Howards End

By: E. M. Forster

Narrated by: Colleen Prendergast

Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

The disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist intersect at an estate called Howards End.

There, the lives of three families become entangled. The Wilcoxes, who own the estate, are a wealthy family who made their fortune in the American colonies. The Schlegel siblings - Margaret, Helen, and Tibby - are lively socialites whose spirited and active lifestyles are representative of the intellectual bourgeoisie. And the Basts are a young couple from a lower-class background who are struggling to survive. As chance brings them together, societal conventions come into question as does the ownership of Howards End.

Through the fate of the estate - as well as the lives of the families who are affiliated with it - Forster creates a brilliant parallel to the fate of English society itself.

Public Domain (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Interesting book, charmingly told

The book reminded me of standing in the ocean, facing the waves. This book starts out light and easy — providing a beautiful introduction to all the characters of the story — before it moves into a rhythm of stormy(ish) and calm tides. The relationship between the three siblings, sisters Margaret, Helen, and brother Tibby, are interesting and unique. I loved the reader of this book. Her voice and tone precisely match that of the two primary characters, Margaret and Helen.

An accessible but deep novel

In college I was assigned A Passage to India in English class and did not appreciate it much. But I thought I might not have given the author a fir chance and decided to listen to the audiobook version of this other novel of his, which is best remembered by many in its cinematic version (which I have not seen). I am glad that I did, to experience some good writing of a non-experimental sort that combines a domestic drama with some explosive class ideas due to take to take center stage in the following decades of the twentieth century.

We see the story largely through the eyes of the elder Schlegel sister, Margaret, who is progressive socially without being flashy about her opinions. Somehow, I am not entirely clear how, she ends up with the capitalist Henry Wilcox as his second wife, which constitutes the engine of the major part of the story. Also key to the plot are the Bast couple, impoverished and unable to improve their circumstances on their own. I think another author (D. H. Lawrence?) might have made them the central figures instead of this lower rank. It's interesting to see how the tumult surrounding them is given no purple prose by Forster. Disgrace and death are mentioned in such an offhand way it would be easy to miss while going through the pages quickly. I have to think this is because the Bast's class of people was virtually invisible to those of privilege, if one disappears, then another will just appear in their place, according to Henry. Telling the story from the Bast's point of view would have deprived the reader of the understanding of the way the economic system is constructed by those at the top, the ones they have to defer to even if they hate it. So by shifting the viewpoint to the more privileged, yet not exalted, person of Margaret the author allows us to see and sympathize to some degree with both ends of the class system.

Besides this careful plot construction, there is beauty in the words as Forster describes the changing face of London with its new construction all practicality without quaintness, and with the motor car taking its dominance there and in the countryside. He invests the secondary characters with enough care that we can remember them when they reappear in the story, and gives enough clues about the relative worth of the houses the Wilcoxes have collected to establish a sense of their power in the hierarchy. This skill at storytelling enhanced my pleasure in reading a book fundamentally about ideas, by making the abstract signifiers of station concrete. Some time, not right away, I may tackle A Passage to India once more.

The book narration pulled me along well, helping me to make sense of the various convolutions of the story and most of the characters popping up. By the end, I had a sense of what relation the house Howards End had to the themes of the story, which turned out not to be the role I had been expecting.

Remarkable

I’ve always loved this book. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook. But the audio production needed improvement. You can hear the reader swallowing between sentences throughout.

Enduring, but Bast grows ever more our tragic hero

Henry reflects modern corporatists, wealth extraction, legalism, "us vs them", "build a wall", White privilege, gender stereotypes, self sufficiency and "bootstraps".

Margaret stands in for present-day progressives, environmental justice, equality, inclusion, open-society, human rights, non-binary roles, "lend a hand" and "give a leg up".

Leonard represents today's masses of university educated minimum-wage "essential-workers", drawn from middle / upper-middle / lower-middle and lower classes, who now find themselves burdened with college indebtedness and a future mortgaged to the fleeting dream that a good education will open doors.

Powerful Story

Powerful story cloaked in genteel language and drawing room manners.
The reader is good but a bit too 'nasal' for my taste. However, her characterizations are clearly defined by inflection and rhythm. Very enjoyable!