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.
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