How Howards End drew on Pride and Prejudice
A documented line of influence: E.M. Forster demonstrably engaged Jane Austen’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813
RomanticismThe influenced
Howards End
E.M. Forster · 1910
ModernRelevance
5/10
On Howards End’s page
- Howards End descends from Austen's novel of manners — the genre Forster updates here. He used the free indirect discourse and the ironic, norm-setting narrator he openly admired in Austen to expose the gap between his characters' self-image and their conduct.
- Critics call Forster the truest claimant to be Austen's spiritual heir; the contrasted-sisters pairing at the novel's moral center belongs to the Austen tradition this book carries forward.
On Pride and Prejudice’s page
- Forster was a self-declared Janeite ('I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen') who named Austen among his primary influences and praised her throughout his Cambridge lectures.
- Her craft is on Howards End: the free indirect discourse he openly admired in Austen, and the ironic narrator who measures characters against a social norm — the comedy-of-manners apparatus Austen perfected in this novel.