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Tibby Schlegel from Howards End: Gay or Straight?

Present evidence from either the film and/or the book to support your position (or his, so to speak).

by Anonymousreply 75March 4, 2018 3:26 AM

He's British, so my gaydar is blocked. But I absolutely love you for asking this question, OP.

by Anonymousreply 1November 28, 2010 2:28 AM

Thanks, R1. Given that you love me for asking this question, I wish I could start dating you. We could make great reading together.

by Anonymousreply 2November 28, 2010 2:42 AM

He was definitely a Foodosexual:

"DON'T HOG ALL THOSE SCONES, TIBBY!"

"Ah, there's Martlett with the Apple Charlotte!"

"Is Cook doing the Mackeral the way Tibby likes it? I know his whole day is spoiled if his breakfast isn't right."

by Anonymousreply 3November 28, 2010 2:48 AM

Reading together? OP is Leonard Bast to r1's Helen - how sweet. Watch out for those fatal bookshelves!

by Anonymousreply 4November 28, 2010 2:50 AM

Leonrad's the one who leaves his umbrella at the girls' house, right? But which one is Tibby?

by Anonymousreply 5November 28, 2010 2:52 AM

"But which one is Tibby?"

He's the Schlegel sisters' brother.

And, yes, I've been the Leonard to Helen too many times as well as the Helen to Paul.

by Anonymousreply 6November 28, 2010 2:56 AM

Now you sound like Ruth Wilcox, OP - too apt to brood! You just can't win you poor dear. Are you thinking about your house a great deal? Shall I be your Margaret?

by Anonymousreply 7November 28, 2010 3:03 AM

"Shall I be your Margaret?"

Hmmm. A question regarding Ruth and Margaret brings up swords and canes, love of a cozy home in a place that's not the country but certainly not the town, butch housekeepers who mysteriously never married, and impromptu, yet thwarted trips, away from the company of men. That is an entirely different thread, I believe.

by Anonymousreply 8November 28, 2010 3:12 AM

Let's get into it, r8 - meanwhile, have a scone that Tibby hasn't yet consumed!!!

by Anonymousreply 9November 28, 2010 3:16 AM

With those two sisters he'd have to be.

by Anonymousreply 10November 28, 2010 3:39 AM

This thread is one of the reasons I still bother coming here. A tiny beacon in the vast darkness of stupidity that is the normal Dl.

by Anonymousreply 11November 28, 2010 4:18 AM

earrings, caftans, fraus, and freepers!!%0D Oh my!!

by Anonymousreply 12November 28, 2010 4:23 AM

I haven't read the book, but based on the movie I always thought he was gay. Wishful thinking perhaps as I thought the actor that played him was awfully cute.

by Anonymousreply 13November 28, 2010 4:25 AM

First time I saw Howards End, I actually thought River Phoenix was playing Tibby. I thought it was genius career movie to go from playing a homeless narcoleptic rent boy in Portland to an Oxford educated Edwardian glutton. Alas!

by Anonymousreply 14November 28, 2010 2:20 PM

Maybe Tibby grew up to be Monty in Withnail & I? Stranger things have happened.

by Anonymousreply 15November 28, 2010 2:22 PM

Heart-ing OP heaps too. Margaret is one of my favorite characters - pre-existential, exhibiting that we cannot live this life without contradiction, no matter how hard we try and how wonderful we are.

Tibby was likely a GUG: Gay Until Graduation. See Brideshead Revisited or Maurice for the composite story.

by Anonymousreply 16November 28, 2010 3:57 PM

True, r16, but I would definitely say that Forster implies that Tibby and the Schlegels are sort of "the end of the family line," at least in terms of traditional upper class European/British inheritance. The inheritors at the end are the non-traditional family of the Schlegel sisters and Leonard's "posthumous" baby. It's implied that Tibby is unlikely to produce heirs or have a career or even a wife; he has no interest in it.

gay, gay, gay, even after graduation imho.

by Anonymousreply 17November 28, 2010 4:08 PM

Do we bow or cut them dead?

by Anonymousreply 18November 28, 2010 9:35 PM

Who goes there? Saxon or Celt?

by Anonymousreply 19November 28, 2010 9:55 PM

I took you for Ruth Wilcox! You have her way of walking.... round the house....

by Anonymousreply 20February 2, 2011 2:44 AM

He probably was gay but i doubt he ever acted on it. He was very smothered by the two sisters so was probably never out of their sight for any length of time i do agree he was cute. it occurs to me he might have been suduced by one of the servants but lets hope he wasn't blavkmailed.

by Anonymousreply 21February 2, 2011 3:25 AM

During the scene when Charles nearly rams him into the bookcase in order to extract the name of Helen's seducer, Tibby looks like he wouldn't mind a bit of extraction himself.

by Anonymousreply 22February 2, 2011 3:52 AM

Do you think Tibby ever went off to a remote part of the Empire and engaged in the love that daren't speak its name?

by Anonymousreply 23August 12, 2011 9:46 PM

Tibby used to hang out with Anthony Blanche. 'Nough said?

by Anonymousreply 24August 12, 2011 10:02 PM

'Allo 'enry! Fancy seein you 'ere.

by Anonymousreply 25August 13, 2011 12:35 AM

I didn't know Leonard Bast was played by the son of Prunella Scales, who played Aunt Julia in the film and played Sybil Fawlty in "Fawlty Towers."

by Anonymousreply 26August 13, 2011 1:15 AM

I imagine poor Tibby would be, in a few years, lying dead in a field in France or on a beach in Turkey.%0D %0D Hopefully, he had the chance to lose his virginity to some brooding but handsome poet-soldier.

by Anonymousreply 27August 13, 2011 2:00 AM

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

by Anonymousreply 28August 13, 2011 2:29 AM

What was the message of Howards End? That the rich kill the poor in many ways? That humanism ends up in societal ostracism? That Emma Thompson will never be fabulously rich?

by Anonymousreply 29August 13, 2011 2:48 AM

"Only connect . . ."

He spelled it out for you.

by Anonymousreply 30August 13, 2011 2:54 AM

Lah-ti-dah...a layyydy!

by Anonymousreply 31August 13, 2011 2:56 AM

What is it? What's wrong? Is Tibby ill?!?!?!?!

by Anonymousreply 32August 13, 2011 4:19 AM

There are so many unattached and pretty young men in Victorian lit who I presume are gay. %0D %0D I'm reading Austen's Persuasian right now and wondering about William Elliot, the presumptive and ne'er do well heir.

by Anonymousreply 33August 13, 2011 5:12 AM

Ello Enry!

by Anonymousreply 34August 13, 2011 6:02 AM

The actor that played Tibby didn't have much of a career. I wonder why?

by Anonymousreply 35August 13, 2011 2:30 PM

I thought the actor who played Tibby was doing an imitation of a young Jeremy Irons.

by Anonymousreply 36August 13, 2011 2:49 PM

r24 Savoring the 26 flavors of Chartreuse as it rolls down the tongue.

by Anonymousreply 37August 13, 2011 3:22 PM

EM Forster was an uncanny prophet. Look at what happens when passionate people like Leonard Bast are deprived oppurtunities by the Henry Wilcox types for over 100 years - they riot on the streets on London. That passion has not been given an outlet, so it goes to violence.

by Anonymousreply 38August 13, 2011 3:36 PM

It's the Jackie Basts, not the Leonard Basts who are rioting.

by Anonymousreply 39August 13, 2011 3:44 PM

I'm saying that it takes 100 years for a Leonard to turn into a Jackie, r39.

by Anonymousreply 40August 13, 2011 3:49 PM

Everybody is so happy and serene at Howards End after Leonard Bast is killed. Is that the English solution? Kill the aspiring working class and everything will be fine? I assume Jackie Bast goes back to turning tricks, which worked out well for her before.

by Anonymousreply 41August 13, 2011 4:36 PM

What about Freddy the hot younger brother in A Room With a View? Was he gay, too? Or just played like that by young Rupert Graves.

by Anonymousreply 42August 13, 2011 11:37 PM

[quote]EM Forster was an uncanny prophet. Look at what happens when passionate people like Leonard Bast are deprived oppurtunities by the Henry Wilcox types for over 100 years - they riot on the streets on London. That passion has not been given an outlet, so it goes to violence.

I don't follow. Leonard was not a violent man. And his son inherits Howards End, so Forster was hopeful about a breakdown of class barriers.

by Anonymousreply 43August 14, 2011 12:44 AM

But what about Jackie? The lower class woman will have to return to a life of prostitution. Any children she bears will be ostracized.

by Anonymousreply 44August 14, 2011 1:00 AM

"There is certainly no rest for us on the earth. But there is happiness, and as Margaret descended the mound on her lover's cock she felt that she was having her share." -- Chapter 26.

by Anonymousreply 45August 24, 2011 12:35 AM

What?!?! R45, you've provided a line from Chapter 26 of what book? Sounds like "Lady Chatterley's Lover." Certainly no Schlegel woman would be so disposed. I'm not sure Tibby wouldn't be though.

by Anonymousreply 46August 24, 2011 7:29 AM

Coincidentally, I have just read A Room With A View. %0D %0D Can anyone familiar with it explain the scene in which Freddy, Reverend Beebe and George Emerson suddenly go skinny-dipping in the family pond? Is their sudden impulse supposed to be shockingly modern for the times? Is that all there is to it? Is Beebe gay? Freddy?%0D %0D And is Miss Lavish, the lady authoress, a lesbian? And for that matter, are we to assume that Cecil, Lucy's fiance, is gay and that's why he is so hostile towards Lucy?%0D %0D

by Anonymousreply 47August 24, 2011 11:42 AM

I never really thought about it but Tibby probably is a self-portrait of the author as a young gay smothered by female relatives. I don't know why he couldn't have had a sex life. He might have traded suck jobs with one of the footmen or something.

by Anonymousreply 48August 24, 2011 12:51 PM

You are pleased about Ba-beh, aren't you?

by Anonymousreply 49August 24, 2011 1:00 PM

Does Tibby's taste include both snails and mackeral.

by Anonymousreply 50August 28, 2011 11:45 PM

"Why didn't you make that young man welcome, Tibby? You must do the host a little, you know. You could've coaxed him into stopping... instead of letting him be swamped by screaming women."

by Anonymousreply 51October 15, 2011 10:11 PM

What's the verdict?

by Anonymousreply 52August 26, 2012 2:53 PM

I wonder if he might have gone the way R27 suggested, or perhaps survived to be invited out to Kent to attend a couple parties at Philip Sassoon's Port Lympne (where he might space himself apart at a suitable distance from the other Lytton Strachey-thin wallflowers against the murals in the exotic Painted Room), or perhaps he tiled away for decades, fussing for a couple decades over an ambitious cataloguing project for the National Portrait Gallery.

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by Anonymousreply 53August 26, 2012 3:13 PM

Yes, the teeth of a pig.

by Anonymousreply 54August 26, 2012 3:36 PM

Howards End 2: Tibby Goes to War and Dies from Malnourishment

by Anonymousreply 55September 22, 2013 5:04 PM

It's been a while since I read those books, but the only one I can think of that doesn't have a young man raised in a household of women is Passage to India. Again, it's been more than 20 years, so I'm probably wrong.

by Anonymousreply 56September 23, 2013 12:22 AM

I also love you OP.

As for Tibby? Probably gay. He must do the host a little.

by Anonymousreply 57September 23, 2013 11:05 AM

What would have happened to the half German, half English Schlegals during the First World War?

by Anonymousreply 58September 23, 2013 11:34 AM

I just watched "Howards End" for the first time in 22 years and I thought it was lovely. I'm so happy that it was nominated for 9 Oscars (and won 3 of them), but I wonder if some of the fine acting that didn't get nominated should have been? Emma won, of course, and Vanessa was nominated, but what about Helena, Anthony, and Samuel West, who did such a nice job as the doomed Mr. Bast?

In answer to OP's question, I do think Tibby was very much into the gentlemen. Adrian Ross Magenty had such a cute young bum (displayed in a deleted scene from Maurice).

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by Anonymousreply 59July 26, 2014 8:31 PM

{quote]What would have happened to the half German, half English Schlegals during the First World War?

They would have been ostracized by some people (mostly the conservative types), but probably very few of those were in their progressive intellectual wealthy circle. Otherwise, not much.

p. s.-- "S C H L E G [bold]E[/bold] L S"

by Anonymousreply 60July 26, 2014 8:36 PM

[quote]And for that matter, are we to assume that Cecil, Lucy's fiance, is gay and that's why he is so hostile towards Lucy?

R47 I agree with you the Cecil may be gay. In fact you get that feeling in the movie version as well.

by Anonymousreply 61July 26, 2014 8:43 PM

Regarding the other EM Forster novel A Passage to India, and its counterpart movie, did anybody else sense a gay subtext between Dr Aziz and Fielding?

by Anonymousreply 62October 5, 2015 12:31 AM

R62, I, myself, did not.

by Anonymousreply 63December 22, 2015 5:28 AM

I agree with the post which stated that it's so damn hard to tell with British men. I've seen the film at least 30 times, and I certainly THINK he is gay, but then again...British academic upper middle class gentleman ??? He may just not be terribly sexual.

by Anonymousreply 64December 22, 2015 5:54 AM

It's EM Forster R62, so, yes.

by Anonymousreply 65December 22, 2015 12:43 PM

"I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another."

by Anonymousreply 66December 22, 2015 1:52 PM

Christmas shopping! Margaret is first on Mrs. Wilcox's list. Hooray! I still think this is Thompson's best film.

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by Anonymousreply 67December 22, 2015 2:12 PM

Is the actor who played Tibby gay?

by Anonymousreply 68December 23, 2015 12:40 AM

It is ET's best film, she's glorious in it.

by Anonymousreply 69December 23, 2015 12:53 PM

[quote] It is ET's best film

She phoned it in.

by Anonymousreply 70December 23, 2015 12:56 PM

I always feel a tinge of sadness when I see or read tales of life before WWI. It's just so likely that all those strapping men will end up rotting in the charnel house of the trenches. England was so eager to send them to the meat grinder. J.R.R.Tolkien famously wrote that only one of his friends survived the war.

And then, of course, there's the Depression and Hitler to look forward to.

Freddy Eynsford Hill, I'm sure, was an early casualty. And I wouldn't be surprised if even Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering ended up in the ooze.

As for the Shlemiels, it's very possible they could have been interned as "enemy aliens." Many were.

But I do love the novels, and films, of E.M.Forster. Such a civilized man, with a grace of expression never seen today. (Can you imagine these characters enmeshed in their i-Phones?)

by Anonymousreply 71December 23, 2015 1:10 PM

Yikes!

I wrote "Shlegels," and computer check wrote "Shlemiels."

(Although, when you think of it, perhaps not entirely inapt.)

Also wanted to mention appreciation for Samuel West. There's a film he made around that time, "Reunion,"(1989) about the non-sexual, but intense friendship between two young men, in 1933 Germany, which is heartrending. Script is by Harold Pinter. Well worth seeing, though it was only available on VHS and laser.

by Anonymousreply 72December 23, 2015 1:17 PM

[quote] As for the Shlemiels

I think they made it to the intro of Laverne & Shirley, John Spike.

by Anonymousreply 73December 23, 2015 1:30 PM

Well, Margaret wouldn't have had to worry about losing Henry to the war considering he had collapsed into feebleness by the end of the novel. I wonder if Henry's murderous son would have been conscripted from prison? Surely, his daughter's new husband would have been sent as well as his other callow son who led on Meg's sister.

by Anonymousreply 74December 23, 2015 5:34 PM

He's gay. Read the book recently.

by Anonymousreply 75March 4, 2018 3:26 AM
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