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Aug. 14th, 2022 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: Howards End, by E M Forster
It is many years since I saw the film, long enough to have forgotten most of the story. What I do remember is the concert playing Beethoven's Fifth at the Queen's Hall. The Aurora Orchestra's recent Proms concert nudged me to take this book from the to-read list.
It's like Jane Austen: it's about two unmarried sisters, the things they have in common and the characteristics in which they diverge.
It's like Dickens: there's a lot of social commentary. Those who are at the top can do mostly as they please, but not without limit. The thing that worries them most is their reputation, on which their social position depends. Those who are already low are dragged lower, in this case by interference from well-meaning and better-off types. There is to be no levelling-up.
It's about London, and England, and the changes in the first years of the twentieth century. The Schlegels' house in Wickham Place is to be demolished to make way for blocks of flats. Howards End is a decaying house in the country, its owners apparently indifferent to its fate but unwilling to restore or part with it.
It is rather more biting than Austen. The Schlegels like to see themselves as independent and progressive women. The Wilcoxes are, if not nouveau riche, evidently self-made and pragmatic businesspeople, and are unconcerned who suffers as a result of their actions.
It is not that the plot is complicated: rather, it is that threads of events unwind in unexpected ways, and with coincidences and consequences.
It is many years since I saw the film, long enough to have forgotten most of the story. What I do remember is the concert playing Beethoven's Fifth at the Queen's Hall. The Aurora Orchestra's recent Proms concert nudged me to take this book from the to-read list.
It's like Jane Austen: it's about two unmarried sisters, the things they have in common and the characteristics in which they diverge.
It's like Dickens: there's a lot of social commentary. Those who are at the top can do mostly as they please, but not without limit. The thing that worries them most is their reputation, on which their social position depends. Those who are already low are dragged lower, in this case by interference from well-meaning and better-off types. There is to be no levelling-up.
It's about London, and England, and the changes in the first years of the twentieth century. The Schlegels' house in Wickham Place is to be demolished to make way for blocks of flats. Howards End is a decaying house in the country, its owners apparently indifferent to its fate but unwilling to restore or part with it.
It is rather more biting than Austen. The Schlegels like to see themselves as independent and progressive women. The Wilcoxes are, if not nouveau riche, evidently self-made and pragmatic businesspeople, and are unconcerned who suffers as a result of their actions.
It is not that the plot is complicated: rather, it is that threads of events unwind in unexpected ways, and with coincidences and consequences.
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Date: 2022-08-14 06:26 pm (UTC)