Where Angels Fear to Tread

These chapters chart the internal development of Philip Herriton, whose intellectual and aesthetic detachment proves an insufficient defense against lived experience. Initially, Philip constructs his identity through personas—the aesthete and the humorist—as mechanisms for avoiding emotional engagement. Lilia’s death completes his disillusionment with Italy, allowing him to retreat into cynicism rather than sympathy. The theme of The Struggle to Develop an Individual Sense of Identity is explored through his conversation with Caroline Abbott. Philip’s philosophy—that one’s “real life is your own, and nothing can touch it” (58)—posits an inner world of thought as a sanctuary. This perspective, however, functions as a retreat from genuine connection. Philip’s vanity, rather than his philosophy, ultimately governs his perceptions; Gino’s simple apology at the Rocca is enough to transform Philip’s perception of Italy, revealing the superficiality of his convictions and his tendency to be swayed by charm over substance.

Caroline Abbott undergoes a profound transformation, moving from abstract principle to embodied understanding. Initially driven by guilt, she acts as the plot’s moral engine, her insistence on rescuing the baby forcing the Herritons’ hand. Her journey highlights her internal contradictions, which underscore The Clashes Between Social Convention and Passionate Emotion. She is unconventional enough to travel across Europe alone, yet her Sawston upbringing makes her hesitate to enter an unmarried man’s house. Her confrontation with Gino in Chapter 7 systematically dismantles her preconceived notions. She arrives prepared to confront a villain but instead encounters a man demonstrating paternal love. The sight of the baby as a living entity—“a glorious, unquestionable fact” (95)—shatters the moral certainty that fueled her mission. As she fails to comprehend the cultural significance of Gino calling out tombola numbers, she comes to see how she has failed to grasp his means of emotional expression. Her ultimate capitulation is not intellectual but physical and emotional; by asking to help wash the child, she sheds her role as a moral crusader and enters into a moment of shared humanity. This act becomes a purifying ritual, connecting her to a maternal force that transcends the rigid social codes she has internalized.

The cultural chasm between England and Italy is rendered through the characters’ sensory and emotional responses to their environment. Harriet’s journey south is a catalog of English discomfort with foreign realities; smuts, heat, and noise are perceived as personal affronts, revealing her inability to see beyond rigid standards of propriety. It functions as a parody of Edwardian tours of the continent. The opera scene serves as a potent microcosm of this cultural conflict. Harriet’s attempts to impose Sawston’s decorum on the lively Italian audience are both comic and telling. For the Italians, the performance is about shared, exuberant entertainment, a concept alien to Harriet’s reserved sensibilities. Philip, positioned between Harriet’s disapproval and the audience’s vitality, finds himself “[d]runk with excitement” (89), surrendering to the passionate, communal spirit of Monteriano. He falls in love with Italy all over again. This moment signals his susceptibility to an Italian ethos that values emotional expression over repressive order. The opera itself, Lucia di Lammermoor, with its narrative of thwarted love and “madness,” ironically mirrors the emotional chaos that the English characters are both drawn to and terrified by.

Forster employs artistic allusion and symbolism to deepen the narrative’s thematic concerns. The baby functions as the novel’s central symbolic object, its meaning shifting according to each character’s projections. For Mrs. Herriton, it is an emblem of family pride; for Harriet, a moral duty; for Caroline, a principle of redemption. Its physical presence in Chapter 7, however, resists all abstraction. The scene of Caroline and Gino washing the baby is described with the reverence of a sacred rite, culminating in Philip’s perception of the tableau. When Philip sees them bathing the child, his thoughts race with references to Renaissance artists such as Bellini, Signorelli, and Di Credi. This is a key instance of Forster’s technique, in which Philip’s love for Italy contextualizes his immediate surroundings in cultural terms. The allusion frames a raw, human interaction through the lens of Renaissance art, characterizing Philip’s aesthetic mode of understanding the world. He comprehends profundity through an artistic filter, observing life as if it were a masterpiece in a gallery. This moment prefigures his eventual realization that he is fated to be a spectator rather than a participant in passionate life. The contrasting settings within Gino’s home—Lilia’s dusty, memorialized reception room versus the messy, vital living quarters—further symbolizes the novel’s valuation of life, however imperfect, over the sterile preservation of memory.