** DISCLAIMER: I am a psych major who signed up for this class because it looked super cool and I needed four more credits to graduate. Please do not judge this post for not being the literary masterpiece that I know the rest of you will/have churned out. Thanks. **
As many of you may have noticed, I have some strong views on On Beauty. Many of those strong views revolve around my feelings towards Howard Belsey, but I will say that the reading for Tuesday really threw me for a loop. I went into extreme hatred and then confused slight compassion and amusement. I've been trying to find the quote somewhere in this book about how it's so basic for one to read and discuss the characters they like and dislike, but since I cannot find it, I have decided to ignore this and tell you why I (and I'm pretty sure Zadie Smith) dislike Howard.
Though this section of the book talked a lot about everyone, I feel that we really got to learn a lot about Howard. Smith's description of Howard's day at Carlene Kipps' funeral makes the reader confused, slightly compassionate and then full of hatred (or maybe that was just me). To start is Howard's experience in church. Out of nowhere, Howard is moved with emotion. This is the first time we see how moved Howard is by music (thought: Why then did Howard sleep during the Mozart performance? Smith seems to connect Howard and music numerous times during the novel. It is also his job to fix the music at the anniversary party, where he meets Vee -- and dont get me started on that one). But the most amazing thing with this, that made me, for a moment, really feel attached to Howard is that he becomes upset thinking about the possibility of his family's gravestones: "His thoughts fled from him and rushed down their dark holes. Zora's gravestone. Levi's. Jerome's. Everybody's. His own. Kiki's. Kiki's. Kiki's. Kiki's" (288). For a brief period we are able to see Howard as a person, not as the monster he is often made out to be. (Sidenote: the way that Smith describes Howard crying is one of those things I "Oh My God"-ed out loud. "But this was different: he was tasting salt, watery salt, a lot of it and feeling it in the chambers of his nose; it ran in rivulets down his neck and pooled in the dainty triangular well at the base of his throat. It was coming from his eyes" pg. 287. That is a real section of writing that even Claire would approve of). Then we are further taken into the idea of Howard as a real person when he goes to visit his father. I was first taken aback by the fact that he hadn't seen him in years and how rude he was. And while no one can argue that Howard wasn't rude to his father ("I said we pay for a nurse. Why do you let these bloody people in? They're just bloody proselytizers" pg 295), we sort of get to see why Howard is who he is. He is obviously still very upset about his mother's death, and, relatedly, doesn't know how to deal with the women in his life (I warned you I was a psych major!). And we are thrown for a total loop with the idea that Harold is both homophobic and racist (though those things may be too extreme and one could argue that he just has very outdated views). But then of course, Smith takes our slight sympathy for Howard and flips it on it's head when he cheats on his wife, yet again, by having anal sex with Vee. AT HER MOTHER'S WAKE. (PS If i just ruined the book for you, I apologize...but I promise it was in the section I'm supposed to write about) It's awkward, it's uncomfortable for the reader and more than anything you just get an interesting mix of hatred and pity for Howard. Pity for during, when Howard tries to show his love in a traditional manner and Vee will have none of it, and pity for after, when Howard is uncomfortable and doesn't know how to act why Vee teases him for his actions ("Anyway, if you are about to leave me for ever, thanks for the memento. It was very 'courtly love' of you" 336). Ultimately, I don't know what to think. I restricted myself to not reading further so I could write the post I was assigned...but as soon as I finish writing this I have to read more so I can really make a character judgment.
Also...I love how obvious Smith makes her views on Howard. In her acknowledgments she says that her husband knows that time is how you spend your love. And then she says that Howard "just did not believe, as his father did, that time is how you spend your love" (302). Also, we all know of Smith's love of Forster. And then she so humorously has Howard say "'A Room with a View. Forster.' Howard smiled sadly. 'Can't stand Forster.'" (298).
I apologize that this is all over the place, and also that it wasn't in by 7...because I just now saw that it was supposed to be.
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I think that I am more perplexed by Howard than enraged by him. We talked in class today about Howard's near inability to connect with human beings or art that presents a distinct human quality, particularly representational art. To explain this phenomenon, I had hastily claimed that this difficulty of Howard's to successfully interact with the human aspects of life stems from his hatred of his father and the inadequacy of his childhood environment. I now realize that I was attempting to observe that, though Howard strongly desired to escape the confines of his middle class upbringing, he actually reestablishes many of the aspects of that life that he despised in his own family environment. In the scene that discusses the painting of Howard’s father that we referred to this afternoon, the narrator comments that the Belsey’s are “petty, cheap and cruel – and are not a family anyone would fight to retain” (18). The painting is the only representation of Howard’s lineage and is described as being “mysterious and redolent in some mystifying way of the English character” (18). This cheapness and this cruelty, this family line that few would fight to preserve, this mysterious, vaguely English identity, plus the “bundle of worthless brick-a-brac that came [Howard’s] way upon his mother’s death,” serves as the entirety of Howard’s inheritance. Howard builds his family on this terribly feeble, hopeless foundation. Rather than escaping his past and using his own family to provide him with the identity he so desperately lacks, Howard perpetuates the shortcomings of the Belsey line. Though he loves his children and his wife, he fails to successfully interact with them or wholeheartedly express his love for them. Howard allows a feud to taint his relationship with Jerome. Most of his interactions with his wife involve conflict and disagreement, and many of his interactions with Levi are consumed with Howard disapproving of or being confused by Levi’s forms of self expression. Though Howard is not an ignorant and bigoted man like his father, he is not much better at interacting with his children than his father was with hi. Despite all of his learning and effort, Howard fails to escape his past, succeeding only in reestablishing an equally toxic and dysfunctional family environment as the one he left.
I think it's interesting that this conversation keeps coming back to "lineage" and the "English character." That is, the book is set up so that you think about Howard's individual problems as emanating -- at least in part -- from his relationship to the environment in which he was raised (his earliest, well, cultivation).
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