Howards End: Book Review

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yet begun to destroy bodies and devastate souls of people. Generally speaking, the times were good, and the future was viewed in an optimistic way. The atmosphere of the book is filled with romance and hope, even though the author is very far from writing an utopian type of description of English society.
In fact, the book is very truthful in the description of class problems of the country. In Howards End Forster talks about two classes and two ideologies that are separated by the thick wall of social prejudices and misunderstandings. The two social groups are represented by the cultured, idealistic Schlegels and the pragmatic, business-oriented Wilcoxes. The Schlegel Sisters, who aren't 'pure' English, but people of German origin, personify Forster's dream about what people's philosophy of life should be. They used to think about the class differences as obstacles that do not allow people to fully understand each other. The hope is that if everybody thinks that way, people will ...

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principle that is emphasized throughout the book: "Be comrades!"
The characters of the novel are believable--as long as the author wants them to be believable. By that I mean that Forster, naturally, wants to create a plausible image of England of that time and therefore he must try to make the characters look plausible. He is successful in making the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes look natural enough, but in doing so he does not care about the characters themselves very much. For Forster, the characters of the novel are people who represent certain ideas, and it is the ideas that are important for him, not the characters as individuals. If he could have written a novel just as lovely and ...

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