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I got the sense from Howards End that Forster had mixed feelings about change.  He seemed to favor intellectual and political growth, but at the same time highlighted the disastrous consequences of “progress” through industrialization and class interaction.  Smith appears to be making the opposite claim about intellectuals.  They are stuck in a pretense of progression that is in reality no longer evolving.  I think this may have something to do with her critique of universities as institutions that espouse innovation and change, while in reality may be perpetuating the same ideas year after year.  This is certainly true of Howard and Claire who for all their radical ideas have ceased moving forward intellectually.  Because of this I think Smith finds Forster’s assessment of intellectualism applicable in some ways to modern society, especially in cases where it causes problems rather than solutions, as for Leonard Bast.  Similarly, Smith transforms Forster’s depiction of “practicals” from necessary yet stagnant members of society into people who change in significant ways like Kiki and Carl.

I’m still unsure about how beauty impacts all of this.  It is a powerful force in both books, and the characters’ appreciation or rejection of it seems to heavily influence their actions.  Perhaps this relates to Sartre’s “fact” because many of the characters in both works are confused/conflicted (sometimes about beauty), but still act in accordance with who they are as a whole, whether intellectual, practical, progressive or not.

Elise