Howards End

Helen is the younger sister of Margaret. She is idealistic, compassionate, and impetuous. The novel opens with her brief infatuation with Paul Wilcox at Howards End, and her affair with Leonard Bast brings the action of the novel to its climax and semi-tragic conclusion.

Helen has a very close relationship with her sister Margaret, which is strained by Margaret’s relationship with Mr. Wilcox. After her brief romance with Paul and her short stay with the Wilcox family at Howards End to start the novel, Helen’s attitude toward the Wilcoxes changes. When she notices that Paul is afraid and embarrassed in the company of his family the morning after she and Paul declared their love for each other, Helen begins to think of the Wilcoxes as callous and hypocritical. Her antipathy toward the Wilcoxes, and Mr. Wilcox in particular, is made stronger when Mr. Wilcox is dismissive of his role in Leonard’s misfortunes, after he provides bad advice to the sisters which they pass on to Leonard.

Helen’s feelings of compassion and her idealism lead her to try to save Leonard and his wife, Jacky. After Leonard loses his job, she brings them to Evie’s wedding and confronts Margaret, with the intention of making Mr. Wilcox take some responsibility for them. Nevertheless, Forster also suggests that Helen is condescending and naïve about The Difficulty of Overcoming Class Divisions. Her wealth makes her callous about money, and she steals Leonard’s umbrella (leading to his distress), forgets to pay for their hotel (leading to him pawning jewelry), and prompts him to quit his job (leading to his eviction and downfall). The novel is hence ambivalent about Helen’s attempts to help Leonard: Her naivete makes his life worse, but her love and sympathy are meaningful and usher in a new generation.

Again carried away by a momentary passion, Helen sleeps with Leonard, and after becoming pregnant, she decides to move to Germany. Several months pass before the sisters see each other again, and Margaret and others begin to speculate that Helen is having a mental health crisis. Margaret thinks that her hatred for Mr. Wilcox is to blame. It is only after Charles Wilcox inadvertently kills Leonard that Mr. Wilcox comes to accept Helen. The novel concludes with the two antagonistic personalities—Mr. Wilcox and Helen—living in harmony together with Margaret at Howards End.

Mr. Wilcox is the patriarch of the Wilcox family. He is a rich businessman, in charge of a rubber company with dealings in British colonies in Africa, which implicitly conveys that he is willing to exploit people for money. He is strict with his children, confident, and quick to action, although he is emotionally callous and at times hypocritical.

While Margaret admires Mr. Wilcox for his self-confidence, optimism, practical attitude, and enterprising spirit, she views his closed-mindedness and lack of compassion as faults. She plans to repair these faults by overlooking them and showing Mr. Wilcox love, rather than confronting him with them. Mr. Wilcox refuses to take any responsibility or show any sympathy for Leonard after his bad advice leads to Leonard’s impoverishment, and he quickly resumes his usual arrogant manner after Margaret forgives him for his past affair with Jacky. His character is therefore mostly static until the end of the novel.

This affair, which happened before the events of the novel when Mr. Wilcox was in Cyprus on business and married to Mrs. Wilcox, is brought up later on by Margaret when Mr. Wilcox refuses to forgive Helen for her affair with Leonard. While able to quickly forget about his own culpability, he nevertheless rushes to judge another person. Forster therefore constructs him as antagonistic to the novel’s case for The Need for Love, Sympathy, and Connection.

His antagonism to this case alters at the end of the novel. His son’s conviction for manslaughter breaks Mr. Wilcox. He no longer appears like the arrogant and authoritative figure he is for much of the novel. Instead, he appears happier and more compassionate as he greets Helen and her baby in the closing scene of the novel. His agreement to allow Howards End to pass to Helen and Leonard’s baby, and his happiness to have them live with him, demonstrates his transformation at the end of the novel.

Mrs. Wilcox is presented as preternaturally, instinctively wise. She is not especially eloquent or knowledgeable about the world, as she often comments that Margaret is much better at expressing ideas. Instead, she has a grasp of people’s characters, and she knows how to resolve issues between people. For instance, after she sees a conflict break out at the beginning of the novel when Charles finds out about Helen and Paul’s engagement, she quickly disperses everybody and calms Charles down.

Mrs. Wilcox is also deeply mysterious and has a mystical connection with Howards End. She does not inform anybody of her illness and she abruptly dies relatively early on in the novel, but she remains a continual point of reference for Margaret. Margaret comes to view her as something like a deity who orchestrates events even beyond the grave. Margaret declares at one point, “She knows everything. She is everything. She is the house” (285). Her view of Mrs. Wilcox as omniscient constructs Mrs. Wilcox as adjacent to the novel’s narrator, emphasizing her role in shaping the narrative of the characters. Margaret has the sense that Mrs. Wilcox watches events unfold, including her own relationship with Mr. Wilcox, without any bitterness.

The final scene, in which Margaret learns that Mrs. Wilcox meant to leave Howards End to her, confirms Mrs. Wilcox’s role as an all-knowing orchestrator of events since Margaret is finally given Howards End. Margaret herself becomes the new Mrs. Wilcox, not only through her marriage to Mr. Wilcox but also by bringing everybody to Howards End and learning how to manage people.