E.M.Forster’s Idea Of Nostalgia And Connection In Howards End

E.M.Forster is a great British novelist and during his lifetime, Forster published six novels and two collections of short stories. Forster deals with the political and economic issues and examines human relationship and class difference which were very important in early20th-century British society. In his well-plotted and critical novels, Forster’s humanistic ideas toward understanding of the class difference and sympathy for the poor may be aptly summed up as his idea of connection. In Howards End, E.M.Forster also shows a strong sense of nostalgia. This thesis addresses E.M.Forster’s view of "connection" from the analysis of nostalgia.Howards End, a picture of English middle-class life before World War Ⅰ,deals mainly with the conflicts and final alliance between two families, the Schlegels and the Wilcoxs. This thesis includes five chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces the life of E.M.Forster and his Howard end, and gives a literature review over this novel. The second chapter mainly analyzes Forster’s idea of nostalgia:nostalgia for culture and nostalgia for nature. The use of binary oppositions is also quite abound in E. M. Forster’s works. The conflicts between the cultivated past and the materialistic present are reflected by the conflicts between the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes. Then Forster portrays the conflicts between countryside and the city London, which shows his desire to return to nature. In Chapter three, Forster’s awareness of the inevitable trend of industrialization is revealed. In Howard End, the trend is perceived by two characters-Leeonard Bast and Margaret Schlegel. Through detailed analysis of binary oppositions in these settings and characters, then the core opposition or the theme of the novel is revealed:contradictions between past and the present, which lead to the conflicts between the idea of nostalgia and the awareness of modern industrialization. In Chapter four, Forster states the claim of connection when faced with these conflicts. His idea of connection is achieved by marriages between different classes. In a sense, if people could "only connect", there would be a place for every class in England. Those conflicts then can be solved. Therefore, the idea of nostalgia is the origin or source of the idea of connection. The dynamic process of idea of connection shows Forster’s attempts to live in the industrialized present with his nostalgic idea.