Class and Art in E. M. Forster’s Howards End

Year 2018, , 229 - 245, 19.10.2018

Hatice Yurttaş

https://doi.org/10.30767/diledeara.472610

Abstract

Howards End presents a world in flux and mobility in the advent of modernism where art and literature are tested for their ability to save the individual in the context of a quest for an English house, Howards End, which on a symbolic level represents not only the English but all humanity. Forster shows the world of literature and art in a very pessimistic and critical way with an emphasis on the lower-class’ futile striving for art and culture and on the over determination of class differences even for a cultivated upper-class individual with socialist aspirations. The destruction of the lower class, represented by Leonard, by the two upper-class families, the Schlegels, representing the German idealism and the Wilcoxes, the brutal capitalists, shows that appreciation of art does not make the refined mind immune to sharing a common ground with the philistine upper-class. Forster suggests that literature does not have the power to change the society, and that class and gender hierarchy cannot be overcome by literature or art.

Keywords

feminism, German idealism

References

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