Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Overall very good, 3 Jul 2009
This book was described as in very good condition, however there were a few creases and written notes in it. This doesnt bother me at all (in fact the notes helped!) Just for future reference :)
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Homecomings., 2 Nov 2008
Most of us connect the notion of "home" or "childhood home" with one particular place, that innocent paradise we have since had to give up and keep searching for forever after. In Ruth Wilcox's world, Howards End is that place; the countryside house where she was born, where her family often returns to spend their vacations, and which, everyone assumes, will pass on to her children when she is dead.
But will it really? Unbeknownst to Ruth's family, the issue is put into question when Ruth forms a friendship with her neighbor-to-be Margaret Schlegel, like Ruth herself from a middle class background but nevertheless separated from Ruth's world by several layers of society and politics: That of the Wilcox is epitomized by pater familias/businessman Henry - rich, conservative and without any sympathy whatsoever for those less fortunate than themselves ("It's all part of the battle of life ... The poor are poor; one is sorry for them, but there it is," Henry Wilcox once comments); while the Schlegels, on the other hand, have just enough income to lead a comfortable life, were brought up by their Aunt Juley, support suffrage (women's right to vote) and surround themselves with actors, "blue-stockings" (feminists), intellectuals and other members of the avantgarde. Further complexity is added when Margaret's sister Helen brings to the Schlegel home Leonard Bast, a poor but idealistic young clerk who loves music, literature and astronomy - and with him, his working class wife Jacky, the embarrassment of having to interact with her, and the even more embarrassing revelation which she has in store for Henry Wilcox; eventually leaving her disillusioned husband to comment that "books aren't real," and that in fact they and music "are for the rich so they don't feel bad after dinner."
An allegory on the question who will ultimately inherit England - the likes of the Wilcox, the Schlegels, or the Basts - E.M. Forster's novel is one of the early 20th century's finest pieces of literature; a masterpiece of social study and character study alike, in which the author brings his protagonists and their environment to life with empathy and a fine eye for detail. The story's strongest character is undoubtedly Margaret Schlegel, a young woman "filled with ... a profound vivacity, a continual and sincere response to all that she encounter[s] in her path through life," as Forster describes her, and whose friendship with Ruth Wilcox, even at the beginning, already brings the two families back together again after Helen has endangered their as-yet tentaive acquaintance by engaging in a near-scandalous affair with Ruth's younger son Paul.
Ultimately, Margaret and Ruth become so close that Ruth eventually decides to give Meg "something worth [her] friendship" - none other than Howards End, a wish that has her panicking family scramble most ungentlemanly for every reason in the book to invalidate the codicil setting forth that bestowal, from its lacking date and signature to the testatrix's state of mind, the ambiguity of the writing's content, the question why Meg should want the house in the first place since she already has one, and the fact that the writing is only in pencil, which "never counts," as Dolly, wife of the Wilcox' elder son Charles is quick to point out, only to be reprimanded by her father in law "from out of his fortress" (Forster) not to "interfere with what you do not understand." And so it is that Meg will only see the house (and be instantly mistaken for Ruth because she has "her way of walking around the house," as the housekeeper explains) when she and her siblings have to look for a new home and Henry Wilcox, who has started to court her after Ruth's death, suggests that the Schlegel's furniture be temporarily stored there - a fateful decision. And while Meg and Henry slowly and painfully learn to adjust to each other, the complexity of their families' relations, and their interactions with the Basts, finally come crashing down on them in a dramatic conclusion.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
"Connect the prose and the passion...both will be exalted.", 25 Oct 2007
In this 1910 story of Edwardian England, Forster illustrates the conflicts between the superior attitudes of the aristocracy and a developing feeling of obligation toward the "lower" classes which World War I will soon bring into sharp relief. Margaret and Helen Schlegel are intellectual and sensitive to the arts, with compassionate hearts for those less fortunate. When Margaret, at age twenty-nine, is affianced to Henry Wilcox, the much older, widowed husband of a friend, this conflict of attitudes is brought to the fore. Henry, insensitive and believing himself actually entitled to his family's privileges, is cold and reserved, though Margaret believes that "Henry must be forgiven and made better by love."
Helen, her sister, a 21-year-old with an enthusiasm for the life of the imagination, has no sympathy for Henry's staid pronouncements and failure to pay attention to the people "below him" who are dependent upon his whims. When Henry asserts that Porphyria Fire Insurance Co. is on the verge of collapse, Helen and Margaret persuade Leonard Bast, a young clerk they have befriended, to resign his position there, only to have him later "downsized" out of his subsequent bank job. Henry refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever and refuses his wife's entreaties to give the destitute Leonard a job.
Immensely sympathetic to the economic position of the poor and women, Forster illustrates their financial dependence on those over whom they have little control. Margaret, who secures the reader's total sympathy, must try to educate a close-minded dolt like Henry to be kinder and more empathetic towards the people he considers below him, but she achieves only limited success. When Helen returns from Germany, where she has been living, and Henry and his family discover she is pregnant, Henry's belief that her condition reflects negatively upon himself and his family inspires a disaster with far-reaching consequences.
Filled with incisive observations and great wit, the novel follows the narrative pattern of a melodrama, but Forster's sensitivity to both sides--the practical and conservative values of Henry vs. the emotional and idealistic sides of Margaret and Helen--elevates the novel above the tawdry. Henry is a product of his time and his class, but though times are changing, he is too dense to realize it. With the action centered around the Wilcox home at Howard's End, the reader realizes that the estate is a microcosm of the country and that its conflicts are those of the nation. Thoughtful and entertaining, Howard's End still draws in readers after almost a hundred years. Mary Whipple
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by Virginia Woolf
by E.M. Forster
by Virginia Woolf
by Zadie Smith
by Joseph Conrad
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