SOURCE: Born, Daniel. “Private Garden, Public Swamps: Howards End and the Revaluation of Liberal Guilt.” In The Birth of Liberal Guilt in the English Novel, Charles Dickens to H. G. Wells, pp. 120-39. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Born considers Howards End “the most comprehensive picture of liberal guilt in this century.”

“I know that personal relations are the real life, for ever and ever.”

—Helen Schlegel, in Howards End

“We merely want a small house with large rooms, and plenty of them.”

—Margaret Schlegel, in Howards End

“Reality” and “realty” derive from the same root word, so it is not too surprising that the Schlegel sisters' premium on personal relationships, the “real life” named by Helen, reveals itself to be equally preoccupied with the business of real estate. Of what, after all, does the “real life” consist? Friendships or property?

The...