Skip to main content

Mobility, Attentiveness and Sympathy in E. M. Forster’s Howards End

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Mobilities, Literature, Culture

Part of the book series: Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture ((SMLC))

  • 490 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter argues that E. M. Forster’s Howards End shows how attentiveness, compassion and sympathy are human values that are grounded in, and developed through, people’s everyday encounters with the world. The depiction of speed, slowness, and autonomous mobility reveals that although fast-accelerated mobilities may increase human detachment and apathy to the world outside the vehicle, they encourage other forms of micro-mobilities and embodied interactions to be acknowledged and appreciated. By reading Howards End in relation to other Forsterian texts, I argue that the careful depiction of different types of embodied mobilities shows the extent to which the relationship between humans and the outside world is analogous to people’s personal relations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adey, Peter. 2010. Mobility. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adey, Peter, David Bissell, Kevin Hannam, Peter Merriman, Mimi Sheller, eds. 2014. The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, Tim. 1998. Modernism, Technology and the Body: A Cultural Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudrillard, Jean. 2010 [1986]. America. Translated by C. Turner. London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergson, Henry. 1911. Creative Evolution. New York: H. Holt and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bissell, David. 2009. “Visualising Everyday Geographies: Practices of Vision Through Travel Time.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (1): 42–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradshaw, David, ed. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnett, John. 2004. England Eats Out: A Social History of Eating Out in England from 1830 to the Present. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cavaliero, Glen. 1986. A Reading of E. M. Forster. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crary, Jonathan. 1999. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cresswell, Tim. 2015. Place: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danius, Sara. 2002. The Senses of Modernism: Technology, Perception, and Aesthetics. New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finch, Jason. 2011. E. M. Forster and English Place: A Literary Topography. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forster, E. M. 1954. “The Machine Stops.” In E. M. Forster: Collected Short Stories, 109–146. London: Penguin Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forster, E. M. 1972. “What I Believe.” In Two Cheers for Democracy, 65–73. London: Edward Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forster, E. M. 2005. Maurice. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forster, E. M. 2006. The Longest Journey. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forster, E. M. 2012. Howards End. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garrington, Abbie. 2013. Haptic Modernism: Touch and the Tactile in Modernist Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gros, Frederic. 2014. A Philosophy of Walking. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jameson, Fredric. 1990. “Modernism and Imperialism.” In Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature, edited by Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward W. Said, 43–66. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kern, Stephen. 1983. The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laurier, Eric, Hayden Lorimer, Barry Brown, Owain Jones, Oskar Juhlin, Allyson Noble, Mark Perry, Daniele Pica, Philippe Sormani, and Ignaz Strebel, et al. 2008. “Driving and ‘Passengering’: Notes on the Ordinary Organisation of Car Travel.” Mobilities 3 (1): 1–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. “Eye and Mind.” In The Primacy of Perception, translated by Carleton Dallery, 159–192. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merriman, Peter. 2012. Mobility, Space, and Culture. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Merriman, Peter, and Lynne Pearce. 2017. “Mobility and the Humanities.” Mobilities 12 (4): 493–508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Neill, Morna, and Michael Hatt. 2010. The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design, and Performance in Britain, 1901–1910. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Page, Malcolm. 1993. An Introduction of the Variety of Criticism: Howards End. Houndmills: The Macmillan Press LTD.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearce, Lynne. 2016. Drivetime: Literary Excursions in Automotive Consciousness. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popan, Ioan-Cosmin. 2018. “Utopias of Slow Cycling. Imagining a Bicycle System.” PhD diss., Lancaster University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Royle, Nicholas. 1999. E. M. Forster. London: Northcote House Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seltzer, Mark. 1992. Bodies and Machines. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Wilfred. 1966. The Cave and the Mountain: A Study in E. M. Forster. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tambling, Jeremy, ed. 1995. E. M. Forster: Contemporary Critical Essays. London: Macmillan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thacker, Andrew. 2000. “E. M. Forster and the Motorcar.” Literature and History 9 (1): 16–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trilling, Lionel. 1964. E. M. Forster. New York: New Directions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vannini, Philip. 2014. “Slowness and Deceleration.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, edited by Adey et al., 116–124. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Virilio, Paul. 2008 [1984]. Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy. London and New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Dakkak, N. (2019). Mobility, Attentiveness and Sympathy in E. M. Forster’s Howards End. In: Aguiar, M., Mathieson, C., Pearce, L. (eds) Mobilities, Literature, Culture. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27072-8_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics