Proponents and antagonists of recapitulation theory agreed that the link between development and evolution is heredity, but their agreement ended with the question of hereditary mechanisms. Recapitulation theory almost inevitably assumes Lamarckian inheritance, which, as we saw in Chapter 1, makes development and genealogy coextensive; Mendelism, by contrast, radically separates them. In theory, the difference between the two hereditary paradigms should have profound implications for the Bildung plot. In practice, novelists rarely have a genetic vision fine-grained enough to affect narrative dynamics in any detectable way, even when heredity plays an important thematic role.

A significant exception is E. M. Forster, whose fiction repeatedly pits hereditary transmission against Bildung, as the protagonists of The Longest Journey and Maurice learn the hard way. Similar issues mark most of Forster's fiction. If this claim seems counterintuitive, it is because modernist and queer studies, which have so productively mined the complexities of Forster's fiction, tend to favour affiliative over filiative dynamics. Forster's focus on reproduction, meanwhile, enjoys little attention, though it is evident even to casual readers. ‘Birth’ was one of Forster's theoretical concerns (AN 36) and a recurrent theme and structuring principle in his fiction. Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Passage to India and Howards End all include or anticipate the arrival of babies, but this feature tends to be overlooked or dismissed as an aspect of his heterosexist surface plots. As John Beer puts it, ‘homosexuality gave [Forster] an “outsider’s” view of things, making him look at the world from a point of view which did not regard marriage or the procreation of children as central’ (qtd in Martland 1999: 20). What is central, according to such interpretations, is the ‘struggle for heirs of same-sex lovers’ (Malik 1997: 230), ‘the problem of continuity without physical begetting’ (Martin 1997: 257).