"Howards End" by E. M. Forster

More on Howards End from J. B. Beer (Lecturer at the University of Manchester):

   "The wisp of hay which Mrs Wilcox holds participates in a stream of symbolism that runs through the entire novel. She is first seen by Helen with her hands full of hay; and when Margaret begins to take her place, later, she also picks up the habit of playing with grass -- at one point leaving a trail of it across the hall. The novel ends with a great hay harvest.

   "Mr Wilcox and his children, on the other hand, are allergic to hay, and have to shut themselves away from it. Their allergy reflects a psychical limitation. Hay-fever, in fact, seems to correspond to the 'peevishness' of earlier novels -- Margaret's brother Tibby, who also suffers from it, is described as losing some of his peevishness when he goes to Oxford. 

   "That the symbolism as a whole is deliberate is confirmed by a brief comment on Mrs Wilcox: 'Clever talk alarmed her, and withered her delicate imaginings; it was the social counterpart of a motor-car, all jerks, and she was a wisp of hay, a flower." 

"Howards End" by E. M. Forster

Over the least few days, Delycia and I read some commentaries on the novel which enlightened us as to some of the more subtle beauties in the book. In "Forster's Howards End" (Explicator 42.1, 1983), Neil Heims  makes the interesting point that Forster was using some lines from Shelley's "Adonais" to develop one of the major themes in the novel -- the contrast between the "white radiance" of the eternal All, and the mundane everyday affairs of people like the Wilcoxes. Also, J.B. Beer, in a book devoted entirely to Forster's novels, discusses some of the underlying symbolism in the book. It was very helpful to read what others have thought of this interesting but often puzzling book. 

"Howards End" by E. M. Forster

     After reading it aloud to each other for probably at least two months, just a few pages each day, Delycia and I finished the book yesterday, and I think we were both impressed -- perhaps even overwhelmed -- by the power of the ending. I don't mean that it was a surprise ending, something shocking and maybe gimmicky -- just an ending that powerfully pushed the book up from being an interesting story to the level of good -- even great -- literature. As we said to each other while sitting on the porch-swing after reading the final paragraph, the book has depth, something lacking in the great majority of merely "good" or "interesting" novels. Howards End, you might say, is like an ocean. The storyline moves fairly quietly along the surface, while vast currents of feelings and ideas swirl underneath. What's fascinating -- and I've seen this phenomenon in many of the great novels I've read -- is that the depth of the book didn't fully reveal itself until the final chapters -- actually the final pages. Forster's novel turned out to be a massive iceberg, with only the tip showing until the immense complexity and profundity of it all rose to the surface in the last chapters and pages.
    This brings to mind something I've always suspected -- that reading a book out loud, and collaboratively, with one or more fellow readers, can bring out the beauty of the book far more fully than reading silently by yourself. Delycia and I read the sentences aloud and slowly, with as much feeling as possible, and that in itself helped the force of the story come forth. However, we also paused whenever we felt it necessary -- to discuss a sentence, look up a word, highlight something, or notice again a theme we had seen earlier. You might say we strolled through the book instead of rushing through it. We weren't as interested in what happened, as in why and how it happened, and how interestingly and beautifully it was described. We got to know this book really well. To use the "depth" analogy, we dove into the book, page after page, and swam in its depths, and thus refreshed ourselves.

     Now, happily, we are going to spend a few days going back through the book, examining our many highlighted sentences, looking again for themes we noticed earlier, and reading scholarly commentaries on the book. After a true reading adventure, it's important to take a few days to look back upon -- and truly savor -- the experience.

"Howards End" by E. M. Forster

Some strange things have happened in the last few chapters -- so strange that both Delycia and I are questioning the plausibility of the story.  Somehow, it hardly seems plausible that  that, just by chance, Margaret's fiancé had an affair with Jacky Bast 10 years ago. It sort of threw both of us, I think, off track for a bit, wondering whether the book was breaking away from being a truly smooth and sincere story. I think what may happen to me is what has often happened with previous great books -- that gradually the beauty of the book will appear, as if a mist slowly rises and a spectacular city is seen. We shall see ...

"Howards End" by E.M. Forster

Howards End (from the film)

In Chapter 25, Margaret decides that she would like to live at Oniton, one of her future husband's many properties, even though he apparently has no use for the place. Also in this chapter, on the way to Oniton, one of the cars hits a cat, and all the cars stop and order the women to get into one care and drive off. Margaret, however, screams for them to stop, and finally jumps out of the car and injures herself. Forster writes this about what she was feeling afterwards: "[These men] had no part with the earth and its emotions. They were dust, and a stink, and cosmopolitan chatter, and the girl whose cat had been killed had lived more deeply than they."
 

"Howards End" by E.M. Forster

For the past six weeks or so, Delycia and I have been reading Howards End for a few minutes each morning, and very slowly but surely I'm beginning to understand and appreciate what Forster was trying to do in this book. I have found it to be confusing at times, often losing track of who this character is and what that character wants, but gradually the good structure of the novel is revealing itself. Just yesterday, in fact, we realized that "proportion" is an often repeated idea in the book. Since we are reading it on my Kindle, we were able to quickly search the book for the word "proportion", and it came up dozens of times, the first back on p. 17. (We're on p. 170 now.) Here is a quote from p. 70, Mrs Wilcox speaking:
     "Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged—well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in—to live by proportion. Don't BEGIN with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed ... "