SOURCE: Hall, James. “Family Reunions: E. M. Forster.” In The Tragic Comedians: Seven Modern British Novelists, pp. 11-30. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.

In the following essay, Hall argues that Forster presents a conservative view of family dynamics in Howards End.

The breakup and continuance of the family are such consistent themes in E. M. Forster's novels that every reader must understand them in a way. But, asked anything specific about them, he is unlikely to understand much more than that they exist, and even less likely to understand their relation to other themes to which critics have given a more prominent place. So my turning Eliot's title to Forster's feeling for family continuity does not mean to be whimsical but to focus an apparent paradox. Most critics of Forster have made much of his liberalism. But, unlike Eliot, the avowed conservative, who in his plays distrusts a return...