Even the best available online resources include only a fraction of the existing works. Their number and variety, however, are difficult to embrace as up to now there has been no single comprehensive source which would include if not all (as this seems hardly possible), then at least a majority of them. There were 68 publications in 2020 alone, with at least 59 more already appearing in 2021. Forster studies are a remarkably vibrant field of literary studies with dozens of books, papers, and articles published every year. 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.Į.
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 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. 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.
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