A Clue in Howards End?

hpfan_mom rdsilverstein at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 18 04:05:16 UTC 2007


No: HPFGUIDX 172064

Joined the library reading club this summer to kill time while 
waiting for July 21.  Came across this passage from Chapter 2 of 
Howards End, by E.M. Forster:
_____
"Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had 
strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our 
gates to the glorious and the unknown. . . .

To Margaret--I hope that it will not set the reader against her--the 
station of King's Cross had always suggested Infinity. Its very 
situation--withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St. 
Pancras--implied a comment on the materialism of life. Those two 
great arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an 
unlovely clock, were fit portals for some eternal adventure, whose 
issue might be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed in 
the ordinary language of prosperity."
_____
When Harry stepped through those arches for the first time, was that 
a foreshadowing of his journey into Infinity through a different 
archway, one with a veil?  Boy, I hope not.  I just cannot see him 
dying at the end.

My guess - Harry's adventure will be prosperous, he will succeed.  
But the results of his "eternal adventure" will "not be expressed in 
the ordinary language of prosperity," which I take to mean a life 
full of material wealth.  Instead, his prosperity will be expressed 
in love, which was missing from his life before he stepped through 
those arches.

hpfan_mom, really really hoping that the last chapter is not 
titled "The Man Who Died."

P.S. Many thanks to the poster who, several months ago, admitted 
reading the chapter titles to HBP before reading the text and upon 
seeing "The White Tomb" figured out that DD died.  I will not even 
glance at the chapter titles until I turn the page to start that 
chapter!





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