About this title: HOWARDS END is a vivid portrait of life in Edwardian England, centered on an old country house in Hertfordshire, the object of an inheritance dispute. When the bohemian Schlegel sisters, Helen and Margaret, meet the Wilcox family, convention gives way to a more complex set of standards and emotions in this beloved and remarkable novel. The Schlegels are widely acknowledged to be based on Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa, who lived at Gordon Square with their brother Thoby (Tibby in the novel).
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679722557ISBN:0679722556
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. In good + condition; no marks or highlighting; some shelf wear on cover; tanning. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 359 p. Vintage International (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Closer to Fine Condition w/some light shelvewear, ; pages are tanning but extremely clean and tight still! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Howards End, 7. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1954
ISBN-13:9780394700076ISBN:0394700074
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Minor rubbing on corners of spine. Text is clean and bright. Binding is tight. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Howards End, 7. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780553212082ISBN:0553212087
Description: Very Good. 0553212087 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in very good condition, may have slight worn corners and varying degre..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780553212082ISBN:0553212087
Description: Good. 0553212087 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780553212082ISBN:0553212087
Description: Fine. 0553212087 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in like new condition, some very minor shelf wear, no rips or tears. _ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York, NY, USA
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780553212082ISBN:0553212087
Description: GOOD. NOT ex-library. Clean, UNMARKED, flat pages have light age discoloration. Uncreased, straight spine. Cover has minor edge bumping, scuffing & tiny corner creases; no tears. No dog-eared corners or ownership marks. 061907 (aa11) read more
And Leonard is really dull. If a chapter started with him, I found myself groaning.
I gather that no-one thinks the marriage is plausible, you have to just go with it.
On the edition, I think that endnotes should be footnotes unless they are really interesting. I didn't appreciate going to the back of the book only to be told that the Hippodrome is "a theatre".
"Not out of them are the shows of history erected: the world would be a gray, bloodless place were it entirely composed of Miss Schlegels. But, the world being what it is, perhaps they shine out in it like stars." NB: I've just noticed that we are spelling "gray" and yet "theatre".
"The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies."
"...it assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed."
My favourite character is Tibby. He reminds me of Ed, the most interesting person in the Katherine Hepburn / Cary Grant film "Holiday": "'I want activity without civilization. How paradoxical! Yet I expect that we shall find it in heaven.' 'And I,' said Tibby, 'want civilization without activity, which I expect, is what we shall find in the other place.'"
"...whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tailcoat and a couple of ideas" NB: As this is often quoted as "a set of ideas", I thought the editor had missed that Forster was alluding to something. But apparently it is Forster, we just misquote him all the time.
"Chairs, tables, pictures, books, that had rumbled down to them through the generations, must rumble forward again like a slide of rubbish"
"'If Wilcoxes hadn't worked and died in England for thousands of years, you and I couldn't sit here without having our throats cut.'"
"'The poor are poor, and one's sorry for them, but there it is. As civilization moves forward, the shoe is bound to pinch in places,'"
Mrs Plynlimmon on the Suffragettes: "'The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself'"
"But he had not grown more human. The years between eighteen and twenty-two, so magical for most, were leading him gently from boyhood to middle age. He had never known young-manliness"
"- a better man, who would never lose control of himself again, but also a smaller man, who had less to control.""
"E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End, published in 1910, is named after an estate, the only constant in the book. The estate belongs to the central characters, first to the Wilcox family, then to the Schlegel sisters. The Wilcox family is dominated by Henry, the father, and Charles, one of his sons. Both are new to wealth, profiting from the rubber industry and the business mind. The Schlegel sisters, Meg and Helen, have some wealth, left to them by their deceased parents. They consider profits to be gained from art, music, and literature. The two families are brought together by Mrs. Wilcox before her death. After her death, their connection is solidified in marriage between Henry and Meg.
The marriage is troubled, as we see different philosophies clash. The Schlegels are settled, wanting nothing more than a home at Howard’s End; the Wilcoxes are nomadic, living for short times at one of several houses, constantly moving. The Schlegels are concerned with helping the poor with something like socialism; Henry Wilcox simply states there will always be the wealthy and the poor, then ignores the poor. The Schlegels are rural; the Wilcoxes are urban. The Schlegels have German heritage; the Wilcoxes have English. As the narrator warns, “England and Germany are bound to fight.”
The clash between the families comes about when a poor young man, Mr. Bast, is introduced. Helen and Meg see him as an adventurer caught in the net of poverty, tied to an unintelligent woman in marriage. The sisters try to help him with advice from Henry Wilcox, telling him to change jobs. The young man does, accepting a lower wage, worsening his financial state. Helen confronts Meg, now Henry’s fiancee, to tell her they are responsible for Mr. Bast’s terrible condition. This confrontation forces some division between the sisters. Meg defends the Wilcoxes, Helen leaves in disgust.
The clash lasts for much of the book, as Meg tries to keep proportion between her two families, and their philosophies. It comes to a climax when Helen returns to Howard’s End after a long absence. She is pregnant with Mr. Bast’s child, unwed, and bound to be shunned by English society. Meg protects her sister from the Wilcoxes, keeping her at Howard’s End. Meanwhile Mr. Bast searches for her so as to confess and receive forgiveness. Instead he finds Charles Wilcox, who fights with him and kills him. Charles is imprisoned. Henry is spent emotionally and physically because of the stress of all that has happened. And Meg is able to settle both Henry and Helen at Howard’s End, where everyone lives happily ever after, since Henry and Charles cannot fight Meg’s management.
The book will interest those concerned with feminism. It depicts the problems for women who are intelligent, soulful, and compassionate, but who are held back by the male-dominated business world, “national morality” that lacks personal care, and the manners of upper classes that leave much unsaid and undone. If Helen and Meg accept these hindrances, they become ineffective. Meg comes to realize that the endeavors encouraged for her – music, art, and literature – are effeminate, inactive, a waste of time. Because Helen and Meg do
not accept the typical place for women of their class they affect the lives of others, for better or worse. The Wilcoxes are forced to consider the new roles of women, or at least these two women, as they are now a part of their family. The book also depicts problems of money and property, especially for women. The whole story starts with Mrs. Wilcox leaving Howard’s End to her friend, Meg Schlegel. The Wilcox family disregards her wish, and keep the estate for themselves. Meg comes to what is rightfully hers only by marriage to Mr. Wilcox.
Overall, Howard’s End is a book about many conflicts. We see the changing of classes and their members. The Wilcoxes are new to the upper or middle class, gaining their wealth by new industries. The Schlegels are landowners, with an established wealth, (though only obtained one generation before the sisters). We see the changing of a rural, agricultural society into an urban, industrial society on the go, made easier by the invention of the auto. The author writes, “The Earth as an artistic cult has had its day, and the literature of the near future will probably ignore the country and seek inspiration from the town.” The conflict of nationalism is expressed in generalities made about English and Germans, giving some insight into the thinking that leads to World War I, which began only a few years after the story was written. The conflicts are resolved only after both philosophies fail. Henry Wilcox’s bourgeois thinking cannot stand beneath the weight of real suffering. Helen’s impulsive behavior leads to responsibility for a child, consideration of her family, and requires forethought. The resolution is only Meg’s ability to keep proportion between the two families."
"Stupidly enough, I hadn't read this book until now. I'd heard plenty of people bandy about the "only connect" epigram that kicks off the book, and now that I've read the book, I see how incorrectly this epigram is usually applied. "Only connect" doesn't refer to connecting with people, except indirectly. It's about connecting the outer life of "telegrams and anger" (i.e. the sensible, get-things-done life) with the inner life of emotions, intellect, striving after beauty and truth, undsoweiter--the idea being that if only the outer and inner life could connect, how simple life would be, eliminating (or joining) the "beast and the monk" that characterize people. The characters in the book all tend to fall into these two camps (outer vs inner), with Margaret as the linchpin for the book--the only person who seems to recognize the difficulty and simplicity of holding these two things in balance. Not coincidentally, she's the only one who seems able to see people as they really are, and to forgive their faults, and to love them anyway.
So that stuff is all interesting, if a little black and white, but where this book gets extra interesting for me is in the reflections about class and progressive vs conservative thinking. This all still has a lot of resonance, obviously, and I can see why Zadie Smith lifted the structure of Howards End for her book On Beauty (highly recommended). And for me, this stuff is extra interesting because I live with an Englishman and even though Forster was writing this in the first decade of the 20th century, his observations about England and Englishness and class still hold very true. The plot is occasionally a wee bit ham-fisted, but it's very satisfying anyway."
"I have been wanting to read Zadie Smith's On Beauty for a while, but thought I should read Howards End first - because I know Smith's 2005 novel was inspired in part by Forster's classic novel. I'm glad I did! It's hard to believe that Howards End was written in 1910, it felt surprisingly relevant to today's world. Though women had not yet received the right to vote, Margaret and Helen are strong, independent, and interesting (if somewhat fickle) characters. Forster brings a lot of sensitivity, insight, and nuance to his characters. Lots of secrets, clashes between people from different socio-economic classes, intrigue, and philosophical musings -- which kept me engaged from beginning to end. I loved the notion that a physical location, a house, has a soul, and Forster captures the pull and essence of Howards End with great skill. If you haven't seen the 1992 film adaptation with Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Anthony Hopkins - it's very good, and faithful to the novel. But of course the book has much more depth. I'm a Forster fan, now, and look forward to reading more of his novels. (And now I can be "in-the-know" when I read On Beauty.)"
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