The novel highlights the difficulty in overcoming class barriers in early 20th-century England – a time when the middle-class was beginning to expand.

The story is told mainly from a female perspective and has strong, empathetic female characters.

The novel highlights the hypocritical attitude toward women and sexual morality at the turn of the 20th century.

The central theme, as in many of Forster’s novels, is the – often futile – human attempt to overcome social, gender and class barriers.

The lives of three families – the liberal and culture-loving Schlegel sisters, the bourgeois and commercially successful Wilcox family, and the working-class Basts – intersect and intertwine, resulting in at least one birth, one death and one marriage.

Howards End is one of the English writer E.

It seems there is no escape from the rules and boundaries of society. For example, Leonard Bast has to give up his ambition at bettering himself and ends up ruined, whereas strong, independent and confident Margaret in the end steps into (and accepts) the role of wife and companion to the hypocritical and complacent Henry. The novel questions the rigid class system and the moral hypocrisy of early 20th-century patriarchal society, but in the end paints a rather bleak picture of the ability either to overcome class barriers or escape gender stereotypes and roles.

Their paths cross and intertwine throughout the novel, with fatal consequences.

Howards End is a finely nuanced depiction of the relationships among three families from drastically different backgrounds and world views.

Howards end 1910