How realistic is the snobbery?
I havent read the books of Forster so maybe its explained in them, but the snobbery is so disgusting to me. Is it realistic of the times?
shareFrom what I know, it was generally like that, although this family seems particularly extra snobby. What an insufferable bunch of idiots!
Class was a huge part of British life. Much of Forster's work addresses the large differences in class at the time, and how horrible it would be to associate outside your class, or heaven forbid, marry outside it. We tend to look at Lilia's adventure as romantic and exotic (although it ended quite badly), but things have certainly changed in the last century.
The family treated Lilia badly when she married into it, and didn't even want to associate with her when she married beneath her, and an Italian to boot! And look how horribly they treated their servants. I'd want to smack them upside the head.
I'm reading the book right now and I feel the treatment of the servants is telling but not precisely in the way one might expect. We see the Herritons treating the servants abysmally. But unless I forgot it the film never shows their reaction. Two of the best servants threaten to walk-which indicated that such treatment was in no way what they had ever seen in the Herriton household. The comment was even made earlier in the novel that Mrs. Herriton had to more or less take over Lilia's household because Lilla ran off one servant after another whereas the Herriton's kept their servants for years. So I think what happened in the film with the servants was more a reaction to the situation than the usual treatment.
That said the snobbish seemed right on point for the time. And the irony is I don't think Phillip really was snobbish. Lilia comments in their angry encounter that he was trying to appear smart and in doing so had been really cruel to her.
The entire fiasco in the work is largely because of how badly the Herritons treated Lilia in life.