Howards End (Romance)

Published in 1910, Howards End is a novel of Edward Morgan Forster which presents a conflict of classes in the England of the turning of the century. Its main theme shows the importance and the difficulty of people of communicating the ones with the others.

The novel puts in scene three families which represent various layers of the middle-classes of the Edwardian time. Wilcox are capitalist rich person who made fortune with the Colonies. The Schlegel sisters, partly of German origin, represent the intellectual middle-class and have much in common with the Bloomsbury Group attended by Forster. Bast are a couple resulting from small the Bourgeoisie. The Schlegel sisters try to help Bast and to fight against the prejudices of Wilcox. Margaret, the older sister of Schlegel, sympathizes with Ruth Wilcox which wishes to leave him his house of Howards End, then becomes the wife of Henry Wilcox. Helen Schlegel tries to help Leonard Bast but it becomes its mistress and it gives up it pregnant… The novel was adapted to the cinema by James Ivory in 1992 (French title: Return to Howards End .

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