Present evidence from either the film and/or the book to support your position (or his, so to speak).
Tibby Schlegel from Howards End: Gay or Straight?
by Anonymous | reply 75 | March 4, 2018 3:26 AM |
He's British, so my gaydar is blocked. But I absolutely love you for asking this question, OP.
by Anonymous | reply 1 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 2 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 3 | November 28, 2010 2:48 AM |
Reading together? OP is Leonard Bast to r1's Helen - how sweet. Watch out for those fatal bookshelves!
by Anonymous | reply 4 | November 28, 2010 2:50 AM |
Leonrad's the one who leaves his umbrella at the girls' house, right? But which one is Tibby?
by Anonymous | reply 5 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 6 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 7 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 8 | November 28, 2010 3:12 AM |
Let's get into it, r8 - meanwhile, have a scone that Tibby hasn't yet consumed!!!
by Anonymous | reply 9 | November 28, 2010 3:16 AM |
With those two sisters he'd have to be.
by Anonymous | reply 10 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 11 | November 28, 2010 4:18 AM |
earrings, caftans, fraus, and freepers!!%0D Oh my!!
by Anonymous | reply 12 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 13 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 14 | November 28, 2010 2:20 PM |
Maybe Tibby grew up to be Monty in Withnail & I? Stranger things have happened.
by Anonymous | reply 15 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 16 | November 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 Anonymous | reply 17 | November 28, 2010 4:08 PM |
Do we bow or cut them dead?
by Anonymous | reply 18 | November 28, 2010 9:35 PM |
Who goes there? Saxon or Celt?
by Anonymous | reply 19 | November 28, 2010 9:55 PM |
I took you for Ruth Wilcox! You have her way of walking.... round the house....
by Anonymous | reply 20 | February 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 Anonymous | reply 21 | February 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 Anonymous | reply 22 | February 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 Anonymous | reply 23 | August 12, 2011 9:46 PM |
Tibby used to hang out with Anthony Blanche. 'Nough said?
by Anonymous | reply 24 | August 12, 2011 10:02 PM |
'Allo 'enry! Fancy seein you 'ere.
by Anonymous | reply 25 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 26 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 27 | August 13, 2011 2:00 AM |
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
by Anonymous | reply 28 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 29 | August 13, 2011 2:48 AM |
"Only connect . . ."
He spelled it out for you.
by Anonymous | reply 30 | August 13, 2011 2:54 AM |
Lah-ti-dah...a layyydy!
by Anonymous | reply 31 | August 13, 2011 2:56 AM |
What is it? What's wrong? Is Tibby ill?!?!?!?!
by Anonymous | reply 32 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 33 | August 13, 2011 5:12 AM |
Ello Enry!
by Anonymous | reply 34 | August 13, 2011 6:02 AM |
The actor that played Tibby didn't have much of a career. I wonder why?
by Anonymous | reply 35 | August 13, 2011 2:30 PM |
I thought the actor who played Tibby was doing an imitation of a young Jeremy Irons.
by Anonymous | reply 36 | August 13, 2011 2:49 PM |
r24 Savoring the 26 flavors of Chartreuse as it rolls down the tongue.
by Anonymous | reply 37 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 38 | August 13, 2011 3:36 PM |
It's the Jackie Basts, not the Leonard Basts who are rioting.
by Anonymous | reply 39 | August 13, 2011 3:44 PM |
I'm saying that it takes 100 years for a Leonard to turn into a Jackie, r39.
by Anonymous | reply 40 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 41 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 42 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 43 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 44 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 45 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 46 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 47 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 48 | August 24, 2011 12:51 PM |
You are pleased about Ba-beh, aren't you?
by Anonymous | reply 49 | August 24, 2011 1:00 PM |
Does Tibby's taste include both snails and mackeral.
by Anonymous | reply 50 | August 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 Anonymous | reply 51 | October 15, 2011 10:11 PM |
What's the verdict?
by Anonymous | reply 52 | August 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.
by Anonymous | reply 53 | August 26, 2012 3:13 PM |
Yes, the teeth of a pig.
by Anonymous | reply 54 | August 26, 2012 3:36 PM |
Howards End 2: Tibby Goes to War and Dies from Malnourishment
by Anonymous | reply 55 | September 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 Anonymous | reply 56 | September 23, 2013 12:22 AM |
I also love you OP.
As for Tibby? Probably gay. He must do the host a little.
by Anonymous | reply 57 | September 23, 2013 11:05 AM |
What would have happened to the half German, half English Schlegals during the First World War?
by Anonymous | reply 58 | September 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).
by Anonymous | reply 59 | July 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 Anonymous | reply 60 | July 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 Anonymous | reply 61 | July 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 Anonymous | reply 62 | October 5, 2015 12:31 AM |
R62, I, myself, did not.
by Anonymous | reply 63 | December 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 Anonymous | reply 64 | December 22, 2015 5:54 AM |
It's EM Forster R62, so, yes.
by Anonymous | reply 65 | December 22, 2015 12:43 PM |
"I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another."
by Anonymous | reply 66 | December 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.
by Anonymous | reply 67 | December 22, 2015 2:12 PM |
Is the actor who played Tibby gay?
by Anonymous | reply 68 | December 23, 2015 12:40 AM |
It is ET's best film, she's glorious in it.
by Anonymous | reply 69 | December 23, 2015 12:53 PM |
[quote] It is ET's best film
She phoned it in.
by Anonymous | reply 70 | December 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 Anonymous | reply 71 | December 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 Anonymous | reply 72 | December 23, 2015 1:17 PM |
[quote] As for the Shlemiels
I think they made it to the intro of Laverne & Shirley, John Spike.
by Anonymous | reply 73 | December 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 Anonymous | reply 74 | December 23, 2015 5:34 PM |
He's gay. Read the book recently.
by Anonymous | reply 75 | March 4, 2018 3:26 AM |