¶ … 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...
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
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