Howards End by E.M.Forster

Historical context

This post-Victorian period is marked by industrial expansion, urban growth, and shifting class structures that loosen the old dominance of the landed aristocracy while elevating a prosperous capitalist and professional middle class. The Wilcoxes embody the pragmatic, business-minded and materialistic elite. In contrast, the Schlegel siblings represent liberal humanism and aestheticism. However, Leo Bast aspires to social mobility and cultural improvement and fails. The gender reforms of the era are reflected in the sisters' moral agency, while ownership of property still confers power and social continuity.

Literary context

E. M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) retains the narrative format of realism while introducing modernist interests such as class conflict, the human cost of capitalism and the need for human connection (“Only connect” being its leitmotif). This makes the novel consistent with the cultural shift of Modernism and its concerns over fragmentation.

Forster resists the stream-of-consciousness, fragmentation and linguistic experimentation techniques of postwar modernists and uses an omniscient narrator, a clear chronological order and realistic characterisation. This conservative approach positions Howards End closer to late-Victorian and Edwardian realism, even as it addresses modern life’s discontinuities. The novel is a transitional work: modernist in social change themes; conservative in narrative technique.

Summary

Discussion

Forster builds his story round places. London is presented as a place where certain characters enjoy culture (music, art, literature) and others attend to their business interests. It is described as creeping over the surrounding countryside, much in the same way that the commercial classes are taking over the country through their imperial markets in India and Nigeria. In contrast, the narrator describes the southern English landscapes and their beauty, almost to the cliché of `a green and pleasant land`. This betrays a melancolic longing for a disappearing graceful world changing into a financial enterprise. Howards End is a home for the Schlegels but a property for the Wilcoxes. It is where the narrative finds its final conflict and also its resolution.

Another element which structures the storyline is the three families. Each represents a different outlook on life. The Schlegel sisters are artistic and sensitive. The Wilcoxes are practical capitalists. The Basts are working class: Jacky has a seamy background, but Leonard, though a poor Cockney, has a drive to better himself through culture. The characters meet through places: the city houses they rent or the concert they attend. What threatens to separate them is money, described in a textile metaphor as the warp of the woof of life. However, wealth does not prevent failure, as Charles and Henry Wilcox find out, yet Leonard cannot fulfil his meritocratic dreams through art or love, either. The book's leitmotif is “Only connect”. Perhaps the real warp of life is Margaret Schlegel's striving to connect others with their inner selves.

Published in 1910, the novel is a last look back at society before the First World War. This had such a calamitous effect on the comfortable outlook purveyed by Victorian literature that it created Modernist art. Forster's novel is written in the traditional narrative format of realism, yet introduces modernist themes such as class conflict, the human cost of capitalism and the need for human connection. However, the author resists the Modernist experimental techniques of fragmentation and stream-of-consciousness created by postwar writers. Forster uses an omniscient narrator, a clear chronological order and realistic characterisation. This conservative approach positions Howards End closer to late-Victorian and Edwardian realism. The novel is a transitional work: modernist in social change themes; conservative in narrative technique.

(Published in the Eco de Sitges,  November, 2025)