Reflections on Howards End

I just finished watching this. It’s one of my favorites. (Of course I have many favorites.) Those who haven’t read the book or seen the film may not realize that Howards End is a house, and the story pivots on who will inherit this old country house. What Forster, the author of the novel, was really asking was who will inherit England. In his story the answer is the illegitimate son of Helen, a woman who comes from the landed gentry but has lost her home, and Lenard, a man who comes from peasant stock--farmers who used to work for the gentry. Lenard has been swept up in the industrial age. He tries unsuccessfully to rise above his station by becoming a bank clerk in the city. Modernity kills Lenard. He is simply not strong enough to endure the bare-knuckled capitalist system of Edwardian England. But Helen, with her education and modest but secure income, perseveres, and we are lead to believe that their son will lead an idyllic life at Howards End.

Interestingly, Chekhov asks a similar question in The Cherry Orchard, but Chekhov’s answer is a little harder to stomach than Forster’s. In Chekhov’s play, the cherry orchard is acquired by industrialists who immediately destroy it for a quick and fleeting profit without regard to future generations.

Both stories seem particularly relevant to the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Forster wanted to believe that perhaps some universally beneficial compromise could be reached. Chekhov was sure we were headed toward disaster.

Maybe both men were right in a way. Although England has had serious trouble in the last 100 years, it has prospered, and a large percentage of its citizens have managed to lead decent lives. Russia, on the other hand, was a basket case. But the problems the two stories examines are still with us, and the ultimate answers to the questions posed remain elusive. Who will inherit? Who will be left out in the cold? Can we manage to create a fair and equitable system? Or will the majority live under the thumb of an overprivileged minority, as has been the case for much of human history? Was the expansive middle class that had some measure of wealth, education, and political power a mere anomaly of the modern age, one that will quickly fade into the past?

The above clip is the opening sequence. I love how the film starts on an extremely dramatic note, but then drifts into something quiter and more lyrical. The opening serves the film well. On the surface, the film is about the lives of several families that cross and interconnect, but underneath something very profound is taking place that has consequences for an entire civilization.