English Respectability Collides with the Force of Italy
E. M. Forster's First Novel
A Custody Mission Becomes a Grotesque Tragedy
The Mature Debut Adapted for Film, Radio, Television, and Opera
Before the celebrated masterpieces came Where Angels Fear to Tread: a first book in which E. M. Forster's defining concerns were already taking shape.
Where Angels Fear to Tread is a 1905 novel by E. M. Forster. The title comes from a line in Alexander Pope's poem An Essay on Criticism: "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread". The BBC adapted the novel for television in 1966 as a Play of the Month. In 1991 it was made into a film by Charles Sturridge, starring Rupert Graves, Giovanni Guidelli, Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham Carter, and Judy Davis. A ten-part radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. An opera based on the novel by Mark Weiser was premiered at the Peabody Institute of Music in 1999, and received its professional premiere at Opera San Jose in 2015.
On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and travelling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with Gino, a handsome Italian man much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband's family send Lilia's brother-in-law Philip to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but he arrives too late. Lilia has already married Gino and becomes pregnant again. She gives birth to a son, but dies in childbirth. Caroline decides to go to Tuscany again to save the child from what she perceives will be a difficult life. Not to be outdone, the Herritons send Philip again to Italy, this time accompanied by his sister Harriet, to save the family's reputation. In the public eye, they make it known that it is both their right and their duty to travel to Italy to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman. Secretly, though, they have no regard for the child, only public appearances. Philip and Harriet meet Caroline in Monteriano. Both Philip and Caroline eventually fall under the charm of Italy, which causes them to waver in their original purpose. They further learn that Gino is fiercely devoted to his and Lilia's infant son. As they admit defeat in their mission however, Harriet kidnaps the baby, but the baby is accidentally killed when the carriage he is in overturns. Gino, hearing the news, attacks Phillip, but the two are reconciled after Caroline's mediation. Gino's physical outburst toward Philip in response to the news makes Philip realise what it is like to truly be alive. The guilt felt by Harriet causes her to lose her mind. Finally, as Philip and Caroline return to England, he realises that he is in love with Caroline but that he can never be with her, because she admits, dramatically, to being in love with Gino.
The reviewer for UK daily newspaper The Manchester Guardian (forerunner of The Guardian) wrote in August 1905: "Where Angels Fear to Tread is not at all the kind of book that its title suggests. It is not mawkish or sentimental or commonplace. The motive of the story […] is familiar and ordinary enough, but the setting and treatment of this motive are almost startlingly original". The review noted "a persistent vein of cynicism which is apt to repel, but the cynicism is not deep-seated. […] [I]t takes the form of a sordid comedy culminating, unexpectedly and with a real dramatic force, in a grotesque tragedy." It concluded by saying, "We wonder whether EM Forster could be a little more charitable without losing in force and originality. An experiment might be worth trying." Lionel Trilling wrote, "Forster's first novel appeared in 1905. The author was 26, not a remarkable age at which to have written a first novel unless the novel be, as Forster's was, a whole and mature work dominated by a fresh and commanding intelligence".
“Forster's first novel appeared in 1905. The author was 26, not a remarkable age at which to have written a first novel unless the novel be, as Forster's was, a whole and mature work dominated by a fresh and commanding intelligence”
Why Where Angels Fear to Tread Still Matters
Read today, Where Angels Fear to Tread offers more than the curiosity of a famous writer's beginning. It preserves the risks, experiments, and unresolved tensions of a literary voice before later success made that voice familiar.
Return to the beginning, and discover how Where Angels Fear to Tread first opened the path ahead.
E.M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread begins with the Herriton family sending off Lilia, a young English widow, to Italy. Driven by suburban English snobbery and a desire to maintain family respectability, the Herritons hope the trip, chaperoned by the respectable Caroline Abbott, will refine Lilia's character. However, they are shocked to discover that Lilia falls in love with and marries Gino Carella, an unemployed twenty-one-year-old son of a provincial Italian dentist. Outraged by what they perceive as a disgraceful lower-class match, the Herritons dispatch Philip Herriton to Italy to prevent the marriage, only for him to arrive too late. Lilia remains in Monteriano with Gino, but her life quickly unravels into isolation and unhappiness. Despite the cultural divide and her husband’s overbearing nature, her hopes center on bearing a son to fix their fractured marriage. Ultimately, tragedy strikes when Lilia dies during childbirth, leaving behind a baby boy. Back in England, the Herriton household tries to suppress the news of the child to avoid social scandal. However, when Lilia’s daughter Irma learns of her half-brother, word spreads, prompting Caroline Abbott to intervene out of guilt for having encouraged Lilia’s original romance. Threatened by Miss Abbott's sudden determination to rescue the infant from a life in Italy, Mrs. Herriton dispatches Philip and his rigid sister Harriet to Monteriano to reclaim the child and save face. Upon arriving in Italy, Philip and Harriet find Miss Abbott already there. While Harriet maintains a fierce, unyielding hatred for everything Italian, Philip and Miss Abbott are gradually transformed by the warmth and charm of the local culture. Miss Abbott secretly visits Gino to demand the child, only to be moved by his profound paternal love and devotion while watching him lovingly bathe his son. Realizing the child belongs with his father, she abandons her plan. Philip, taking a detached, cynical view of life, accepts the failure of their negotiations after a friendly meeting with Gino, content to return home empty-handed. Harriet, however, refuses to accept defeat. Driven by fanatic zeal and moral arrogance, she secretly kidnaps the baby from Gino’s home. As she and Philip make a dark, rain-soaked escape down the mountain in a carriage, Philip becomes uneasy. Looking at the bundle Harriet carries, he hears the infant weeping silently under her cloak. Disaster strikes on the slick road: the carriage crashes and overturns in the dark wood. Philip is injured in the accident, and in the chaotic aftermath, a panicked Harriet shrieks that the baby was knocked from her arms. The stolen infant perishes in the crash, turning their hypocritical rescue mission into a horrifying tragedy born of rigid English self-righteousness.
For twelve years you’ve trained me and tortured me, and I’ll stand it no more.Where Angels Fear to Tread Chapter 2. It is a dramatic, emotionally charged moment of liberation where Lilia fiercely rejects the domineering control and hypocrisy of the Sawston establishment.
There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy; it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it has not the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany.Where Angels Fear to Tread Chapter 6. The observation offers a brilliant cultural insight that highlights the uninhibited, confident vitality of Italian aesthetics compared to Northern European sensibilities.
Forster's prose is accessible, engaging, and remarkably modern for a work published in 1905. The language is sharp, concise, and filled with social satire that makes the narrative flow quickly. Readers will find the dialogue natural and the pacing deliberate. The primary challenge lies not in complex vocabulary, but in navigating the subtle layers of irony and the shifting moral perspectives of the characters as they move between England and Italy.
The novel established Forster as a major voice in Edwardian literature through its brilliant critique of middle-class English hypocrisy. It balances comedic satire with intense tragedy, examining how rigid social expectations crush genuine human emotion. By contrasting suburban English decorum with vibrant Italian passion, the work explores timeless themes of identity, cultural misunderstanding, and moral blindness, making it a foundational text in twentieth-century fiction.
What lies at the journey’s end is an intense collision between rigid English propriety and unyielding Italian passion. As the dark, rain-soaked roads of Monteriano test every character's moral certainty, a single frantic choice shatters the lives involved and forces Philip and Caroline to confront the true cost of their actions. The final chapters bring no comfort, only a profound transformation born of grief and a quiet, haunting revelation of feelings that can never be realized. Everything the characters believed about duty and righteousness is brought to an irreversible reckoning. Read these closing pages for yourself.
Rather than a single villain, the primary antagonist is the suffocating social convention represented by the Herriton family, particularly Mrs. Herriton and Harriet. Their rigid enforcement of propriety drives the central conflict, causing them to treat human lives as objects for preserving status. Their narrow worldview contrasts sharply with the authentic, uninhibited life found in Italy.
The title is drawn from Alexander Pope's famous line, "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread." It refers directly to the reckless intrusion of the Herriton family into lives and cultures they do not understand. Their arrogant belief that they know what is best leads them to rush into delicate situations with catastrophic results.
Italy serves as a transformative force that breaks down English emotional repression. Through its warmth, beauty, and unrestrained passion, characters like Philip and Caroline are forced to reexamine their narrow values. They move from detached cynicism to genuine emotional awareness, discovering what it truly means to feel alive.
Miva: the next reading experience beyond audiobooks
Listen like an audiobook, then ask anything, anytime.
Start Miva's narrationMiva does not just narrate. It keeps explaining based on what you ask.