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hayley reed's picture

The end of "Howard's End" and the beginning of "On Beauty"

Yesterday in class Prof Dalke posed the question why Mrs. Wilcox's home is called howard's end. I am not sure I have an answer to her question but, she prompted me to think about the meaning of the words beginning and end. I think the beauty of “Howard’s End” is that as a reader I have the opportunity to read about a complex set of relationships without knowing everything there is to know about every character in the book. The beginning of the story for the reader was not really the beginning of the family’s story but, it was simply when Forster chose to start. Similarly, the end of the novel wasn’t really the end of all of the character’s lives- their stories continued on even when we were denied permission to follow them further. From a biological standpoint, just as evolution didn’t begin with the beginning of “Howard’s End”, evolution didn’t end with the end of “Howard’s End”. In fact, the beauty of evolution is that with every end, there is a beginning. For instance, the beginning of “On Beauty” only came with the end of “Howard’s End”.

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