Howards End

Howards End is the ancestral home of Mrs. Wilcox. In the novel it symbolizes the virtuous simplicity of the countryside and permanence in contrast to London, which is always changing and expanding, both upward and outward.

Howards End is where the novel opens when Helen writes to Margaret about her stay there and her love for Paul Wilcox, and it is also where the novel closes; Margaret lives there with Mr. Wilcox, Helen, and Helen’s baby. Mrs. Wilcox, who has a very strong attachment to Howards End, leaves it to Margaret in her will, and Margaret does not find this out until the end of the novel, after Mr. Wilcox has left it to her in his will. After Margaret’s death, it is to pass to Helen’s son with the dead Leonard Bast. The fact that it frames the novel and is passed between characters emphasizes its permanence.

Miss Avery, in a remark that Margaret takes for a kind of prophetic statement, says that she is going to live at Howards End, after Miss Avery has unpacked her furniture and set it up there. In this way, Howards End becomes the Schlegels’ new home before they move in.