The Advance Beyond Daintiness: Voice and Myth in Howards End

Abstract

Behind the rather cozy domesticity of Howards End lies a full-scale attempt on Forster’s part to create an English myth. His preoccupation with this idea is evident when the narrative voice muses:

Why has not England a great mythology? Our folklore has never advanced beyond daintiness, and greater melodies about our countryside have all issued through the pipes of Greece. Deep and true as the native imagination can be, it seems to have failed there. It has stopped with the witches and fairies. It cannot vivify one fraction of a summer field or give names to half a dozen stars. England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature — for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.¹