Howard’s End by E. M. Forster

Howard’s End by E.M. Forster is overrun with characters who had clever thoughts and conversations about Nature, Literature, Art and other Capitalised Ideas, although these intellectually blessed characters were generally short of common sense, to the detriment of themselves and other characters whose ordinary thoughts were more in keeping with my own.

I read Where Angels Fear to Tread by this author and enjoyed the writing style and the story, but did not like the characters in that book any better than those in Howard’s End.

Howard’s End follows the lives of the Schlegel and the Wilcox families who met while travelling on the Continent (I guess there is no need to say when this story is set after using the term ‘travelling on the Continent’). Sisters Margaret and Helen Schlegel had an income that was large enough for them to indulge in Clever Thoughts, but were fascinated by the self-made, buttoned-up, ordinary-thinking Wilcox clan to the point where Helen entered into a hasty and soon regretted engagement with the younger Wilcox son.

The engagement ended as quickly as it begun and the two families would not have met again except that the Wilcox’s took a house in London across the road from the Schlegel’s. Mrs Wilcox and Margaret formed a friendship and when Mrs Wilcox died suddenly, the Wilcox family were angry to learn she left her family home, Howard’s End to Margaret on a whim. As Mrs Wilcox’s wish was not formalised in a will, the Wilcox’s did not action the wish and Margaret herself was unaware of the bequest.

A few years after Mrs Wilcox’s death Mr Wilcox began courting Margaret, who agreed to marry him for reasons I found difficult to understand. Personally, I would have been put off by his horrible cigar breath during the first kiss, but Margaret professed to Understand and Respect who Mr Wilcox was as a Man. Mr Wilcox’s children, however, were deeply unhappy with their father’s choice of wife.

Margaret’s younger sister Helen was the interfering type who caused trouble wherever she went, most significantly when she and Margaret became involved in the life of Leonard Bast, a poor clerk they had met by accident at a concert and took an interest in. Leonard’s common-law wife Jacky had an unexpected connection with the Wilcox family too.

The differences between the three families seemed insurmountable to me for them to have been connected socially, but these differences in their outlooks were the whole point of the novel. The different standards for men and women, the extreme divide between the rich and the poor, the stiff English nature of the Wilcox’s compared to the expressive, romantic nature of the half-German Schlegel’s, even the differences between the love of the city and the country were explored in this story. “Only connect” is the most well-known quote from this novel.

My irritation with the characters, who mostly had unlikeable natures (excluding Mrs Wilcox and Margaret) meant that I struggled to like this story. The Schlegel’s Big Ideas drove me mad and the Wilcox’s weren’t my type either. Funnily enough, I think I related best to poor Leonard Bast, whose only aim was to improve himself culturally.

Regardless of my general dislike of the characters, I was able to Respect and Admire the Beauty of the Writing. The story was also fascinating in that Mr Wilcox believed a war with Germany was coming (Howard’s End was written several years before World War One broke out). The author delighted me by suggesting in Howard’s End that in 100 years, it would be unthinkable for a woman not to work. Woohoo!

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

Where Angels Fear to Tread was E. M. Forster’s first novel, which seemed to me to be a good place for me to start reading this author’s works.

The story began with widowed Lilia leaving her daughter with her in-laws to travel to Italy as chaperone to her friend, Caroline Abbott. In Italy, Lilia fell in love with Gino, who was much younger than her and who, as the son of a dentist, was considered to be socially ludicrous in the eyes of Lilia’s in-laws.

Philip, Lilia’s brother in law, raced off to Italy, as instructed by his mother, to save Lilia from herself only to find that Lilia had already married Gino.

Lilia’s marriage turned out to be an unhappy one (was anyone really surprised to hear this?) and when Lilia died giving birth to her and Gino’s son, Philip was sent back to Italy by his mother to bring the baby back to England. Philip’s sister Harriet, a cold fish who was more concerned with retrieving an inlaid box she loaned Lilia than the baby, accompanied Philip. When Philip and Harriet arrived in Gino’s home town they found Caroline Abbott there too, as she also had intentions of returning to England with the baby.

Caroline visited Gino first and realised that he loved the baby, then Philip visited Gino and learned the same thing. Caroline and Philip agreed that the baby would be better off to be left with the father who loved it*, than taking the baby to England where it would be brought up properly in an English household, but would not be loved.

Harriet complicated things though by stealing the baby, which was then killed in a road accident. Philip returned to Gino to tell him of the tragedy.

When Philip finally realised he was in love with Caroline, he was too late, as Caroline had fallen in love with Gino. I suspect Philip was a bit in love with Gino, too. In comparison to the reserved and proper English characters, Gino was full of life and emotion.

The only character I really liked or felt sorry for in this story was the baby. The adults were selfish and full of their own importance and the ‘rightness’ of their ideas. The English and the Italians patronised each other in their own way, and no one really showed themselves at their best.

Based on Where Angels Fear to Tread, I would definitely visit Italy though. I will probably read more of this author’s work too.

*I know the baby was not an ‘it’ but I could not remember if it was a boy or a girl…