Where Angels Fear to Tread Themes

In Where Angels Fear To Tread, the emphasis placed on social class creates Grand Canyon-sized rifts between characters. For the people in Sawston, appearances are more important than reality,...

E.M. Forster's favorite game is poking fun at the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of English society. As readers, we can laugh at Forster's pompous or pathetic characters, but we're also being shown t...

In Where Angels Fear to Tread, Forster shows us English society as overly conventional, stuffy, and way too concerned with good manners. Within the Sawston community, one of the most important rule...

Passivity in Where Angels Fear To Tread is generally associated with the upper classes. The richer you are, the less you have to do (because, you know, you can just hire servants to do things for y...

Forster portrays Italy as a country of romance and adventure, a place to escape the stuffy, hypocritical conventions of English society. Many of the characters feel liberated the minute they step o...

In the small town of Sawston, maintaining the respect of your neighbors is The Golden Rule. Mrs. Herriton prides herself on being a model for good manners, and her daughter Harriet also follows a s...

There aren't all that many compassionate or forgiving characters in Where Angels Fear To Tread. In fact, Forster spends a lot of time portraying characters who refuse to forgive each other for one...

Where Angels Fear to Tread might start off with a young woman getting ready for a liberating adventure of a lifetime, but a large portion of the novel is actually concerned about the plight that wo...