Would you agree that although E.M Forster’s novel Howard’s End is not, in any obvious sense a ‘modernist’ novel, it is certainly a novel fundamentally concerned with ‘modernity’?

Although it is not regarded as a complete modernist novel, it is clear that Forster in Howard’s End integrates obvious modernist subject matter. The novel seems to be a dichotomy between Victorian form and modernist content, as Forster employs an obtrusive narrative, a technique far more widespread in Victorian literature, to portray often snobbish and classist sentiments. The focal point of the manor house, Howard’s End, reinforces these conventional Victorian undertones. However, throughout the novel Forster incorporates modernist allusions to new modes of transport and new ways of thinking, through the representation of the Wilcoxes and the Schlegels respectively. The novel, one that is “composed of contraries”, seems to be at “cross-purposes” with itself, at once hailing back to Victorian attitudes and in particular a reminiscence to rural England whilst maintaining a current of modernist symbolism and thought. This at times seems cautious and uneasy as urbanisation and the city of London encroaches on the countryside and indeed Howard’s End itself.The obtrusive narrative in Howard’s End is a stylistic approach used extensively in Victorian literature. However, this Victorian style is coupled with modernist sentiments and ideas. There is an obvious disgust of modernist capitalism that filters through the narrative voice. The narrator seems to feel that humanism is being expended at the cost of capitalism as he states despondently that “man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself”. Forster utilises this narrative intrusion to seemingly remind the reader of his own tendencies. The narrator informs us that King’s Cross’s “situation – withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St Pancras – implied a comment on the materialism of life”. Here Forster’s narrative voice seems to intrude as the narrator states: “if you think this ridiculous, remember that it is not Margaret who is telling you about it”. As David Bradshaw reminds us, “obtrusive narrators are more or less absent from modernist literature” and it would seem that Forster is employing this Victorian style of writing to highlight the issues that he has with modernity and in particular capitalism.