Howards End - Softcover

Forster, E.M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1619492881 ISBN 13: 9781619492882

Publisher: Empire Books, 2012

Synopsis

Regarded by numerous critics as Forster’s masterpiece, Howards End is a novel that explores the many intricacies of class relations in English society during the turn of the century. Centering around three families representing England’s working class and wealthy elite, the novel weaves a complicated tapestry of misunderstandings, careless impulses, and, ultimately, tragedy. Like many of Foster’s works, Howards End concerns the nature of class and social status and how they affect one’s relationships and well-being, for better or for worse.

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Review:

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

From the Publisher:

9 1.5-hour cassettes

About this edition

• Publisher: Empire Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1619492881
• ISBN 13: 9781619492882
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 342