This work cements Forster’s ability to capture emotional truths within their wider social context. Love, jealousy, friendship, and suspicion are never free-floating, but shaped and refracted through history, class, and empire.
The “only connect” Schlegels (Margaret, Helen, Tibby), half-British, half-German, cultured and bohemian, a little hysterical, are set against the Wilcoxes: practical, wealthy, and decidedly imperial in their outlook. The marriage between Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox forms the uneasy axis of the novel. Meanwhile, the Basts, Leonard and Jacky, hover as a third, socially marginal family. Leonard’s painful attempts to better himself are described with a precision that is unsparing.
At its heart, Howard’s End is a story of two sisters, with a strong Austenian flavour: Margaret as the pragmatic Elinor, Helen as the impetuous Marianne.
I was struck by the references to the Wilcoxes’ colonial rubber business: a reminder that the family’s solidity and respectability are built on the spoils of empire.
It’s also a book about space and place: how houses impact their inhabitants and how country and town assert their own social rules.
First published in 1910, Howard’s End was immediately recognised as Forster’s most accomplished novel to date. It sold well, was praised by critics, and has never been out of print. Forster himself described it as his “best” work…. at least until A Passage to India in 1924. The novel resonated with its Edwardian readership: the clash between landed and commercial classes, the cultural anxieties of modernity, and the uncertain place of the intellectual middle class are all analysed.
The novel has inspired many adaptations, including the great BBC miniseries with Hayley Atwell as Margaret.
Howard’s End feels fresh: a novel of connections and compromises, family ties and fragile ideals: a nascent “woman question” novel.
One word: art.
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