Lionel Trilling famously wrote that E.M. Forester was “the only living novelist who can be read again and again” and “who, after each reading,” gives us “the sensation of having learned something.” He also wrote that “Howards End is undoubtedly Forster’s masterpiece.” Agreed!

Rereading the novel after 50 years I was also struck by how many of its themes resonate with issues today—from how to deal with income inequality to Brexit—and how that might be a good “hook” for teaching the novel in high school and college classrooms and for recommending it to the general public. Better still, the social and economic issues raised by the novel are presented in a non-dogmatic way, in their full complexity. I was reminded of Wayne Booth’s understanding of the ethical novel (in The Company We Keep, An Ethics of Fiction) as one that engages the reader in thinking about ethical issues, not as one that champions a certain viewpoint. Some specifics:

Class differences in Edwardian England are a principal preoccupation of the novel. There are the Schlegels—Margaret, Helen, and Tibby—not rich but with enough inherited money to live comfortably in London and devote themselves to the pursuit of Literature and Art and after-dinner discussion clubs at which social issues—e.g., how to raise up the poor—are debated. The Wilcoxes, whom the Schlegels met while vacationing in Germany, are business people, Mr. Henry Wilcox having made his fortune at the head of the Imperial and West African Rubber Company. He sees life steadily, if not whole, to paraphrase one of the motifs that run through the novel. (However, his wife, Ruth Wilcox, legatee of Howards End, belongs to the world of an older, rural England where traditions, the land, and family heritage are supreme. ‘England is unique,’ different from the Continent, Margaret concedes in conversation with Ruth, a view that many a Brexiteer would agree with today.) Then there is Leonard Bast, the unfortunate clerk at the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company, who aspires to Culture—Beethoven, Ruskin—and is adopted as a “cause” by the Schlegel sisters after they meet him at a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth. All represent different and distinct gradations of the middle class.

Early on in the novel, after the sisters’ second encounter with Leonard Bast, Margaret and Helen attend a dinner party followed by a discussion of a topical social issue. The subject posed by one of the attendees, all of whom appear to have independent incomes, is ‘How ought I to dispose of my money’ when I die? And because the Schlegels have talked about the plight of Leonard Bast all through the meal, the question becomes, How might my accumulated wealth be used to profit the likes of Mr. Bast? Answers range from Keep the money in the family—he can go to the National Gallery for free, to Give him a third-class return ticket to Venice and other things but no money that he might misspend, to Give ‘as many poor men as you can three hundred a year each.’ (Doesn’t the last sound a lot like Andrew Yang’s Universal Basic Income? Forster was likely thinking of the debates of the Fabian Society [founded 1884 with G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb among its more famous members], forerunner of today’s Progressive movement.)

Unfortunately, while strolling on Chelsea Embankment after dinner, Margaret and Helen encounter Mr. Wilcox. In the course of their conversation, insider Henry passes on a tip that the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company is about to go under and that they ought to warn their friend to seek employment elsewhere. This is the beginning of the tragedy of Leonard because the sisters—with the best of intentions—warn him and he takes steps that lead to his and his wife Jacky’s financial ruination.

The brilliance of this novel, in fact, owes much to the presence of Leonard Bast as a kind of “testbed” for various characters’ ideas about “social justice.” At one point Forster allows Margaret, clearly the hero of the novel, to become insufferably patronizing on the subject of Leonard’s disadvantages and the need for enlightened people like herself to rescue him: ‘His brain is filled with the husks of books, culture—horrible; we want to wash out his brain and go to the real thing. We want to show him how he may get upsides with life.’ Henry responds with comments that seem eminently sensible: ‘This bounder has a life of his own. What right have you to conclude it is an unsuccessful life . . . ? You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests—wife, children, snug little home.’ We know that all is not happy in the Bast home; however, even Margaret concedes that Henry has a point, that practical men like himself are ‘more tolerant than you intellectuals.’ More generally, she appreciates Henry’s virtues—enough to marry him—while being clear-eyed about their differences and what she terms his “obtuseness,” whereas for Helen, the Romantic, Henry epitomizes the outer world of “telegrams and anger” and is beyond redemption.

Forster allows the debate about justice for the poor to unfold in the remainder of the novel, but he does not take sides. By the close of the novel we—and Margaret, who does emerge as the true spiritual heir of Ruth Wilcox—realize that both she and Helen, in treating Leonard as a cause, and Henry, in his moral obtuseness and inability to make connections, are equally responsible for Leonard’s demise.

Along with its weighty ethical concerns, Howards End is simply a fantastic read. Forster’s third-person narrator dips in and out of different characters’ consciousness (using the technique of “free indirect discourse” apparently invented by Jane Austen), occasionally jumps ahead to the future, and from time to time addresses us directly, in the manner of Anthony Trollope rather than Henry James. All of this adds to a slightly “old-fashioned” style that fits perfectly with the novel’s subject matter and themes. The plot advances with unexpected twists and surprises, often occurring at the ends or beginnings of chapters, and the whole is woven together with repeated phrases, similar to musical motifs—“Only connect,” “To see life steadily and to see it whole,” the “outer life of telegrams and anger.” I can think of only a few other writers who can capture so well as Forster an awkward moment in human relations, such as when Helen finds Leonard Bast’s umbrella and proclaims, “It’s an appalling umbrella. It must be mine,” or when Margaret writes her “discourteous” letter to Mrs. Wilcox announcing that, because of Helen and Paul’s “history”--any acquaintance between the families should end only to hear from Mrs. Wilcox that she had dropped by simply to say Paul had gone abroad. “Margaret’s cheeks burnt.”

What I remembered best from reading the novel many years ago was the scene near the end of the novel when Margaret and Helen visit Howards End together and discover that Miss Avery has unpacked their belongings that had only been sent to the house for temporary storage. “The furniture fitted extraordinarily well.” They enter the dining room where their rug has been laid and Helen remarks, ‘Look where Tibby spilt the soup.’ Funny what one remembers!