Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions)
by E. M. Forster
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Book Summary Information
Author: E. M. ForsterEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-10-29
ISBN: 0486424545
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Dover Publications
Book Reviews of Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions)
Book Review: A Novel of Edwardian Society with Disaster Looming
Summary: 5 Stars
This brilliant classic of English literature features the clash of the artistic and social Schlegel sisters--Margaret and Helen--with the business oriented and pragmatic Wilcox men--Henry and his sons Charles and Paul. All are wealthy. This is a novel of comfortable upper-class Edwardian life set in London and rural England.
Although written in 1910, Howards End is amazingly contemporary and relevant. Of course, the conflict between the personal and the practical, the artistic and the commercial is ever-present. Also Forster touches cleverly on many other societal issues that are current. We read about the motor car just beginning its dynasty in 1910; indeed the automobile is almost another character in the novel--mute and ominous. There are also insightful passages about pollution and environmental issues, urban sprawl, and a wonderful discussion of the commercialization of Christmas, among many other fascinating discussions some shallow others deep. I was particularly interested in Forster's exploration of the practical and commercial as the necessary underpinning of the artistic and personal. At one point Margaret says that money is the "warp of life," a metaphor based on the warp and woof of the weaver's cloth (a clever pun also).
One aspect of reading Howards End that I felt continually, but seems not to have been mentioned by other reviewers, is the giant tentacles of the ugly octopus of World War I looming darkly over the characters and their futures. Neither the author in 1910 nor his characters, the half German Schlegel sisters nor the very British Wilcoxes, could know that a great war that would end their peaceful and prosperous Edwardian era was soon to begin. Throughout the novel the issues of German and English culture are in the background. The Schlegel sisters met the Wilcoxes in Germany. The Schlegels often have relatives visiting from Germany, and Helen returns there toward the end of the novel. Only slight foreboding hints of a coming disaster are slinking here and there. At one point just in passing early in the book Forster says that war with Germany is inevitable because the newspapers say it is. The war was a result of the commercial and military competition of Great Britain and Germany which was already anxious and worrisome in 1910, although no one could anticipate what a monumental crisis it would provoke. Almost twenty percent of all upper-class British males were killed in action in the war--over 40 million casualties total for all combatants in World War I.
Howards End is just as readable and fascinating now as it must have been in 1910, and it was a popular success. I do not believe, however, that it would have even been conceivable just five years later. So much had changed by 1915. World War I--1914-1918--was roiling the entire civilization of Europe. The old ways were dissolving on the battlefields France and Belgium. The easy intercourse of the Schegels with Germany and their German relatives would be impossible. Indeed the Schegel sisters themselves would be suspect and isolated in England. (Perhaps though they would find their fulfilment as volunteer military nurses as many Germans living in England did.) Paul and Charles would be in the trenches at Ypres if they were still alive, not in business in London or strutting about the colonial empire. Everything would change so fast so soon. As I read this novel I felt every moment the monumental disasters stalking the Schegels and Wilcoxes and their world, disasters that would make their current personal trials seem rather puny. For me this gave the novel an extra frisson of tension and awe.
Summary of Howards End (Dover Thrift Editions)
The disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist ? all intersect at an estate called Howards End. The fate of this country home symbolizes the future of England in an exploration of social, economic, and philosophical trends during the post-Victorian era.
Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.
Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly. --Alix Wilber
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