Howards End

“Margaret, if I may interfere, don’t be taken by surprise. What do you think of the Wilcoxes? Are they our sort? […] Do they care about Literature and Art?”

Aunt Juley’s question to Margaret establishes the juxtaposition, sustained for the rest of the novel, between the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes. Her question presupposes that the Wilcoxes must be just like the Schlegels for the match between Helen and Paul to work, and the question posed to Margaret, who marries Mr. Wilcox, is one she considers for the rest of the novel.

“She approached just as Helen’s letter had described her, trailing noiselessly over the lawn, and there was actually a wisp of hay in her hands. She seemed to belong not to the young people and their motor, but to the house, and to the tree that overshadowed it. One knew that she worshipped the past, and that the instinctive wisdom the past can alone bestow had descended upon her.”

This passage describes the entrance of Mrs. Wilcox when she comes to break up the argument over Helen and Paul’s affair. In contrast to the car, representative of technological progress, movement, and the overtaking of the old by the new, Mrs. Wilcox is associated with the house and with the nature surrounding it. Mrs. Wilcox is also presented as a spectral figure, “trailing noiselessly” while the others are arguing.

“The truth is that there is a great outer life that you and I have never touched—a life in which telegrams and anger count. Personal relations, that we think supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marriage, settlements, death, death duties. So far I’m clear. But here is my difficulty. This outer life, though obviously horrid, often seems the real one—there’s grit in it. It does breed character. Do personal relations lead to sloppiness in the end?”

This passage indicates Margaret’s openness to what the Wilcoxes represent. She perceives a lack in the Schlegels way of life: their care for art, for ideas, and for personal relations. She thinks that the Schlegels are too ready to dismiss as vulgar the petty everyday realities in which the Wilcoxes deal, and she begins to see that dealing in these realities bestows its own positive character qualities and constitutes a necessary part of society.