Reviews

I had an adverse reaction to this book. Disappointing really, because I loved the other book I read by E.M. Forster, A Room With a View, and was prepared to declare Forster a favorite if his other books suited me too. Alas, while A Room With a View is a completely charming book full of light and movement, Howards End is an overburdened, joyless book. Maybe I’m so bothered by this book because it’s so well-crafted, while the turns of plot and many of the worldviews espoused within distressed me. I think I can only love Forster when he allows luminosity and optimism to shine through his prose and characters unchecked.

And yet, two scenes from Howard’s End stand out to me as perfect: firstly, the scene describing the concert and Helen’s vivid interpretation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; and secondly, Leonard’s guilt-laden flight to Howards End

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only to meet his death saying “I’ve done wrong.” (something about the momentum got to me)

. The beginning of this book I have little issue with; it was towards the middle, from when Margaret decides to marry

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Mr. Wilcox,

that my opinion deteriorated. Why, oh why, does Margaret do it (other than to serve as an authorial plot device)? I can’t understand why she ends her independence like that. Perhaps it’s simple loneliness, or perhaps it’s due to the ‘personal relations are supreme’ tenet the Schlegels have adopted; Margaret believes if she can change one man she can do some good in the world. Sadly I don’t agree, and don’t see why she must be subjugated to become heroic. I can’t help but feel that her character arc betrays a fundamentally misogynistic viewpoint. My feeling about it is akin to how I felt watching the miniseries North & South (I haven’t read the book—perhaps it’s different) — both Margarets are independent female main characters interested in social reform who end up marrying men who signify everything they deplored— social Darwinist capitalist overlords, and it’s somehow dressed up as a happy ending when I view it as a sad capitulation of their genuine selves (and Howards End has no Richard Armitage to make it more bearable. I’ll admit Margaret does have ONE satisfying row with Henry

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but then goes and decides not to leave him afterall:(

). But I suppose it does happen often in real life that women marry men quite wrong for them and self-efface themselves continually in the name of “love.”

But I don’t mean to say that the Schlegels are so much superior to the Wilcoxes. Part of me would like to side with them just because they’re artistic intellectuals, and I did like Helen the first bit of the book (later on, less and less). But —and Forster points this out himself — an appreciation for art and culture doesn’t mean you are in any way a better human being, especially if you are lacking in other departments. The intellectual, self-righteous Schlegels are so removed from the reality of the world that when they try to enter it they destroy passerby;

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they singlehandedly ruin the Basts with their condescending academic “interest” in them, viewing them as if they were an entertainment and not actual people

the Wilcoxes are brutish imperialists with blood on their hands, and the Basts, likely due to Forster’s own unrestrained prejudice against the lower classes, are hardly allowed a single sliver of humanity. The Schlegels and the Wilcoxes somehow become the protagonists of this story, and their synthesis (with a hint of Bast renewed) are presented as the book’s triumph. I despair over this outcome; how could Foster think this a fitting ending, a fitting conclusion? When I think of the Wilcoxes and Schlegels, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s description of Tom and Daisy comes to mind: “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Speaking of class views, I found the implication that Leonard Bast, although struggling to improve himself through self-study, would never grasp art or literature at the level that the Schlegels-- born into it--could, to be really problematic. I don’t believe that. I hate that Forster wrote it, that he had such disdain for his “cramped mind.” It goes against everything I believe about self-education and it honestly makes me depressed about Forster’s views, which for their time period were supposedly progressive. Perhaps it’s a British mentality (I wouldn’t know, as I’m not British) in which social-economic classes are utterly rigid, and an attempt to better yourself is not only in vain, but also provides all the more reason to mock and pity you.

I won’t deny this book did gave me some insight. Unfortunately by nature of its subject matter, it was primarily insight into the mindset of imperialistic, sexist, and racist British empire prior to WWI. Forgive me if I couldn’t pretend to enjoy reading Forster’s thoughts on how to create a better England through a better English race. At this point in my reading life, I don’t actually want any more insight into the problematic, self-congratulatory thought process that powered the British empire. Perhaps I’m being overly hard on Forster because I’ve already reached my tolerance a while ago, and it’s so easy to make me irritated. (I should probably stop reading British literature by dead white men).

There were some passages about life I did like a lot in Howards End. Forster, unlike many other lesser authors, gets away with Making Points in the middle of a narrative due to the musicality of his prose.

I liked this passage about the temptation to dismiss passing emotion and impulses:

To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of "passing emotion," and how to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one. We recognize that emotion is not enough, and that men and women are personalities capable of sustained relations, not mere opportunities for an electrical discharge. Yet we rate the impulse too highly. We do not admit that by collisions of this trivial sort the doors of heaven may be shaken open.

And this passage about how actual life is narratively weak. Also, a reminder to stay in the present:

Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken.”

And another reminder, about plateaus:

“She mistrusted the periods of quiet that are essential to true growth.”

Perhaps this is Forster’s clearest statement of his aim in Howards End?

"Don't brood too much," she wrote to Helen, "on the superiority of the unseen to the seen. It's true, but to brood on it is medieval. Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them."

But Forster’s answer to reconciling the seen and unseen is marriage, children. I find this solution unsatisfactory. But I will say that I like the thematic matter itself a lot: those who live interior lives versus those who live exterior lives. I live an interior life, and I sometimes wonder what I miss. Should I be trying to reconcile the two modes of living?

As for setting, I really did like the descriptions of London as a city, “a heart that certainly beats, but with no pulsation of humanity”; while Forster’s preoccupation with farmers, physical haleness, and pastoralism, to my 21st century eyes, was just plain bizarre. I got the unpleasant whiff of eugenics at times when you could feel him trying to think how to combine all three families through interbreeding, ruminating on the supposed nobleness of farming and nature, and complaining about physical degeneracy that plagues city-dwellers and declining birth rates. *shudder*

It seems there is the opinion out there that Howards End is Forster’s masterpiece, and I see that I’m in the minority of opinion by disliking it, but I’m dearly hoping this is actually his worst book. It was not without good prose and moving scenes. It made me think. Still, please let this be his worst book.

gunnar96's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

leighsneade's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny medium-paced

5.0

elysareadsitall's review against another edition

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4.0

My experience with "Howards End" is a perfect illustration of how much narrators matter in audiobooks. I started with the Recorded Books version, and I absolutely hated it. I couldn't focus on the story, thought it was boring, and was about to DNF. I don't know why, but I chose to switch to a different version and start over instead. Colleen Prendergast's reading completely brought the story to life. The story was lively, characters ridiculous, and prose absolutely witty.

All the tension between Germany and England was fascinating. We know that a World War is coming after this story is published, but Forster obviously didn't. It's a unique experience to read novels right before a world event because the tension is there. The whole novel feels like sitting on the precipice. In the world of the novel, it's about the possibility that Margaret will find out that Howards End was left to her, but in reality it captures the world on the brink of huge changes.

I found this novel incredibly entertaining (after switching narrators), and it's one I plan to read again. I'll also be checking out Forster's other work.

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