Howards End
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True to his word, Tibby sends along the money, only to have Leonard send it back.
(Helen, if youre listening, dont do it!
The railway stocks are about to crash in a couple years!)
Hiring and firing domestic staff?
The question of where to live still plagues them.
He doesnt believe shes capable of or entitled to a say.
Helen is still avoiding her family, traveling around the continent and pointedly refusing to see them.
But once she discovers that Aunt Juley is on the mend, Helen again demurs.
Its tempting to call Margarets inability to notice Henrys brutishness and bullying a character flaw.
After all, weve been dazzled by her intelligence and clearheadedness so far.
Because when the stakes are high, Margaret refuses to yield.
The scene at the gate recalls earlier moments of conversational brilliance in the mini-series.
This is not one of those moments for the anger and telegrams she derided inthe first episode.
Helen, she knows, needs love and tenderness.
But he absolutely will not, under any circumstances, allow Helen to sleep at Howards End.
Would it, as Margaret snarkily suggests, depreciate the property?
Well, in a way.
It would depreciate the familys respectability, at least according to Henry.
And Margaret wont stand for it.
Would you forgive her, she asks as you have been forgiven?
You are criminally muddled, she tells him.
In an act of deep deep cowardice, Henry sends Charles over to evict the ladies in the morning.
He heads to the house in Wickham Place, but the Schlegels have decamped.
An intellectual striver who is killed by his long lost, educationally superior lovers books?
Its a bit on the nose, Forster, but nonetheless delightfully dramatic.
But finally, after a death, Henry seems to have tapped into the emotion inside himself.
Henry, who certainly didnt bear the worst of it, is still eternally tired from emotional shock.
Margaret shall have Howards End when he dies, but no money.
But she forgives him even that.
As for Jacky, well … nobody seems to remember her.
Where did she go?
How does she live?Howards Endwraps up far too neatly for us to find out.
But what are we to make of the question at the heart of the story?
Can these two wildly different creatures intertwine their lives?
Forster doesnt provide an answer, and the mini-series thankfully doesnt, either.
After all, there is none.
