,

Howard’s End

When written: 1908-1910

Where written: Surrey, England

When published: October 18,1910

Literary period: Modernism, Edwardian Literature

Genre: Novel

Setting: England

Climax: Charles Wilcox assaults and kills Leonard Bast

Antagonist: the materialistic Wilcox family

Point of view: third-person omniscient

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Characters

Margaret Schlegel
• the chief protagonist of the novel
• a 29- year-old woman of mixed English and German heritage
sister to Helen and Tibby
• later Henry Wilcox's wife
• imaginative and committed to "personal relations"
• the chief representative of the Schlegel family, which
represents the idealistic, intellectual aspect of the English
upper classes

Henry Wilcox
• the patriarch of the Wilcox family
• a prominent businessman in London
• married to Ruth Wilcox and later to Margaret
• stuffy, conventional, and chauvinistic
• Henry is the chief representative of the Wilcox family, which
represents the pragmatic, materialistic aspect of the English
upper classes
 ,

Helen Schlegel
• Margaret's sister
• a passionate, flighty girl of 21
• lives for art, literature, and "human relations
• like Margaret, Helen is a representative of the idealistic,
cultured Schlegel family, which represents the intellectual
aspect of the upper classes
• Helen, who is prettier than Margaret, is also much less
grounded and far more prone to excessive and dramatic
behavior

Leonard Bast
• a poor insurance clerk on the very bottom rung of the middle
class
• he has money for food, clothing, and a place to live, but not
much else, and is constantly beset with financial worries
• married to Jacky
• Leonard represents the aspirations of the lower classes
• he is obsessed with self-improvement and reads constantly,
hoping to lift himself up
• he is never able to transform his meager education into an
improved standard of living
• late in the novel, Leonard has a sexual encounter with Helen
Schlegel, which results in his becoming the father of Helen's
child
• Leonard is killed by Charles Wilcox near the end of the novel
 ,

Ruth Wilcox
• Henry's wife
• dies in the first half of the novel
• gentle, selfless, loving, and strangely omniscient
• Mrs. Wilcox seems to represent the past of England
• Howards End belongs to her, and she attempts to leave it to
Margaret when she dies, an attempt which is blocked by Henry
and Charles

Charles Wilcox
• the oldest Wilcox son
• a self-centered, aggressive, moralistic young man who
represents the negative aspects of the Wilcoxes' materialistic
pragmatism
• married to Dolly
• Charles is sentenced to three years in prison at the end of the
novel for the killing of Leonard Bast

Theobald ("Tibby") Schlegel

• Tibby is Margaret and Helen's younger brother
• a peevish 16-year-old, who grows up and attends Oxford
• Tibby is prone to acting out the flaws of the Schlegel family--
their excessive aestheticism, indulgence in luxury, and
indolence--but shows real improvement by the end of the
novel
 ,

Aunt Juley Mund

• the sister of Margaret, Helen, and Tibby's deceased mother
• though goodhearted, she is a meddling, conventional woman

Dolly Wilcox
• Charles' wife
• a scatterbrained, insecure girl who often causes trouble by
revealing secrets

Paul Wilcox
• the youngest Wilcox son
• travels to Nigeria to make his fortune in the British colony
• before he leaves, he has a brief romance with Helen Schlegel

Jacky Bast
• Leonard's garish wife
• a former prostitute who had an affair with Henry Wilcox in
Cyprus

Evie Wilcox
• the youngest Wilcox daughter
• a self-centered, petulant young girl who, at 18, marries Percy
Cahill
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Miss Avery
• an elderly spinster living in Hilton
• takes care of Howard s End when it is unoccupied
• a childhood friend of Mrs. Wilcox
• Miss Avery takes the liberty of unpacking the Schlegels'
belongings while they are stored at Howard s End

Percy Cahill
• Dolly's uncle
• marries Evie Wilcox

Frieda Mosebach
• The Schlegels' German cousin, with whom Helen vacations on
the Continent

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Chapter 1-4

- Helen has left her home to visit the Wilcox family estate
Howard s End ̶> Helen and Margaret met Mr. Wilcox and his
wife while traveling in Germany

- Margaret was also invited, but stayed home to look after their
younger brother Tibby, who has hay fever

- Helen sends Margaret several letters describing the beautiful

estate and the materialistic Wilcox s

- her last letter sends a shock towards Margaret as she learns

that Helen has fallen in love with Paul, the youngest Wilcox s
son

- scandalized by the news Aunt Juley travels to Howard s End to

try to convince Helen her engagement is a mistake

- soon after, the love affair between Helen and Paul is over

- after her trains arrives, Aunt Juley meets Charles Wilcox,

Paul s older brother

- she mistakes him with Paul, and starts asking question about
his engagement; this is the first Charles has heard of any
engagement
 ,

- he drives Aunt Juley to Howard s End; they argue the entire

way about whether the Schlegel s are good enough for the
Wilcox s and vice versa
- Charles then confronts Paul, but Mrs. Wilcox ends the dispute

- Helen returns home to London with Aunt Juley

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Helen and Paul

• the attraction between a Schlegel and a Wilcox, has the

potential to connect the two aspects of the upper class

The Schlegel ’s

• represented by Margaret and Helen (and, to a lesser extent,

Tibby and Aunt Juley)

• they are intellectual, idealistic, somewhat flighty, romantic, and

impractical

• dedicated to "personal relations" above all things

• they represent culture, education

• represent the kind of idealism that Foster implies can only be

obtained when one does not have to worry about money
 ,

The Wilcox’s

• hard-nosed, pragmatic, materialistic, and patriotic

• represent the work ethic, materialism, imperialism

conventionalism and form, of a solid English

• exhibit the emotional restraint and repressive conformity

Forster considered typical in the England of his time

Money

• the only thing connecting the two families is money

• they represent two different facets of the English upper class
(or upper-middle class) at the time in which the novel is set:

• in the pre-World War I years in which the novel is set, the

conflict between England and Germany is just beginning to
escalate into prejudice and hatred

• the Schlegels face some unpleasantness about their German

background, especially from people such as the Wilcox s
 ,

Chapter 5-9

- the Schlegels take Aunt Juley, a German cousin, to a

performance of Beethoven s Fifth Symphony

- there Margaret meets and converses with a lower-class young

man named Leonard Bast

- the day after the concert, Aunt Juley presents Margaret with
what she thinks is terrible news: the Wilcoxes have taken a flat
in a building on Wickham Place ̶> Helen blushes furiously

- after they move, Mrs. Wilcox calls Margaret, but she does not
return and instead writes a note, saying that giving the
situation between Helen and Paul, it would be best if they did
not meet

- Mrs. Wilcox responds by saying she has been rude ̶> she
only wanted to tell her that Paul has left for Nigeria

- feeling guilty, Margaret spends the day with Mrs. Wilcox and
they slowly become friends
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Leonard Bast

• Leonard Bast does not exactly represent the poor, but rather
the very bottom rung of the lower-middle class

• he has an office job, a furnished apartment, and the rudiments

of an education, but still he is light-years away from the
lifestyle enjoyed by the Schlegel s

• his poverty makes him suspicious and mean-spirited

• Leonard believes that if he attends classical music concerts

and reads Ruskin, he will be able to better himself
 ,

Mrs. Wilcox

• Mrs. Wilcox is a very different creature from her husband and

children, replacing their materialistic hard-headedness with a
kind of selfless, loving sensitivity to those around her

• it is also a surprise for the reader to learn that Howard s End

actually belongs to Mrs. Wilcox ̶> her maiden name is
Howard, and it was a family farm for generations

• as the novel progresses, Mrs. Wilcox emerges as a metaphor

for England's past, and Howard s End becomes a metaphor for
England itself
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Chapter 10-13
- Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox go Christmas shopping together

- she reflects on the muddiness and clumsiness of the

Christmas holiday, thinking that it does a poor job of
reflecting the unseen

- in their conversation, she reveals that the Schegels will be

forced to move away from Wickham Place in two or three
years

- then Mrs. Wilcox invites Margaret to come to Howards End

- not long after Mrs. Wilcox dies, and is buried near Howards
End

- Margaret has grown very fond of the Wilcoxes, and actually

feels very protective of them

- two years pass, Tibby enters Oxford, where he thrives

- when coming back on holidays, Tibby discusses with Margaret

what will they do after the Wickham Place lease expires -which
was in nine months- and also discusses what he wants to do
with his life

- Leonard s wife called Helen demanding to see her husband

 ,

Materialism vs Spiritual meaning

Margaret brings about the conflict between the practice of

Christmas, with its materialism and its decoration, and the
spiritual meaning of Christmas

Helen concludes that it is only the idea of death that makes "the
unseen" relevant: If people lived forever, life would be all money
and toil, but because people know that they must die, they are
interested in meaning
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Stylistic Features

• key images and phrases are repeated throughout it, forming a

kind of symbolic shorthand for important thematic ideas

"the outer world of telegrams and anger"

̶> used by the Schlegel s to describe the pragmatic life of the
Wilcox s

"goblins marching across the universe"

̶> used to describe the feeling of desolation and
meaninglessness that haunts the edges of the intellectual life
and challenges the notion that humanity is capable of greatness

"plain question, plain answer

̶> a notion used by the Wilcox men to imply that the truth is
immediate and knowable, but rejected by Mrs. Wilcox as overly
simplistic

the relation of "the seen" to "the unseen" used by both

Schlegel sisters
̶> used to describe the conflict between the actual, material
world and the world of ideals and spirit.
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Chapter 14-17

- the next day Leonard comes to visit the Schlegels to

apologize for his wife s intrusion

- intrigued, the Schlegels think that he made a heroic attempt

to break the dullness of his daily life and to connect with
something spiritually real

- that night, Margaret and Helen go to a dinner party

discussion group, at which they debate the question of
allocating money to the poor

- they talk so much about Leonard that everyone at the party

begins using his name as a kind of shorthand of the poor in
general

- afterward, they meet Mr. Wilcox, who has doubled his fortune
since Mrs. Wilcox s death

- he tells them that he and Evie have rented Howards End to an

invalid and moved to a much larger home

- when they tell him about Leonard, he warns them that the
Porphyrion fire Insurance Company, where Leonard is a clerk,
is an unsound operation that will crash before Christmas- the
Schegels agree to advice Leonard to find a new job
 ,
- they invite him to tea, but the encounter was a disaster

- after Mr. Wilcox and Evie arrive unexpectedly, Leonard loses

his temper and accuses Margaret and Helen of trying to pry
into his knowledge of the insurance company to make money
for themselves- he storms away

- Margaret and Mr. Wilcox begin to form a strong bond, right

after she takes him to a faddish restaurant- just his type

- eventually, it is time to visit Aunt Juley at Swanage

- the Schlegels have still not found a new house to live in

 ,

At the tea

• the lives of the three main groups of characters--the

Schlegel s, the Wilcox s, and Leonard--begin to intertwine in
this section

• Mr. Wilcox's advice for the clerk to leave his job at the
Porphyrion Insurance Company

• when all three groups share a space for the first time and
Leonard loses his temper, the belittling effect Forster ascribes
to poverty is in full view

• hard experience taught Leonard to be suspicious of other

people, and when his carefully crafted idea of romance is
disappointed by the actual environment

• at the tea his petty suspicion is fueled by complex inner

feelings

• when he begins screaming at Margaret. he is actually really

angry that his visit has not lived up to his romantic hopes of
discussing books, beauty, and poetry

• he is unable to express those feeling, he accuses them of

using him to profit instead
 ,

Wickham Place , Wilcoxes’flat and Howards End

• as the impending loss of Wickham Place begins to loom over

the Schlegels' lives, the symbolic importance of houses in this
novel becomes a main thematic concern

• houses tend to express the ideals and positions of their

occupants :

• Wickham Place ̶> represents haven of art and culture

• Wilcoxes' flat ̶> represents the same middle-class

detachment and materialism that the Wilcox s themselves
often represent

• Howard s End ̶> it is the title of the novel, and is generally

understood as a symbol for all of England
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Chapter 18-22

- at Swanage, Margaret receives a letter from Mr. Wilcox,

saying that he is moving to a different house and would be
willing to rent the Schlegels his old one

- when Margaret takes a trip back to London, and takes a tour

of the house with Mr. Wilcox, he suddenly proposes- she
promise him to write him the day after with an answer, and
returns to Swanage to talk things over with Helen

- Helen thinks that Wilcox men are made of panic and

emptiness ̶ but after all Margaret accepts

- Mr. Wilcox travels to Swanage at once with the engagement

ring, and he and Margaret walk together by the sea- she
realizes that he is afraid of emotion

- his motto is Concentrate while hers is Only connect

- they kiss, and she thinks that if she could only teach him to
connect his passionate subconscious to his restrained,
moralistic exterior self, she could help him, but he is too
obdurate to be helped
 ,
- when Hellen tells him that she has received a letter from
Leonard, saying that he left the Porphyrion for a much lower-
paying job at the bank, he replied that Porphyrion is not a bad
company

- Helen is outraged, because Mr. Wilcox contradicted his

previous sayings about the company, and basically made
Leonard leave that job

- he although does not feel any guilt, and wouldn t take any
responsibility for the matter, arguing that the struggles of the
poor are merely part of the battle of life

- when Charles receives the note from his father announcing

the engagement, he blames Dolly: if she had not introduced
Evie to her fiancé, Mr. Wilcox would not have been lonely and
would not have to propose to Margaret

- Charles suspects Margaret of wanting to get her hands on

Howards end, ad says that he will only tolerate her as long as
she behaves herself
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The Proposal

• after two failed attempts to unite the Schlegels and Wilcoxes̶

and the aspects they symbolize- Forster makes a third,
climactic attempt

• a marriage between the cultural idealism of the Schlegels and

the pragmatic idealism of the Wilcoxes


• Forster hints a connection between the seen (the material

world of money and work) and the unseen (the moral,
intellectual, and spiritual)
 ,

Margaret and Henry

• Margaret is a sympathetic, appealing protagonist

• Henry a vaguely hypocritical, somewhat pompous minor

character

• they definitely are the least reasonable marriage to happen,

as they are very different people

• although Margaret has developed a profound appreciation for

money and what it represents

• she is not a materialist, but she understands her brand of

idealism could exist without the leisure and security afforded
by money

• she also understands that poverty only makes men suspicious

and mean; men and women need financial security in order to
develop their moral, intellectual, and spiritual selves

Helen

• Helen is more impulsive and slightly than Margaret,

• she believes that poverty is somehow more real than wealth
• this is why she does not approve of this engagement
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Main Conflict

• Mr. Wilcox s motto is to concentrate - he believes in seeing

the world steadily

• Margaret s motto is only connect - she believes in seeing the

world whole , in making connections between herself and
others, between the seen and the unseen, between the
physical and the spiritual

• the difference between their mottos is the difference between

Margaret and Henry; it is the difference between the Schlegels
and the Welcomes and the main conflict in Howards End
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Chapter 23-26

- Margaret and Helen discuss Margaret s engagement to Henry:

Helen admits that she does not like him and promises to try
to be civil to him

- Margaret travels with Henry to Hilton, where they dine with

Dolly, then take an excursion to Howards End

- it is the first time she has ever been to Howards End, and as
she looks through the empty house she thinks that it, like the
giant wych-elm in the yard, is like England

- as she opens the door, she sees an old woman coming down
them: it is Miss Avery, a local spinster who says that Margaret
frightened her (she though she looks like Mrs. Wilcox s ghost)

- Evie is annoyed with her father s engagement, and moved her

own wedding to August to distract herself

- Margaret travels with Henry and some Wilcox family friends

out to the Oniton, where the Wilcoxes have recently rented an
ancient estate

- after Evie s forgettable wedding, the bride and groom are

driven away for their honeymoon
 ,
- Back at the Oniton manor, the find a trio of scraggly looking
people that later on Margaret sees as Helen, Leonard and
Jacky Bast

- Leonard has lost his job at the bank and Helen blames Henry
and Margaret for it, because they convinced him to leave
Porphyrion- Henry agrees to speak to Leonard about giving
him a job

- when he approaches, the drunken Jacky calls him Hen and

asks if he loves her, which made him very awards as well as
Margaret herself

- he angrily tells her that her plan has worked, and that she is
released from their engagement

- confused, Margaret discovers that 10 years ago Jacky was

Henry s mistress

- Henry believes Margaret dragged the Basts down to intone to

expose his secret- but she is not interested in Henry s
humiliation

- it is not Margaret s tragedy, but Mrs. Wilcoxes

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Henry’s affair with Jacky

• the main narrative event of this section

• this serves further to tangle the histories and fates of the

three main symbolic groups of the novel

• it serves to introduce into the second half go the novel a

major referendum on sexual mores and gender attitudes in
early 20th century England

Gender

• Margaret s plunge into the heightened consideration of gender

relations began in earnest when she became engaged to
Henry

• Henry holds extremely conventional views about the role of

men and women

• it reaches an early climax in this section when Margaret leaps

out of the moving car in defiance of Charle s orders,
determined to decide to herself what she will do and where
she will go, regardless of the opinion of men
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Key events

• this section is devoted mainly to foreshadowing key events:

- Jacky s revelation
- Helen s highly agitated mental state
- Miss Avery s insistence that Margaret will soon come to
live at Howards End

• all predict major development to come in the novel

• Helen s imbalance predicts her coming sexual encounter with

Leonard, Miss Avery s weird prophecy predicts the fact that
Margaret will soon into Howards End, and Jacky s revelation
foreshadows the eventual exposure of Henry s hypocrisy and
his collapse
 ,

Chapter 24

• when Margaret, starting from Howard s End, attempted to

realize England

• Howards End has already been suggested as an important

symbol for England itself, but in this chapter, its symbolic role
in the novel becomes explicit

• the question of Who will inherit England? begins to resolve

around the various characters relationships to Howards End:
- Margaret s awakening love for the house and England
- Henry s indifference to it,
- Charles and the other Wilcox children s strange though
possessive distaste for it

• each aspect of Howards End--its position halfway between a

rural environment and an urban environment; its past as a
farm; and its status as a former home to Mrs. Wilcox, a
character who evokes the past of England--becomes
metaphoric

• those elements parallel the condition of England at that time,

which was in process of transition from dram-based economy
to an urban way of life \
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Chapter 27-31

- Helen and Leonard discuss Henry at their hotel, while Jacky

sleeps in another room̶ while they discuss several topics,
two notes arrive from Margaret, one for each

- at Oniton, Margaret contemplates how to react to the news of

Henry s decade old-affair- she considers leaving him, but is
motivated by love and pity to try to help him become a better
man

- she visits him in the morning- he tells her of his encounter

with Jacky in Cyprus, where the affair occurred, and Margaret
tell him that she has forgiven him

- she learns that both Helen and the Basts have left the hotel̶
she is worried that she may have blundered, for she sent
Helen a very critical note about Leonard and Leonard a terse
note saying that Henry did not have work for him

- Tibby is in his apartment at Oxford, where he is nearing his

last year at school- Helen bursts in, crying and telling him all
about Margaret, Henry and the Basts̶ Tibby is detached but
tolerant, and agrees to carry out certain instructions
 ,
- Helen herself cannot bear to face Margaret, and so is taking a
long trip to Germany- she asks Tibby to give the Basts 5000
pounds of her money

- Leonard refuses the check, and after which evicted from their
apartment and have disappeared

- as the lease at Wickham Place nears expiration, the house

falls into a kind of desolation, the furniture is all sent to
Howards End, which Henry is generously offered as storage
space

- Henry and Margaret go to live for a time at the Wilcoxes

house in London̶ with the intention of finding a bigger house
soon

- time passes, and Henry becomes happier and happier with his
choice of Margaret as a wife̶ she is clever, but also
submissive, and seems to understand her place as a woman

- Margaret understands every sacrifice she makes for Henry,

continues to be motivated partially by pity for him, also begins
to be less interested in discussing societies, debate, and
theater, preferring instead to read books and think on her
own

 ,
- now that she has passed 30, she is passing from words to
things , a moment in her life when some closing of the gates
is inevitable…it the mind itself is to become a creative power

Symbolic importance of houses

• the description of the house at Wickham Place falling into

desolation as its inhabitants depart

• this underscores a feature of the emergent middle-class

lifestyle adopted by the Wicoxes and the Schlegels that
Forster consistently criticizes through his characters: its
portability

• Helen continually imagines that luggage will outlive humanity

• Margaret mourns the impermanence of people s relationships

with houses


• Wilcox even suggests that it is a tragedy that someone would

die in a room different from the room they were born in
 ,

Helen and Leonard

• Helen s conversation with Leonard offers an important

thematic insight into the question of the relationship of the
seen and the unseen, the physical and the spiritual

• Leonard complains that all of life is merely a quest of mount

and Helen argues that it is not

• she says that if people lived forever, Leonard would be right,

but the mere fact of death forces them to seek some kind of
meaning to their lives

• this realization immediately recalls Helen s previous

observation that goblins walk across the universe ̶ that life
has no meaning and humanity has no greatnesses; seems to
imply that what banishes the goblins is the idea of death:
people cannot accept the goblins, because they know that
they will die
 ,

Chapter 32-36

- Margaret and Henry decide to build a new home in Sussex

- Miss Avery has begun unpacking all of the Schlegels luggage

and arranging their furniture and possessions at Howards end

- Charles suspects Margaret of ordering her to do so as part of

a covert plan to take over Howards End- she insists that she
has done no such thing, and travels to Howards End to set
Miss Avery straight

- here, the peculiar old woman insists prophetically that

Margaret will soon be living at Howards End; she says that the
house empty long enough, and that Mrs. Wilcox would like to
see the Schlegels furniture there

- Aunt Juley becomes ill with pneumonia, and Margaret and

Tibby rush down to Swanage to be with her on what it seems
to be her deathbed

- Helen has been living abroad for many months̶ she returns
to England only reluctantly, and when Aunt Juley recovers, she
declines to leave London
 ,
- Margaret consults Henry about Helen s strange behavior; his
practical mind can only suggest that she is exhibiting signs of
mental illness, and he orchestrates a scheme to surprise her
with a doctor at Howards End

- at Hilton, Henry attempts to leave Margaret at Charles house

and go to Howards End alone, but she leaps into the car just
as he drives

- they stop to pick up a doctor

- at Howards End, they find Helen on the porch̶ Margaret

sees immediately what ha prompted Helen s behavior, she is
pregnant

- she hurries Helen into the house, and with difficult persuades
Henry and the doctor to leave so that she can talk to her
alone
 ,

Helen’s pregnancy

• this section of the novel is largely transitional, and serves

chiefly yo move most of the important characters into position
for the final conflict of the novel

• Forster builds suspense before the revelation of Helen s

pregnancy by leading the reader to suspect she is mad, or at
least severely mentally unbalanced

• the only clue we have that Helen has had a traumatic sexual
episode with Leonard is her tearfulness when she visits Tibby
the next day and the clue also effective plays into the idea that
she is really mad

• when Forster shows Margaret betraying her own principles to

try to help Helen by going to Henry for advice, he sets the
stage for a crisis situation

• when Margaret discovers Helen s actual situation, the crisis is

replaced by a moment of acute surprise, for the reader can
hardly have suspected the truth
 ,

Margaret’s reaction

• Margaret s first concern is for her beloved sister

• she dismisses Henry and the doctor with an argument that the
most important thing now is simply love̶ she says that she
loves Helen more than they do, and therefore she is the only
person who can help her

• Margaret fights the battle as though she were fighting for all
women̶ Forster implies that the unjust sexual dynamic
Margaret is forced to endure on a daily basis as a result of
marriage has taken more of a toll on her than she had
expected

• now, she associates a forceful restatement of her basic

philosophy of life̶ that human relations are more important
than anything else̶ with a forceful restatement of her
independent identity as a woman
 ,

Gender relations #2

• Forster critique of gender relations in Howards End is an

extremely nuanced and subtle one

• the novel does not simply vilify men and glorify feminism,
rather, it simply portrays as accurately as possible the way the
individual characters really feel about they positions, admitting
that one of Margaret s reasons for marrying Henry is that she
is gratified to be loved by "a real man"

• but in this chapter, Margaret is simply sick of being bustled

about and controlled by men
 ,

Chapter 37-40

- inside Howards End, Margaret merely asks about Helen s

situation̶ she is living in Munich with a journalist named
Monica

- at first, they seem far apart from one another, and their
conversation is awkward, but as they look at all the old
furniture from Wickham Place, they realize how much the love
one another̶ they spend the night together in the house

- Margaret goes back to Charles house to ask Henry s

permission̶ he denies and expresses his desire to thrash
Helen s seducer within an inch of his life; also says he will
not let a woman such as Helen spend a night in his house

- Margaret after all returns to Helen at Howards End

- after Henry learned of Helen s condition, he called Charles to

solicit his help̶ he immediately goes to see Tibby, whom he
bullies into telling him Leonard is responsible

- Charles leaves TIbby in disgust

- outside, Helen tells Margaret the story of the night she slept
with Leonard̶ the night of Evie s wedding, when she and
Leonard talked in the hotel
 ,
- Helen asks Margaret to go with her to Germany, and
Margaret, though she loves England deeply, considers the
idea

- Suddenly, imagining that she, Helen, Henry, and the placid

countryside around are all part of the dead Mrs. Wilcox s
mind, she wonders whether Leonard is part of that mind as
well
 ,

Henry’s reaction

• Henry s shockingly hypocritical reaction to Helen s pregnancy

reveals his inner crisis; he is terribly unsure of how to act, so
he simply does the most conventional thing imaginable at
every turn

• this behavior leads him into the horribly contradictory position

of wishing to blame and punish Helen's seducer but refusing
to let Helen spend a single night in his house

• here Margaret s philosophy and Henry s philosophy crash

headlong into each other

• Henry is concentrating so hard on social morality that he is

unable to see that Helen is not guilty of anything he himself
has not done

• Margaret points out that Helen has only hurt herself, while
Henry was unfaithful to Mrs. Wilcox
 ,

Feud

• when Margaret, enraged, points this out to Henry in terms that

even he cannot fail to understand, he falls to pieces, snarling
his refusal once more and then shambling away

• as forster points out in a narrative aside, Margaret s only hope

of saving Henry lies in breaking him

The father

• Helen s confession that Leonard is the father of the baby of

her unborn child serves to further entwine the fates of the
three main groups of the novel̶ it is clear that the question
of Who will inherit England? will not have a simple answer

• of the two Schlegels sisters, one has married a Wilcox, and

the other will bear the child of a Bast

• the message is that the classes are mingling and the

boundaries are becoming indistinct

• Howards End, like England, can no longer belong to any one

group, and soon the groups themselves will cease to exist as
separate classifications
 ,

Chapter 41-44

- after his indiscretion with Helen, Leonard is consumed with

pitiless remorse that eats away at him

- seeing Margaret and Tibby in a cathedral one day, he resolves

to confess his misdeed to Margaret, hoping to ease his
conscience

- the next day, Leonard takes a train to Hilton and walks to

Howards End- on the way, he lapses into a gaze, in which his
extreme sorrow seems to transform the squalor of his life into
tragedy

- his grief has awaken something great in him

- in te meantime, Charles has gone to Howards End to force

Margaret and Helen to leave

- when Leonard arrives, he enters the house; Charles sees him,

and, echoing his father s desire to trash him within an inch of
his life , seizes the Schlegels great German sword, and beats
Leonard with the flat of the blade

- he stumbles backward into the bookcase, which falls onto

him, covering him with books̶ he experiences heart failure
and dies
 ,
- Charles leaves, stoping at the police station to tell them he
died from a heart attack̶ they tell him that there will be an
inquest

- Margaret answers the policemen s questions, saying that

Charles actions could not have cause the death, though they
may have hastened it

- she decided to go to Germany with Helen, and she tells Henry

this; Henry shocks her by telling her the police have found
that manslaughter was the cause of death

- Charles will spend three years in prison- Henry is shattered,

and asks Margaret to take care of him

- fourteen months later, Margaret, Helen and Helen s child are

living happily at Howards End

- Henry and Helen have learned to like one another, and are
now good friends

- Helen s little boy plays happily with the village children

- London is barely visible on the horizon

- Henry is exhausted, and still frail from his sudden

confrontation with his inner weakness; he is not his old self
 ,
- he calls all his children to Howards End to tell them he is
leaving the house to Margaret̶ in return for which she will
receive money when he dies

- the children all accept the dictate, though Paul, not returned
from Nigeria to run his father s business, is scornful

- as they leave, Dolly comments that it is odd that Mrs. Wilcox

wanted Margaret to have Howards End, and now she will after
all

- when they are alone, Margaret asks Henry about Dolly s

comment, and he reveals to her that his wife wished to leave
her Howards End

- she tells him that he did no wrong to keep it from her

- Helen runs into the room with the baby, announcing happily
that the meadow has been cut, and there will be such a crop
of hay as never
 ,

The novel ’s conclusion

• the novel s conclusion is heavy with symbolism

• Leonard s death comes when he topples a bookshelf on

himself̶ symbolizes his terrible obsession with educating
himself and his failure to pull himself from the abyss (of
poverty) with books

• in a way, books ruin him as a human being before they

smother him to cause his heart attack

• Charles surprising conviction for manslaughter indicates the

eroding authority of upper classes: no matter how
conventional and solid he acts, he cannot kill a man with
impunity and get away with it

• the final scene at Howards End provides a happy ending for

the novel, with Helen and Henry being friends at last, and
Henry s hypocritical edifice being replaced with a more
genuine human

• this final chapter also directly addresses the question of who

will inherit England? by featuring about who will inherit
Howards End itself
 ,

• Margaret is granted this pleasure, and she intend to leave it to

Helen s child
• Howards End falls from the materialistic upper class to the
idealistic upper class and thence to an offspring of the upper
and lower classes

• in a sense, the final living arrangement at Howards End

indicates Forster s belief that, if people could only connect ,
there would be a place for every class at Howards End, and in
England

• the classes are becoming irrevocably mixed; London is

enriching on the countryside, and World War 1 is coming in
the near future̶ but for the time, all is well; the classes can
live together happily, and the future of England seems less
uncertain, and less dim