Zadie Smith's Forsterian Ethics: White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty

Abstract

Zadie Smith's 2005 novel, On Beauty, rereads and revises E. M. Forster's Howards End, and Smith's authorial affinities and dissimilarities to Forster were much discussed by the novel's critics. This article extends this discussion by arguing that On Beauty actually represents the culmination of an extended engagement with Forster's work. Identifying the marks of a Forsterian ethics within both White Teeth and The Autograph Man, I suggest that a sustained ethical enquiry—prompted largely by Forster but also indebted to contemporary moral philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum and Elaine Scarry—underpins and illuminates Smith's fiction in a manner crucial to a fuller understanding of her work.