Howards End
Encyclopedia
Howards End is a novel
by E. M. Forster
, first published in 1910
, which tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England
. The main theme is the difficulties, troubles, and also the benefits of relationships between members of different social class
es. Many critics, including Lionel Trilling
, consider Howards End "undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece".
In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked Howards End 38th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
; and the Basts, a struggling couple in the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The motto of the book is "Only connect..."
The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The youngest, Helen, is for a short period intensely attracted to the younger Wilcox brother, Paul; each rejects the other for his or her own reasons. The eldest, Margaret, becomes friends with Paul's mother, Ruth Wilcox. Ruth's most prized personal possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her. Ruth's own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because such abstractions, while being very dear to Margaret, are lost to them. As Ruth is terminally ill, and Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note delivered to her husband from the nursing home where she has died, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox's widowed husband, Henry, and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance. However, over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually marries him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry's elder son Charles and his wife try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End.
Gradually, Margaret becomes aware of Henry's dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. On Henry's advice, Helen tells Leonard Bast to quit his respectable job as a clerk at an insurance company, because the company stands outside a protective group of companies and thus is vulnerable to failure. A few weeks later, Henry carelessly reverses his opinion, having entirely forgotten about Bast, but it is too late, and Bast has lost his tenuous hold on financial solvency. Bast lives with a troubled, "fallen" woman for whom he feels responsible and whom he eventually marries. Helen continues to try to help young Leonard Bast (perhaps in part out of guilt about having intervened in his life to begin with, as Leonard had not wanted it and Henry had explicitly stated beforehand that he advised no one) but it all goes terribly wrong; because of Bast's wife's connection with Henry, Henry will not countenance helping them. It is later revealed that ten years previously, as a teenager, she had been Henry's mistress in Cyprus
, but he had then carelessly abandoned her, an expatriate English girl on foreign soil with no way to return home. Margaret confronts Henry about his ill-treatment, and he is ashamed of the affair but unrepentant about his harsh treatment of her. Because of Margaret's impending marriage into the Wilcoxes and situations such as these, the Schlegel sisters drift apart somewhat. In a moment of pity for the poor, doomed Bast, Helen has an affair with him. Finding herself pregnant, she leaves England to travel through Germany to conceal her condition, but eventually returns to England when she receives news of her Aunt Juley's illness. She refuses a face-to-face meeting with Margaret in an effort to hide her pregnancy but is fooled by Margaret -- acting on the advice of Henry -- into a meeting at Howards End. Henry and Margaret plan an intervention with a doctor, thinking Helen's evasive behavior is a sign of mental illness. When they come upon Helen at Howards End, they also discover the pregnancy. Margaret tries in vain to convince Henry that if he can countenance his own affair, he should forgive Helen hers. Mr. Bast arrives having been tormented by the affair wishing to speak with Margaret. He is not aware of Helen's presence. Henry's son, Charles, attacks Bast for the dishonor he has brought to Helen, and accidentally kills him when striking him with the flat edge of a sword, Leonard grabs onto a bookcase, which falls on top of him, and his weak heart gives out. Charles is charged with manslaughter and sent to jail for three years. The ensuing scandal and shock cause Henry to reevaluate his life and he begins to connect with others. He bequeaths Howards End to Margaret, who states that it will go to her nephew - Helen's son by Bast - when she dies. Helen reconciles with her sister and Henry and decides to raise her child at Howards End. Margaret is usually viewed as the heroine of the story because, in staying married to Henry despite the scandal, she acts as a uniting force, bringing all the characters peaceably together at Howards End. Henry is sometimes viewed as a hero because he triumphs over his inability to connect with the situations of others. In the end, the open-minded intellectuality of the Schlegels is reconciled or balanced with the practical economy of the Wilcoxes, each learning lessons from the other.
, Sarah-Jane Gwillim
, and Glenda Jackson
.
The 1992 film
version starred Emma Thompson
, Vanessa Redgrave
, Helena Bonham Carter
, Anthony Hopkins
, and Samuel West
. Thompson won an Academy Award for her performance.
Zadie Smith
's On Beauty
is a modern retelling of and homage to Howards End.
, his childhood home from 1883 to 1893. According to his description in an appendix to the novel, Rooks Nest was a hamlet with a farm on the Weston Road just outside Stevenage
. The house is marked on modern Ordnance Survey maps at . Since Forster's childhood, Stevenage has expanded beyond the house, now encompassing it.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
, first published in 1910
1910 in literature
The year 1910 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*April - Halley's comet reappears , and Mark Twain dies on April 21, 1910, the day following the comet's perihelion. In his biography, Twain had written, "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again...
, which tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The main theme is the difficulties, troubles, and also the benefits of relationships between members of different social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
es. Many critics, including Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...
, consider Howards End "undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece".
In 1998, the Modern Library
Modern Library
The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
ranked Howards End 38th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Plot summary
The book is about three families in England at the beginning of the twentieth century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have much in common with the real-life Bloomsbury GroupBloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
; and the Basts, a struggling couple in the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The motto of the book is "Only connect..."
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.
The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The youngest, Helen, is for a short period intensely attracted to the younger Wilcox brother, Paul; each rejects the other for his or her own reasons. The eldest, Margaret, becomes friends with Paul's mother, Ruth Wilcox. Ruth's most prized personal possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her. Ruth's own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because such abstractions, while being very dear to Margaret, are lost to them. As Ruth is terminally ill, and Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note delivered to her husband from the nursing home where she has died, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox's widowed husband, Henry, and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance. However, over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually marries him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry's elder son Charles and his wife try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End.
Gradually, Margaret becomes aware of Henry's dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. On Henry's advice, Helen tells Leonard Bast to quit his respectable job as a clerk at an insurance company, because the company stands outside a protective group of companies and thus is vulnerable to failure. A few weeks later, Henry carelessly reverses his opinion, having entirely forgotten about Bast, but it is too late, and Bast has lost his tenuous hold on financial solvency. Bast lives with a troubled, "fallen" woman for whom he feels responsible and whom he eventually marries. Helen continues to try to help young Leonard Bast (perhaps in part out of guilt about having intervened in his life to begin with, as Leonard had not wanted it and Henry had explicitly stated beforehand that he advised no one) but it all goes terribly wrong; because of Bast's wife's connection with Henry, Henry will not countenance helping them. It is later revealed that ten years previously, as a teenager, she had been Henry's mistress in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, but he had then carelessly abandoned her, an expatriate English girl on foreign soil with no way to return home. Margaret confronts Henry about his ill-treatment, and he is ashamed of the affair but unrepentant about his harsh treatment of her. Because of Margaret's impending marriage into the Wilcoxes and situations such as these, the Schlegel sisters drift apart somewhat. In a moment of pity for the poor, doomed Bast, Helen has an affair with him. Finding herself pregnant, she leaves England to travel through Germany to conceal her condition, but eventually returns to England when she receives news of her Aunt Juley's illness. She refuses a face-to-face meeting with Margaret in an effort to hide her pregnancy but is fooled by Margaret -- acting on the advice of Henry -- into a meeting at Howards End. Henry and Margaret plan an intervention with a doctor, thinking Helen's evasive behavior is a sign of mental illness. When they come upon Helen at Howards End, they also discover the pregnancy. Margaret tries in vain to convince Henry that if he can countenance his own affair, he should forgive Helen hers. Mr. Bast arrives having been tormented by the affair wishing to speak with Margaret. He is not aware of Helen's presence. Henry's son, Charles, attacks Bast for the dishonor he has brought to Helen, and accidentally kills him when striking him with the flat edge of a sword, Leonard grabs onto a bookcase, which falls on top of him, and his weak heart gives out. Charles is charged with manslaughter and sent to jail for three years. The ensuing scandal and shock cause Henry to reevaluate his life and he begins to connect with others. He bequeaths Howards End to Margaret, who states that it will go to her nephew - Helen's son by Bast - when she dies. Helen reconciles with her sister and Henry and decides to raise her child at Howards End. Margaret is usually viewed as the heroine of the story because, in staying married to Henry despite the scandal, she acts as a uniting force, bringing all the characters peaceably together at Howards End. Henry is sometimes viewed as a hero because he triumphs over his inability to connect with the situations of others. In the end, the open-minded intellectuality of the Schlegels is reconciled or balanced with the practical economy of the Wilcoxes, each learning lessons from the other.
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
A television adaptation of the novel was broadcast in 1970 with Leo GennLeo Genn
- Early life :He was born at 144 Kyverdale Road, Stamford Hill, Hackney, London, England to a Jewish family. His father, Woolfe Genn, was a jewellery salesman and the maiden name of his mother, Rachel, was Asserson....
, Sarah-Jane Gwillim
Sarah-Jane Gwillim
Sarah-Jane Gwillim is a British television and stage actress who worked mainly from the mid-1960s until the 1980s. She now teaches as an Assistant Professor of Acting at the University of Michigan.-Brief career:...
, and Glenda Jackson
Glenda Jackson
Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...
.
The 1992 film
Howards End (film)
Howards End is a 1992 film based upon the novel of the same title by E. M. Forster , a story of class relations in turn-of-the-20th-century England...
version starred Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...
, Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
, Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter is an English actress of film, stage, and television. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's A Pattern of Roses before winning her first film role as the titular character in Lady Jane...
, Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
, and Samuel West
Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...
. Thompson won an Academy Award for her performance.
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...
's On Beauty
On Beauty
On Beauty is a 2005 novel by British author Zadie Smith. It takes its title from an essay by Elaine Scarry . The story follows the lives of a mixed-race British/American family living in the United States...
is a modern retelling of and homage to Howards End.
Location
Forster based his description of Howards End on a house at Rooks Nest in HertfordshireHertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
, his childhood home from 1883 to 1893. According to his description in an appendix to the novel, Rooks Nest was a hamlet with a farm on the Weston Road just outside Stevenage
Stevenage
Stevenage is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England. It is situated to the east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1, and is between Letchworth Garden City to the north, and Welwyn Garden City to the south....
. The house is marked on modern Ordnance Survey maps at . Since Forster's childhood, Stevenage has expanded beyond the house, now encompassing it.
External links
- Critical/Historical Edition of Howards End
- Study guide with plot summary, analysis and background
- A hypertextual, self-referential, complete edition of Howard's End