A different kind of

Howard's End portrays a truly wonderful juxtaposition of the personalities of two sisters, Margaret and Helen. Although equally compassionate and outraged at the plight of the poor, Margaret is the more socially pragmatic (and forgiving) of the two. In marrying Henry Wilcox, she strives mightily to wed bookish ideas with real life, rescue the sisters' protegee, Leonard Bast, and at the same time fulfill her own ambition to gain Howard's End for herself. Helen, however, after experiencing first hand Henry Wilcox's cavalier advice giving, offered up as authoritative, and then blithe, mocking retreat in the face of calamity, has given up on any "connection" between ideas and reality, retreating into what is at first thought by her relatives to be madness. Instead, she literally becomes the "connection" herself after conceiving Leonard Bast's child. The final "connection" comes with a crash landing, however, when Leonard Bast, cruelly executed by Henry Wilcox's son, Charles, as an act of social revenge, ironically falls to his death under an enormous pile of books, leaving both families irretrievably fragmented. Margaret must now take sides. This work contains an ingenious look at the nature of hypocrisy contained within (and played off against) the ubiquitous instinct for survival and social gratification in the lives of two families.