Journal of Modernism and Postmodernism Studies

Yazarlar: SEÇİL ERKOÇ

Konular:-

DOI:10.47333/modernizm.2021171846

Anahtar Kelimeler:E. M. Forster,Howards End,Reconciliation,Opposite Ends,Social Class,Cultural Inheritance

Özet: The twentieth century marks the beginning of a new period in England during which the norms and the traditions pertaining to the Victorian age start to be questioned. While the echoes of this change have been audible from the 1890s onwards, they reach their climax with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 because it announces not only the physical death of the Queen but also the symbolic death of the Victorian mindset. With the reign of King Edward VII, therefore, the literary texts of the period illustrate a liberal outlook that questions the outdated ideals of the previous era. Within this context, this article examines E. M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) by foregrounding and analysing the clash between the ideals of the past and those of the present, which in the wider perspective demonstrates Forster’s modernist agenda to go beyond the strict dualities and to introduce a totally fresh synthesis. Epitomising the cultural inheritance of the country, Howards End is more than a house; it represents the future of England. Thus, it is important that Howards End should function as a unifying force that will bring these opposite ends together – as represented through different socio-economic classes embodied through three families whose lives get connected to one another at the end of the novel. Thereby, Forster aptly weaves the stories of the Schlegels, the Wilcoxes, and the Bast family by counterbalancing the intellectual and the material; the spiritual and the physical; the feminine and the masculine; the past and the present, and he presents a modern synthesis that, he believes, will shape England in the future.

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