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¶ … Howard's End," by E.M. Forster, is a story that uses people to represent the idealized positive and negative traits of the upper and lower class English in the early twentieth century. Three of the characters embody the symbolic stereotypes given to their respective classes. Margaret Schlegel represents the more idealized, romantic ideals of the upper class; she is interested in things with intellectual, beautiful and artistic value. On the contrary, Henry Wilcox embodies the negativity associated with upper class -- materialism, hard-nosed stuffiness and conventionalism. Leonard Bast, who finds himself at the very bottom of the social and monetary scale, represents the poor, working class who wish to better themselves through association with upper class, and through reading of books about finer things.
Forster interestingly uses this novel to develop Margaret, the chief protagonist, from a seemingly two-dimensional character at the outset of the story into a three-dimensional one at the end. Margaret is very much the motherly character of the book in the way that she takes care of her younger brother, Tibby and feels the need to protect her sister Helen. Margaret has a flair for the overdramatic, proven when Helen sends a letter about a romantic encounter with Paul Wilcox, which sends Margaret into a fit. She feels that she must go down to visit with her sister immediately, because "I love my dear sister; I must be near at this crisis of her life'." (Forster, 569) By her overreaction, her Aunt Juley actually goes to Howard's End to visit with Helen (in the hopes of breaking off her "engagement" to Paul) in place of Margaret, whom Aunt Juley states, "would say the wrong thing." (Forster, 569) Margaret continues to seem quite flighty, emotional and ditzy throughout the beginnings of the novel, but begins to develop more stable emotions after developing a friendship (though somewhat timidly) with Mrs. Wilcox in Chapter Eight.
Mrs. Wilcox represents everything good and perfect in the world -- she is only in the first...
Wilcox, like the reader, seems to perceive more than just "pretty" in Margaret. Margaret begins to broaden her emotional range to include sympathy for others, including the Wilcoxes, which begins with her friendship with Mrs. Wilcox. After Mrs. Wilcox dies, Margaret feels even more protective of Henry Wilcox (who later oddly becomes her romantic interest and husband). By Chapter 18, when Henry proposes to Margaret, Margaret has grown fond of being with him, and loves the ideals that he represents to her -- "not youth's creative power, but its self-confidence and optimism." (Forster, 694) Her idealism is partially shattered when she learns of Henry's affair with the prostitute Jacky, but her rejection of her own principles when confronted by a pregnant Helen (Chapter 37) brings a full maturation of Margaret's character. Love has remained her main emotion, as when she found out about Henry's affair with Jacky and thinks "Henry must be forgiven, and made better by love." (Forster, 766) Until her sister became pregnant, Margaret maintained a certain "acceptable" level of class despite her emotions. Despite her want for a life with Henry, she leaves him when he doesn't find it in his heart to connect his emotions with his head -- he can't have her unless he accepts her sister, too. She truly becomes independent in her thinking for the first time and ignores society; her husband and her own head and follow her love.
Luckily, Margaret's husband also changes quite a bit during the novel as well. He is a practical man, older than Margaret by about twenty years, which makes him of a different generation than her. His upbringing causes him to analyze everything in a tedious fashion, while not involving emotion in any sense of his life. He embodies, along with his family, all of the unpleasant aspects of the wealthy -- he demeans his wife and other women (sometimes without even meaning to), trivializes the monetary struggles of the poor, and tends to think that his wife's emotions are silly. His marriage to Margaret forces him to deal with his emotions on a level that he is uncomfortable with,…
Leonard Bast is the one person who literally changes things for everyone, including himself. He is poor, suspicious of everyone, and desperately wants to gain status through reading about finer things in life. His friendship with Margaret and Helen begins very slowly. He suspects them of every imaginable ill, thinking they are using him to learn secrets about his business. He is always concerned with self-improvement, and constantly nagged with financial worries. He is married, but is married to a former prostitute, Jacky. She represents the worst of the worst -- somewhat "trailer trash" if you will. Leonard begins to develop some redeeming qualities when he forms a tentative friendship with Helen, which turns sexual when they are both at terribly vulnerable times in their lives. Immediately, and for the rest of the novel, Leonard is filled with remorse. He is in turmoil, which actually helps him forget his money woes for a while. Despite the continuous troubles that came his way, they were "overshadowed by Remorse" and was unable to see "beyond his own sin." (Forster, 835) In spite of his marriage to this garish woman who used to sell herself to men, he still feels guilty about his sex with Helen. He never once considers that she is to blame, when he earlier had thought she was conniving in everything she did. When Leonard goes to tell Margaret, whom he has learned to respect, about his sin, he is beaten severely by Charles (Henry's son) and is killed by the heart attack that ensues. His thoughts before, during and after this attack are what shows his change -- perhaps the most notable in the novel. He feels a "conviction of innate goodness" and it is described not as his death itself that saves him, but "the idea of death saves him." (Forster, 841) One of his last thoughts is that he was "ashamed, but had done no sin." (Forster, 841) Leonard no longer cares so much about appearances as he does about doing the right thing, which is a totally foreign concept to him.
Overall, E.M. Forster certainly succeeds in painting accurate, though somewhat exaggerated portraits of the idealism, and materialism that can coexist and compete within the upper classes in England, along with the debilitating effect that poverty can have on a life. His characters, Margaret, Henry and Leonard all three represent good, evil and poor respectively, and all three achieve marked growth in the novel. Margaret and Henry both achieve this growth partly due to Leonard, who achieves the most notable growth shortly before his untimely death in "Howard's End."
Forster, E.M. "Howard's End," Great Novels of E.M. Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howard's End. New York: Caroll & Graff Publishers, Inc. 1992
Ruth represents the past but she understands that Howards End (very much like England itself) needs to look towards the future. It is interesting to note here that although Ruth's dying wish is dismissed by her family, the strong bond that she and Margaret had shared is not dissolved upon her death. In the end, ironically, Margaret -- now Mrs. Wilcox -- rightfully inherits Howards End. More importantly, it
Mr. Forster, it seems, has a strong impulse to belong to both camps at once. He has many of the instincts and aptitudes of the pure artist (to adopt the old classification) -- an exquisite prose style, an acute sense of comedy, a power of creating characters in a few strokes which live in an atmosphere of their own; but he is at the same time highly conscious of
There has been a lot of debate and discussions on how exactly these so called heritage films must be interpreted, in academic circles as well as in the mainstream press, and in the more specialized film publications. As a part of the debate, certain issues became more important than others, and some of them were that a limit must be imposed on this type of trend in production, and that