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    Howards End
    Howards End
    Howards End
    Audiobook12 hours

    Howards End

    Written by E.M. Forster

    Narrated by John Franklyn-Robbins

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Set in Edwardian England, Howards End is the portrait of a lost era, a deceptively golden time before the First World War that would change values and lifestyles forever. To illuminate these changing times, Forster throws together three vastly dissimilar classes of people: the Schlegels-Helen and Margaret-educated, compassionate and independently wealthy; the Wilcoxes-nouveau riche Empire builders; and Leonard Bast, an ambitious but struggling bank clerk. As these three groups move in and out of each other's worlds, disasters and discoveries ensue.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 24, 2008
    ISBN9781440797163
    Author

    E.M. Forster

    Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist, short story writer and essayist best known for his books A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India. Born in London as the only child to parents Edward and Lily Forster, Edward inherited a considerable sum of money from his paternal great-aunt that allowed him to embark on a career as a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent but did not enjoy his time there. He then went to King's College in Cambridge where he joined a secret society known as the Apostles, several members of which later helped form the Bloomsbury Group, a literary/philosophical society that boasted such early members as Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Vanessa Bell. Upon graduation, Forster went abroad - often escorted by his mother - and wrote of his travels extensively. Upon his return, he set up residence in Weybridge, Surrey where he would write all six of his novels. All of his books were written between 1908 and 1924 and his last, A Passage to India, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Forster was a homosexual and while he never married, he did have several affairs with male lovers during his lifetime, including a forty-year romance with married policeman Bob Buckingham, at whose home he collapsed and died at age 91 of a stroke. Forster explored his struggle with his own sexuality in his book Maurice. Forster was extremely critical of American foreign policy during his lifetime and rebuffed efforts to film adaptations of his novels due to the fact that the productions would likely use American financing. After his death, however, several of his books were made into films and three of them - A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India are among the most highly regarded films of the late 20th century.

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    Reviews for Howards End

    4.5/5

    51 ratings29 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The perfect example of a book with a strong message/moral, but it doesn't push the message over the characters.
    • 5/5
      Such a clever and subtle story. Wonderful narration. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys early 20th century literature.
    • 5/5
      E.M. Forster’s novel about class, money, and ideals can be summed up thusly: "It’s about people connecting with each other." The unmarried and well-off bohemian Schlegel sisters get the story rolling when younger sister Helen is invited to one of the Wilcox family’s homes, Howards End. Her time there sets things in motion, the consequences of which is felt years into the future. The Wilcoxes are proud, capitalistic, and unconcerned with anything but money, with the exception of Mrs. Wilcox. She, the inherited owner of Howards End, is more dreamy, in tune to nature, nostalgia, and emotions, and sees a kindred spirit in the eldest Schlegel sister Margaret. When her dying wish is to bequeath Howards End to Margaret, the family balks and refuses to disclose the request. Meanwhile, the Schlegel's run-in with struggling insurance clerk Leonard Bast becomes an unwitting pawn under the attentions of the sisters and the condescending advice of the Wilcoxes.When people discuss this novel, they often refer to Margaret as the heroine and Henry Wilcox as the hero. I agree that Margaret is the heroine: she is the stabilizing factor for all the other characters. In the end, everyone comes to her for advice or support. She, ultimately, fulfils the novel’s imperative to connect while the others stumble or create muddles. But Henry doesn’t strike me as a hero, for the same reason that Helen is not a heroine. Both become overcome by trying to remain rigid in their philosophies and ideals to the detriment of themselves and others. Helen becomes hysterical and unhinged in her quest to help Leonard. The novel suggests this stems from her brief romance, and subsequent disappointment, with Paul Wilcox. While both Schlegel sisters are dreamy and have lofty expectations of Love and Death, Margaret becomes more realistic and accepting of people and things the way they are, while Helen rails against them. While she tries to do good and seek justice, she actually creates chaos. Henry, with his rigid ideals of how everything and everyone should be, rules the Wilcox family with condensations and a touch of the bully. His proposal to Margaret opens him up to new ideals, but it isn’t until he fully surrenders himself to her that he is able to truly connect with anyone on an emotional level. Like Forster’s other novel, A Room with a View, things start with a muddle, get more and more agitated, then finally explode before settling into a calm.
    • 5/5
      Far from a ponderous, castor-oil classic, this is a wonderfully readable book, with many concerns that resonate today: feminism, class prejudice, the encroachment of suburbia on rural life. The narrator's voice was sometimes pompous and intrusive, although the content of his buttings-in was always interesting.
    • 5/5
      Howards End is one of my favorite books, and every couple of years I pull it down off the shelf to reacquaint myself with it. It's one of those books that has become an old friend over the years.The story revolves around the Schlegels, Wilcoxes and Basts, three families whose lives interconnect over the course of several years and not necessarily always for the better, and at the center of the story is always the country home, Howards End. The book is an amazing study of class distinctions; passion versus intellect; constraint versus action; wealth versus poverty.The Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, are passionate for life; they want to experience as much as they can from it. The Wilcoxes come from a more conservative stock, more it tune with their wealth and possessions than anything else. After a hastily announced (as just as hastily broken) engagement between the youngest Wilcox son, Paul, and Helen, the families find themselves at odds, until an unlikely friendship forms between Mrs. Wilcox and Margaret Schlegel. Upon Mrs. Wilcox's death, she leaves Howards End to Margaret, but the Wilcoxes as a whole do not feel that Mrs. Wilcox was in her right frame of mind and never let Margaret know of Mrs. Wilcox's bequest. In amidst these settings we are also introduced to Leonard Bast, who lives on the brink of poverty and feels that through education and enlightenment he might better his life and that of his fiancée, Jacky.There are so many subtle nuances to this story, I have a hard time getting it all down on paper. Forster has created an amazing story that is poignant in its telling and staggering in it depth. No matter how many times I read Howards End, I am always amazed at the intricacies of the story and feel that I take something new away with each reading.
    • 5/5
      Along with Passage to India, one of Forster's two great novels that deserve to be called great literaure. Howard's End alone manages to take on large themes while keeping much of the charm and warmth that draw many readers to Forster's earlier novels of awakening.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of the Schlegal sisters, the Wilcoxes, and Leonard Bast. Each group of people live in a different social class - The Schlegal sisters running with artists, musicians, and great thinkers. The Wilcoxes are of old blood, very traditional. Leonard Bast is very poor, but longs to move up in class. Its an interesting book. Its well written, but I don't think its that great. As I read the book, I had a hard time following who was talking, how time was handled, and spent a lot of time backtracking. The story was interesting, but only because I enjoyed learning about how the Schlegal sisters friends and companions. As a modern woman, I was absolutely appalled at how Margaret Schlegal accepted a marriage proposal from Mr. Wilcox. As for Leonard, his story is important, but it isn't a large part of the book. He's pretty much only there as a project for the two Sisters and as a comparison to Mr. Wilcox.
    • 4/5
      The Wilcoxes are rich and traditional - women are to have influence instead of rights, the lower classes are beneath their concern, etc. The Schlegels, Helen and Margaret, are different; also wealthy, they feel a strong whiff of noblesse oblige and a kind of socialism. So, here's so summary:Helen meets the Wilcoxes and falls in love with their ways and the titular house. Manages to resist marrying into the family, knowing it would not do. Two years later, after Mrs. Wilcox has passed away, Margaret is drawn to the Wilcoxes and marries Mr. Wilcox. It all begins very well; Margaret plays Rosamond Vincy. Unfortunately, while Mrs. Wilcox is another one of Forster's Mrs. Moore characters - one of those women with an overwhelmingly exceptional presence yet nothing special about them in particular - Mr. Wilcox is set in his little ways. Wanting to appear knowledgeable, he assuredly gives unsound financial advice, bungles his house purchases, and blames it all on someone else, in a most high-handed way. Margaret wants to use her love to reform him. I enjoyed this book, despite finding most of the characters despicable (Charles, Mr. Wilcox, Tibby, etc.)
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this novel several years ago and, like other great novels, found it more insightful and deeper upon rereading. Forster’s novel, regarded by many as his best, turns upon the beauty which Margaret Schlegel glimpses within her chosen one, Mr. Wilcox. Where others see only a man bound by his snobbery, his wealth, and his homilies — “My motto is Concentrate” — Margaret sees only a life-challenge:"It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. 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."The portrait of Margaret and her sister and brother, Helen and Tibby, can be seen as emblematic of Forster's own liberal values. The Schlegels are devoted to living a civilized life that cherishes the arts, music, literature, and thinking. This life is in contrast to the Wilcox family who value practical affairs, materialism, and suspicion of imagination. Their attempts to unite result in conflicts. Of the minor characters I found the sad life of Leonard Bast particularly poignant. The novel is beautifully written even if its details sometimes fail to convince the reader of the reality of the characters.
    • 4/5
      Having been enthralled by A Room With a View, I expected a similar experience with Howards End, especially since it is hailed by many as Forster's masterpiece. By the time I reached the climax, I discovered that the piece did have quite the impact on me. Forster's critique of the social tenets of turn-of-the-century life in early 1900s Britain is certainly progressive. It is positively eye-opening, if one is willing to imagine the stir it would certainly have make upon readers in Forster's age. While not even coming close to being as good from start to finish as A Room With a View was to me, Howards End seems to be the most important of the two novels.Because of the lack of immediate page-turning storyline, patience is certainly the most important virtue a reader requires when approaching this novel. However, Forster's writing style is extremely easy to follow, which helps to delve into the story. This is helpful because the story seems to drag for a majority of the novel, leaving the reader wondering where in the world Forster is planning on taking them.One of Forster's core beliefs concerning the novel was that plot was of minimal importance. Plot is simply to serve as a means-to-an-end--it is a device simply utilized to suggest a broad social critique. When the novel is concluded, it becomes clear this is the case with Howards End. Characters such as Leonard, an insurance clerk of the lower echelon of Britain's socioeconomic ladder are presented as incredibly complex, but developed briefly and not touched upon for large chunks of the novel. Leonard lacks intelligence concerning fine art, but not or lack of trying. After encountering Forster's two protagonists who are of a high-art, liberal (and borderline feminist) persuasion, Leonard desires to increase his knowledge of art and fiction, and begins to resent his simplistic wife, who represents everything he loathes within himself.Leonard's complexity comes to us in the span of two short chapters and is not touched upon for most of the novel. I had a sense of him being key to the conclusion of the story (and was correct!), though I had no idea how. Because of his disappearance from the plot, much of the novel, especially the middle bits, seem to needlessly drag. I almost began to hate reading the novel, but the last one hundred pages turned brought me back around and caused me to love the story, and the points Forster made.The core of the story deals with political struggles. The liberal Schlegal sisters alternate between being disgusted by the aristocratic and conservative Wilcox family and admiring them. The Schlegals are introduced to the Wilcoxes before the story even begins. They start to constantly intersect the Wilcox's affairs both intimately and casually. The first chapter describes to us how the youngest sister (Helen) hastily becomes engaged to one of the youngest of the family. The engagement quickly turns to be a sham. Besides, with their alternating world-views, would it have worked out anyway? After this, the Wilcox family becomes a constant physical, emotional, and even spiritual presence in the sisters' lives, fueling the banter of ideas between the two clans. The Schlegal sisters (mainly the older one, Margaret) come under their influence and begin to question their own ideals, such as the belief that women should someday be allowed employment the same as men.The banter between the two families serves as much of the entertainment of the novel, but because of the length of the book, it becomes exhausting. Luckily, Forster saves his reader from utter boredom with the final third of the novel. This concluding section tackles taboo (for the early 1900s) subjects such as pregnancy out-of-wedlock, and how societal reactions negatively impact the pregnant woman in question. Many pieces written circa the same period (the book was published in 1910) would be undoubtedly condemn this type of woman as a harlot who is not fit for Christian society. Forster remains hopeful on the subject, treating it with compassion and acceptance. He urges his society to do the same, which for the time was quite a bold statement.Like all Forster novels, Howards End is tame when compared to what is being written today. However, if this novel is read for the time piece that it is, it should be an all-together inspiring experience. It is comforting to know that people such as Forster existed in a time of intolerance. His works were anything but groundbreaking.
    • 4/5
      This novel had so many lines that I wanted to write down and save for later. I might have done so but after a while it seemed less than feasible. There were just too many! Forster is pretty remarkable as a twentieth-century writer for being able to produce floaty philosophical prose from his narratorial perch.

      The introduction to my edition (Everyman) approached it as a novel about the English class system and critiqued it for arguing that you could solve the class wars with the power of true love.

      But really I think to write anything about this book without using the word "feminism" at least once is appalling. This is a great feminist novel, and it's not trying to solve the problems of a society - it's showing how an individual can learn to become an authentic, integrated person and thus overcome gender roles and cultural norms. Love doesn't solve anything; love is in fact imperfect until the characters figure out who they are and what they really want.

      Of course, I could still fault Forster for creating a protagonist who tries to reform a man with the power of love and arguably succeeds. Margaret's efforts do fail miserably until Henry is overcome by his own wrongdoing in the person of Charles (the Mr. Rochester solution, so to speak), but for Margaret to have married him and then to be vindicated by the plot is questionable. "Marry losers because eventually they'll reform themselves" is bad advice. But Henry Wilcox isn't a really bad loser, and Margaret loves him, and we're shown the real consequences of her marrying him pre-reform (she's even willing to leave him when he rejects Helen), so that's all right I suppose.
    • 5/5
      My book. Perhaps my favourite. Like a sweet shop for the mind. There is something precious on every page.
    • 3/5
      Once I got into this book, I became enamored with the characters even if the style of writing and relating was much more distant than I was used to. The way the characters loved was left out of the writing, and when it was discussed it was formal and proper. But the surprise near the end reeled me as much as it did the characters. (And as always, the book is better than the movie.)
    • 5/5
      Excellent characterization... even if the characters will drive you nuts. It has very little to do with a dispute over a house, but rather, if one will 'only connect'... it is about the dispute with providence.
    • 2/5
      Apparently I will never tire of swimming against the tide. This opus has been consecrated as some sort of modern classic -- whatever in Hell that is supposed to mean -- but I must fail to join in the Hosannas. I am well aware that one must carefully distinguish the artist from the artistic product, yet somehow in this story I discerned a kind of mind-spiritedness or at-least arrogance behind the principal character, who already had plenty of it in her own right. Too bad, since Forster at his best can be enjoyable and even instructive.
    • 5/5
      One of the densest books I've ever read. And I mean that in a good way -- it's like one of those Byzantine ivory carvings (no movie tie-in pun intended) that open up and have all those tiny devotional episodes going on inside. Layers and layers of commentary all wrapped up in this almost fragile -- but actually really forceful -- writing. What a total trip.
    • 2/5
      Most interesting aspect is the way Zadie Smith updated situations into a century later. Race issue here = class issue. Margaret is annoying rather than inspiring, as is the mirror character in On Beauty. Why did she marry brute loser Wilcox? But it's good to read about single women in that time. Tedious narrative style, over complex, although some stunning insights, especially about the countryside in England (compare with less sentimental The Enigma of Arrival by VS Naipaul) and the price of `progress'. The Imperial assumptions are truly shocking now..
    • 4/5
      Good lesson for everybody. Loved the end.Forster as his best.
    • 3/5
      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 highest. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.This is the story of the Schlegals, and the Wilcoxes (who own the house called Howards End).The Wilcoxes represent the 'outer world', a masculine world of industry, finance and commerce. The Schlegals represent the 'inner world' - relationships, liberal politics, the arts. The novel's epigraph, 'Only connect', suggests that these two worlds are inter-dependant. As Margaret Schlegal says, "Don't brood too much on the superiority of the unseen to the seen. It's true, but to brood on it is medieval. Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them".The two families meet on holiday, and Helen Schlegal later visits the Wilcoxes at Howards End, where she becomes briefly engaged to Paul Wilcox. The affair ends unhappily and in embarrassment, but the two families later meet up again in London, when Mrs Wilcox and Margaret Schlegal enjoy a brief friendship before Mrs Wilcox's sudden death.Helen Schlegal introduces Leonard Bast into the family after a casual meeting when Helen 'steals' his umbrella. He is a young, bookish clerk who lives with a woman to whom he is not married.After the wedding of Mr Wilcox's daughter, Helen turns up with Leonard and his 'wife', who seems to be drunk. Separately, Margaret and Helen learn that Jacky Bast was once the mistress of Mr Wilcox. Helen goes abroad. Margaret and Mr Wilcox marry, quietly. Margaret observes that, "When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil".When Helen returns to England, she is visibly pregnant, by Leonard Bast. Margaret is furious with her husband for his hypocrisy, his inability to connect Helen's 'disgrace' with his own dalliance with Jacky Bast. Margaret considers leaving her husband and moving abroad with Helen, but everything changes when Charles Wilcox accidentally kills Leonard and ends up serving a three-year sentence for his manslaughter. A broken man, Mr Wilcox lives - with Margaret, Helen and Helen's son - at Howards End, the home around which the story and its protagonists all revolve and to which, one way or another, they all return. [Jan 2005]
    • 4/5
      Wow. This was powerful. I would like to read it again, knowing more of what to expect, not that the plot is particularly... central. But, the book starts off so light and slow, almost like a comedy of manners, and a hilarious one at that. But then the middle section, which was hard for me, because I felt a shift. It seemed more like things were being set up to happen but I didn't know what. The middle section didn't exactly connect with me at all times and I found myself kinda forcing myself through. Then the last eighty pages or so made it all worthwhile, as it was filled with insight and focus. The characters we know by now very thoroughly, and the book turns almost into a tragedy before coming back up for air.There are passages, often, where he gives so much wisdom in a paragraph, in the form of generalities, that I usually do not like in other books (it comes off as preachy or vague) but here I do not mind at all, perhaps because it is so well written and the insights are so apt to what's happening. Often his language is also evasive to the point where I have a notion of what he's saying, but can't really say exactly what it is.I also admire that he switches points of view in a way that provides reveals and hides on pertinent bits of information, where the reader will know something that is happening and see what a certain character is thinking/responding; and yet not tell you what another character is thinking about it until later, which is like being suspended in mid-air on a ferris wheel that has suddenly malfunctioned and stopped, and you feel the air around you suddenly cooling, the little lights below contracting.I would like to revisit this book later, and throw myself at it again and again. Here are some quotes:"The truth is that there is a great outer life that you and I have never touched--a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage settlements, death, death duties. So far I'm clear... but here's my difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid, often seems the real one--there's the grit in it. It does breed character. Do personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?"p. 22"It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven. That is not imagination. No, it kills it."p. 24"Sooner or later the girls would enter on the process known as throwing themselves away, and if they had delayed hitherto, it was only that they might throw themselves more vehemently in the future" p. 12"People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness"p248"It's madness when I say it, but not when you say it"p.224"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him"p. 256"He has worked hard all his life, and noticed nothing. Those are the people who collapse when they do notice a thing." p.313
    • 4/5
      A wonderful protrait of the shifting society of Edwardian England, Forster's novel vividly ilustrates the fears and struggles that each class faced in the wake of socail change and the decline of he aristocracy.
    • 4/5
      This is an elegant book--one of those that gets better each time you come back to it and look further into the characters and settings. I'd see it as halfway between Kazuo Ishiguro and Charles Dickens, with thoughtful characters and clever conversation. I was too young for it when I first had it assigned to me in a class (twenty, maybe?), but coming back to it in my late twenties was a pleasure once I found my way back in. I'd recommend it for a quiet day by the fire--it's not a traditional page-turner by any means, but it's worth a look.
    • 5/5
      If A Room With a View is comedy and romance, then Howards End is its tragic counterpart. This novel examines the social and cultural changes occurring in England during the early 1900s, such as the rise of the bourgeois class, the plight of workers, the call for women’s rights, the urbanization of England and the transition to the automobile.There are three principal groups of characters, each representing a different social strata. The Schlegels — principally the older sisters, Margaret and Helen — are members of the leisure class, having old money and intellectual rather than professional pursuits. The Wilcoxes represent the rising middle class. And the Basts are working class, living on the edge of extreme poverty, at the mercy of those above them. These three families, thrown together by the cultural shifts happening around them, entangle their lives, with tragic consequences.However, all of these characters share a flaw, which directly contributes to the tragedy. They all isolate themselves, a pervasive modern problem that Forster presciently portrays here. No character has a real community or sense of belonging. The Schlegels, particularly Margaret, separate themselves via their eccentricities, their insular family life and their intellectual pursuits, which help them avoid emotional entanglements. But the sisters, at least, long for connection. Margaret wants to belong to a community; Helen craves romance. Yet they keep failing to find the connection they seek. The Wilcoxes hold themselves aloof with their antiquated social principles, their hasty judgments of others and their unspoken sense of inferiority to the moneyed upper classes. Leonard Bast is separated not only by his class, but by his refusal to settle for his lot in life, which he is told he must accept. He tries to hold himself to an ideal he has only read about in novels, which leads him into a marriage that he know will be bad and that estranges him from his family.That is why the novel begins and ends with a house: Howards End. It isn’t a grand estate, but it represents a sense of continuity and belonging, of something that will endure. The Schlegel girls instinctively feel at home at Howards End, and the Wilcoxes are loathe to give it up, even though they don’t really value it. When Margaret forms a rare true connection with the first Mrs. Wilcox, she wants to leave Margaret Howards End, because she understands its importance and feels that Margaret will likewise value it, protect it and pass it on. In a world of change and upheaval, Howards End is a constant, and lives that are lived there, however quiet, are meaningful lives.Howards End is not as much of a pleasure to read as A Room With a View. There are certainly passages where Forster wanders off into obtuseness or inserts too much authorial opinion. But it’s a valuable book to read, to understand this time in history, and perhaps even shed some light on our modern discontents.
    • 5/5
      eBook

      Loved it.

      There. I've spent far too much time trying to come up with something to write, when that's all I really need to say about this book.

      It's funny and cutting and passionate. Margaret is such a wonderful character, so open to exploring the depths of her own mind. And Leonard. Leonard Bast is a masterpiece. I remember thinking after his hasty departure from Wickham Place that I desperately wanted to read more about him. Forster did not let me down.

      I've been on Leonard's walk. That voyage, fraught with the potential of Answers, which turns out to be nothing more than an exhausting waste of time. When the sisters ask him if the dawn was wonderful, his one word response -- "No" -- is at once sublime comedy and powerful, moving, devastating tragedy.

      Parts of the story were a little too predictable. Leonard's mistake in leaving his job, his dalliance with Helen, and her eventual pregnancy all seemed so transparently obvious, but there were also many elements to the story that were shocking, from Mrs. Wilcox leaving Howard's End to Margaret, the revelation of Mr. Wilcox's affair, or the death of Leonard.

      On a side note, my eBook was littered with typos. Extra carriage returns, misspellings, zeroes instead of the letter O. I know I got this for free, but still ...
    • 2/5
      The novel seems to be will written. The author does use Capitol letters and periods and commas, so it essentially seems to be will written. The main focus of story is always on relationships and so makes it somewhat of a chick novel. None of the men in this novel seem to have any character and their flaws are always glaring and makes it hard to like them. Paul Wilcox is mentioned only briefly but is a Mama's boy and is easily manipulated by the opinion of others. His brother Charles Wilcox is a bully and somewhat of a dim bulb. Tippy Schligal appears to be immature and self absorbed and can never be counted on in a time of crisis. Leonard Bast whom the girls chose to help is weak and spineless and does not the the ability to make a good decision. Finally Henry Wilcox from the very first appears to be self absorbed and confused and is never apparent why Margaret marries him in the first place. He is a man who cannot forgive others for the very things he has done. While the women have faults, these faults are always shown in a more endearing light. Forster may not have taken sides in the struggle between different classes, but he certainly did in the struggle between genders. The property, Howard's End belonged to the late Mrs Wilcox. In a surprise move, after her surprise death, in her will, Howard's End is left to one of the Schlegels. None of the Wilcoxes really wanted Howards End, they just didn't want the Schlegels to have Howard's End. While it is not a complete waste of time, there are better books out there to read.
    • 4/5
      Howards End is a tale that expresses the circularity of life, how things thought lost come around again in unexpected ways. It begins with one Schlegel sister falling rapidly in love and then out of love with the youngest Wilcox son while visiting at Howards End. This scandal in minuscule goes away, but manages to tie a knot between these two families, so that their lives become interconnected in unexpected ways as time goes on. I didn't love this novel quite as much as I loved A Room with a View, but it was still a lovely story about how some people deliberately misunderstand each other, while others make similar efforts at understanding (which becomes in and of a conflict), how people make mistakes and are forgiven, and how life can come around to happiness if only you have a good home to take root in.
    • 4/5
      There are a million books about the inner lives of English people. Here is one of them.
    • 5/5
      Forster is a master storyteller with an incredible sense of history and timing. Love this novel.
    • 5/5
      Just re-read this and now am reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty. I was obsessed with Forster in high school (Maurice, etc) and am happy to know that Howards End not only holds up but in fact is improved by time. I found myself thinking of Mrs. Dalloway quite a bit. Also, I enjoyed the depiction of the posh ladies' discussion circles, in which rich British ladies debate how best to give their money away to the poor. I was also shocked by how obvious/explicit the queer content is now. I thought I was reading so naughtily and detectivishly when I first read it, but it's laid quite bare. Odd.