Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, about social conventions,
codes of conduct, and personal relationships in turn-of-the-century England.
Howards End is considered by some to be 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.
Plot summary The story revolves around three families in
England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune
made in the Colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings, whose cultural pursuits have much
in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, an impoverished young couple
from a lower-middle-class background. The idealistically motivated, well read, highly
intelligent Schlegel sisters seek to help the struggling Basts, wishing at the same
time to rid the Wilcoxes of some of their deep-seated social and economic prejudices.
The Schlegels had briefly met and befriended the Wilcoxes when both families were hiking
in Germany. Helen, the youngest daughter, is romantically attracted to the younger Wilcox
son, Paul; they get engaged in haste but soon afterwards regret their decision, each rejecting
the other for different reasons. The engagement is consequently broken off without acrimony,
by mutual consent, despite a somewhat awkward intervention by Helen's aunt, Juley. The eldest
daughter, Margaret, then resumes her friendship with Paul's mother, Ruth Wilcox. Ruth's most
prized personal possession is her family home at Howards End. She invites her friend to
come and visit, as she feels Margaret would immediately connect with the values and history
which the old house represents. Ruth's own husband and children do not greatly cherish
Howards End, for all its rich cultural heritage; such abstractions, while being very dear to
Margaret, are relatively insignificant to them, other than the property's real estate
value on the housing market. However owing to a series of circumstances Margaret never
gets a chance to visit Howards End while her friend Ruth is still alive. Equally she is
unaware that, gravely ill, Ruth regards her as an ideal prospective owner of Howards End,
feeling that her home would be safe and in very good hands with her, after she is gone.
As Ruth's condition deteriorates fast, and Margaret and her family are about to be evicted
from their London home by a developer when the lease on their house expires, Ruth bequeaths
Howards End to Margaret in a handwritten note. This last will and testament of Ruth's is
delivered to her husband from the nursing home where she died, causing great consternation
and anxiety to the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox's widowed husband, Henry, and his children,
burn the note without telling Margaret anything about her inheritance. However over the course
of the next several months, Henry Wilcox seeks Margaret's company and is very much impressed
with her, as she is with him. Their friendship blossoms into romance and in due course, Henry
asks for Margaret's hand in marriage. Margaret accepts. It soon becomes apparent that their
personalities could not be more different from one another; the courageous, idealistic,
compassionate, high-minded, romantically-inclined Margaret tries to get the fairly rigid, unsentimental,
staunchly rational Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry's children, while
outwardly polite to Margaret, do not look upon her engagement to their father with a
friendly eye. Evie, the daughter, soon to be married herself, is largely concerned with
her own affairs; Paul, the younger son, now lives overseas, making his way in business
in Nigeria; the main opposition comes from the elder son, Charles, and his wife Dolly,
who are only civil enough to conceal their hostility to Margaret, yet really see her
as an intruder, posing a potential threat to their own ambitions. Most of all they fear
any claim she could one day have on Howards End.
Gradually, as they get to know him better, Margaret and Helen become aware of Henry's
prejudices, including his dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. Acting on Henry's
advice, both sisters encourage Leonard Bast, a friend of theirs, to resign his respectable
post as a clerk and seek employment elsewhere, having learned from Henry that the insurance
company he works for stands outside a protective group of companies and, heading for failure,
is very likely to be smashed. A few weeks later Henry reverses his opinion, having entirely
forgotten about Bast; but it's too late. Leonard Bast has taken a new job but has already lost
it, together with the precarious hold he once had on financial security, and his subsequent
search for a new job comes to nothing. An additional complication is that the young
Leonard Bast lives with a troubled, vulnerable "fallen" woman for whom he feels responsible;
true to his word, he keeps his promise and marries her. Helen continues to try to help
him, ostensibly out of guilt for having interfered in his life to begin with, as Bast had not
wanted it and Henry Wilcox had explicitly stated beforehand that he advised no one,
but also perhaps because she is secretly attracted to him. Soon enough it all goes terribly wrong.
Helen encounters the starving Basts and, appalled by the state they are in, brings them to Evie
Wilcox's wedding garden party, whereupon Henry recognizes Bast's wife, Jacky, as his former
mistress. He flees from the scene shaken to the core, outraged and horrified, breaking
off his engagement to Margaret. Ever mindful of appearances and his own respectability,
he immediately suspects some dark plot to entrap and expose him. Later the same day
he calms down and tells Margaret that ten years previously, he had seduced Jacky and
embarked on an adulterous affair with her in Cyprus. The young woman was barely sixteen
years old at the time and had just lost her father. He had carelessly abandoned her as
soon as it suited him to do so, leaving the expatriate English girl on foreign soil with
no way to return home. Margaret, dreadfully disturbed by this, confronts Henry about his
ill-treatment of Jacky, which she regards as a moral transgression. Henry is embarrassed
and ashamed but unrepentant. Such are the ways of the world, to his mind. He explains
that he lived as he could. Margaret is still very much in love and, wishing to save the
relationship, forgives him, bravely declaring: "it's not going to trouble us". Henry and
Margaret realize they must put the past behind them in order to make peace with each other
and plan their future together. The Schlegel sisters drift apart, partly because
of Margaret's impending marriage into the Wilcox family, and partly because of Helen's
profound disapproval of Henry's treatment of the Basts. Much distressed by what she
has heard from Leonard Bast about the circumstances of Henry's acquaintance with Jacky in Cyprus,
she is overwhelmed by love and pity for him; indeed she sees Leonard Bast as a strikingly
altruistic and romantic figure whose struggle with life bears the mark of heroism. We must
conclude that this opinion is shared by the author and reflects E. M. Forster's own view.
Helen and Leonard are thrown together in an atmosphere of great anguish and succumb to
their feelings of mutual passion. Finding herself pregnant, Helen leaves England, travelling
to Germany with the aim of hiding her condition, but she returns to England on receiving news
of Aunt Juley's illness. She refuses to meet her sister face-to-face but is tricked by
Margaret, who, following Henry's suggestion, has travelled to Howards End, where Helen's
belongings are kept. Having correctly guessed that Helen would wish to retrieve them, she
surprises her sister by appearing on the scene unannounced. Henry and Margaret had planned
an intervention with a doctor, presuming Helen's evasive behaviour was a sign of emotional
instability, if not of mental illness. However, as soon as they come upon Helen at Howards
End, they see her true condition for themselves. Margaret then determines it is her duty to
stand loyally by her sister and to help her at such a time. She tries in vain to convince
Henry that if she can countenance and forgive his own transgression, he should by the same
token forgive Helen hers. Henry, strongly indignant, remains unconvinced, immovably
standing his ground. At this point Leonard Bast arrives at Howards End, still tormented
by the affair and wishing to speak to Margaret. He is not aware of Helen's presence there,
having lost contact with her, fiercely proud no matter how desperate, and has refused her
offer to assist him financially. Charles Wilcox then bursts onto the scene and, in an effort
to ingratiate himself with his father, attacks Bast for purportedly "insulting" Helen. Charles
strikes Bast with the flat edge of a heavy old German sword which had belonged to Margaret's
long deceased father, Bast attempts to grab a nearby bookcase, which collapses in a heap
on top of him; at which stage his weak heart instantaneously fails and he dies. Margaret
assumes responsibility for this turn of events and sides completely with Helen and the dead
Bast, informing her husband of her intention to leave him.
Charles Wilcox, charged with manslaughter, is found guilty and sentenced to a prison
term of three years. The scandal and ensuing repercussions have a profound effect on Henry,
causing him to take a good look at his life and to examine his conscience. Mostly he learns
the value of empathy and begins to connect with others. In a new will, he bequeaths a
life interest in Howards End to Margaret, and provides that after her death the property
will go to her nephew, Helen's son by Bast. Helen is warmly reconciled with Margaret and
Henry. Fully supported by them, she decides to bring her son up at Howards End. The scene
of the tragedy is then revealed as a place of poetic justice and ultimate redemption.
It may be said that Margaret is generally viewed as the heroine of the story because,
in making a complex, thoughtful, remarkably noble moral choice to stand by her sister,
while at the same time reversing her decision to leave her husband, she effectively resolves
this conflict; indeed, by staying married to Henry, lovingly supporting him through
his own greatest hour of need, she acts as a uniting force, bringing all the elements
peacefully together. Henry is equally viewed as a hero because he triumphs over his own
ruthlessness, his rigid, unsympathetic, preconceived notions of supposed right and wrong, as well
as his inability to connect positively with the predicaments and situations of others.
The future is happily assured as the open-minded, forward-looking idealism of the Schlegels
is finally balanced and integrated with the healthy drive and essential pragmatism of
the Wilcoxes, each side learning tremendous lessons from the other through a vital process
of discord brought into harmony. Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
A British television adaptation of the novel in the BBC's Play of the Month series, was
broadcast in 1970 with Leo Genn, Sarah-Jane Gwillim, and Glenda Jackson.
The 1992 film version stars 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.
Location
Forster based his description of Howards End on a house at Rooks Nest in Hertfordshire,
his childhood home from 1883 to 1893. The house, known in Forster's childhood as "Rooksnest",
had, as in the novel, previously been owned by a family named Howard, and the house itself
had been called "Howards" in their day. 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 grid reference TL244267. Since Forster's childhood,
Stevenage has expanded beyond the house, now encompassing it.
Wickham Place, the London home of the Schlegel sisters, was demolished to make way for a
block of flats; it did not have a direct real-world counterpart. However, Forster's conception
of it owed a great deal to 1, All Souls Place, where the sisters of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
lived. References
External links Howards End at Project Gutenberg
Critical/Historical Edition of Howards End Study guide with plot summary, analysis and
background Free online notes, analysis and study questions
A hypertextual, self-referential, complete edition of Howard's End