SOURCE: Daleski, H. M. “Howards End: Goblins and Rainbows.” In Unities: Studies in the English Novel, pp. 111-25. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1985.

In the following essay, Daleski examines personal fragmentation in Howards End.

About midway through Howards End—in a passage that is right at its center—the novelist describes a pervading condition of personal fragmentation:

Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born …

It did not seem so difficult [i.e., for Margaret to help Mr. Wilcox]. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only...