Howards End - Part 1 of 2 - FULL Audio Book - by E. M. Forster

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• published: 18 Jan 2013
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Howards End - Part 1 of 2 - FULL Audio Book - by E. M. Forster Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, which tells a story of social and familial relations in turn-of-the-century England. Howards End is generally considered to be Forster's masterpiece.[1] In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Howards End 38th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. - PLOT The book is about three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Tibby, and Helen), who have much in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, a struggling couple in the lower-middle class. The Schlegel sisters try to help the poor Basts and try to make the Wilcoxes less prejudiced. The Schlegels frequently encounter the Wilcoxes. The youngest, Helen, is for a short period intensely attracted to the younger Wilcox brother, Paul; each rejects the other for his or her own reasons. The eldest, Margaret, becomes friends with Paul's mother, Ruth Wilcox. Ruth's most prized personal possession is her family house at Howards End. She wishes that Margaret could live there, as she feels that it might be in good hands with her. Ruth's own husband and children do not value the house and its rich history, because such abstractions, while being very dear to Margaret, are lost to them. As Ruth is terminally ill, and Margaret and her family are about to be evicted from their London home by a developer, Ruth bequeaths the cottage to Margaret in a handwritten note delivered to her husband from the nursing home where she has died, causing great consternation among the Wilcoxes. Mrs Wilcox's widowed husband, Henry, and his children burn the note without telling Margaret about her inheritance. However, over the course of several years, Margaret becomes friends with Henry Wilcox and eventually marries him. The more free-spirited Margaret tries to get Henry to open up more, to little effect. Henry's elder son Charles and his wife try to keep Margaret from taking possession of Howards End. Gradually, Margaret becomes aware of Henry's dismissive attitude towards the lower classes. On Henry's advice, Helen tells Leonard Bast to quit his respectable job as a clerk at an insurance company, because the company stands outside a protective group of companies and thus is vulnerable to failure. A few weeks later, Henry carelessly reverses his opinion, having entirely forgotten about Bast, but it is too late, and Bast has lost his tenuous hold on financial solvency. Bast lives with a troubled, "fallen" woman for whom he feels responsible and whom he eventually marries. Helen continues to try to help young Leonard Bast (perhaps in part out of guilt about having intervened in his life to begin with, as Leonard had not wanted it and Henry had explicitly stated beforehand that he advised no one) but it all goes terribly wrong; because of Bast's wife's adulterous connection with Henry, Henry will not countenance helping them. It is later revealed that ten years previously, as a young woman, she had been Henry's mistress in Cyprus, but he had then carelessly abandoned her, an expatriate English girl on foreign soil with no way to return home. Margaret confronts Henry about his ill-treatment, and he is ashamed of the affair but unrepentant about his harsh treatment of her. Because of Margaret's impending marriage into the Wilcoxes and situations such as these, the Schlegel sisters drift apart somewhat. In a moment of pity for the poor, doomed Bast, Helen has an affair with him. Finding herself pregnant, she leaves England to travel through Germany to conceal her condition, but eventually returns to England when she receives news of her Aunt Juley's illness. She refuses a face-to-face meeting with Margaret in an effort to hide her pregnancy but is fooled by Margaret -- acting on the advice of Henry -- into a meeting at Howards End. Henry and Margaret plan an intervention with a doctor, thinking Helen's evasive behavior is a sign of mental illness. When they come upon Helen at Howards End, they also discover the pregnancy... - If you enjoyed listening to "Howards End - Part 1 of 2 - FULL Audio Book - by E. M. Forster" please rate, comment and subscribe to GreenAudioBooks, We really appreciate it :) Thanks for viewing Howards End - Part 1 of 2 - FULL Audio Book - by E. M. Forster