Howards End

I fell in love with this book from my first reading of it when I was in college many, many years ago. Each character was vibrant and perceptive. The writing was beautiful and portrayed images that have stayed with me all of my life.   

This book opened my eyes to class differences and privileges. It led me to evaluating my own life and values.

I love this novel’s insights into human psychology and society and its sense of humor. When its two main characters—young women from a sensitive, artistic family—fall in love with men from a hard-hearted, business-oriented family, sharp observations about English society in 1910 unfold. But so, too, do probing love stories.

What if you learn that your fiancé is hypocritical—can you love him anyway? What happens when love for your family tugs against love for your spouse; what do you learn about yourself? E. M. Forster explores these questions in a witty, urbane narrative style that is one of the novel’s… show more.

I loved this book because it marvelously portrays the unintended and harmful effects of social class.

Everything about this work, including the dialogue, the setting, and the characters, is compelling. I think its lasting effect was to impress upon me the way an author can write about something tragic and sad and yet leave me with the feeling that I have encountered a great story.

Howard’s End made me miss my train stop – it’s so brilliantly plotted – but what makes me love it is how Forster forgives his characters’ many mistakes. Even stuffy Mr. Wilcox gets forgiven. 

As I inhabited each of the characters in turn, I felt able to forgive my younger self. And I was so happy that the sisters did finally inherit Howard’s End, the magical house of the title.  

This is one of my favorite novels ever. Though it describes the author’s own society—Edwardian England—it tackles so many human subjects that will resonate for a modern reader. That a man was able to inhabit so many fully realized female characters is nothing short of miraculous. The plot concerns a social collision one can imagine happening today: two earnest, well-intentioned intellectual sisters in London meet a snobby upper-class family and, later, an impoverished bank clerk. While trying to help the clerk, the sisters create a crisis. How all these lives intertwine tells a story of marriage, betrayal, widowhood, forgiveness, and… show more.

I’m recommending this wonderful novel but it really could just as well be any of his novels (or his essays or broadcasts or any of his writing at all!) All his work is suffused with his humanist values (he was an active member of UK humanist organisations as well as all his other activist and intellectual connections) and Howard’s End in particular contains the immortal line “Only Connect!” which is a manifesto not only for connecting with others but also living an integrated life within yourself.