Dougherty is a Ph.D. candidate at Tufts University. In this essay, she discusses Forster's depictions of the characters' relationships to their dwelling places in Howards End.
Daniel Born notes that "discussion of values in Howards End is never ... pursued apart from a material context of physical living space." In Howards End, a novel which takes its name from the Wilcox family's country house, the "material contexts" of the characters and their relationships to these material contexts defines each of the three families: the Schlegels, the Wilcoxes, and the Basts. As Michael Levenson notes, Howards End is a novel "not of three classes, but of three households." Throughout the novel, each of the three families is defined by their relationships to their physical living spaces. These differing relationships are, in fact, shown to be in conflict.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 2,134 words. This
study guide contains 32,549 words (approx. 108 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our Howard's End Access Pass.
