In what ways and to what effect does E. M. Forster explore the theme of class disparity within Howards End?

Upon the publication of Howards End in 1910, it was received with not only widespread acclaim, but a universal opinion that the complexity and vast social sweep of issues it dealt with constituted Forster’s most successful and brilliant novel yet. Howards End has since been heartily accepted into the canon not only because of its depth, but because of the insight it provides into Edwardian England. From this evocative depiction of an era, a clear societal concern emerges among a diverse spectrum of themes explored: the disparity between divergent hierarchical levels of the social class. Throughout the novel, the narrator and the majority of the characters alternate between the support and disapproval of the lower class, epitomized by the characters Leonard and Jacky Bast. Despite this oscillation between the two standpoints, the novel’s culmination reveals Forster’s ultimate affinity for the lower class of the novel, as the diametric character, Henry Wilcox, is defamed and quashed.