'In Howards End, Forster is very much on the side of women, and unfair to male characters' - Do you agree?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Joe Levy

English Homework

'In Howards End, Forster is very much on the side of women, and unfair to male characters' - Do you agree?

Edward Morgan Forster was born in 1879 in London. His father died before he was born and subsequently it was women who brought him up, his mother and great-aunt Marianne Thornton. Foster spent his childhood largely in the female company and in their sheltering presence, who no doubt gave him knowledge of how women were perceived and where their role was in the society. It was his aunt who left Forster a legacy of eight thousand pounds, a considerable sum in those days when remembering that Margaret Schlegel lives very well on six hundred a year. The inheritance from his aunt enabled him to write in independence and security. It is therefore unsurprising that Forster held a high opinion of women, and being brought up by them, not surprising that he would take 'their side'. Forster exposes the constructed nature of gender and his own ambivalent relationship to traits coded 'masculine' and 'feminine' in his culture. However, there is substantial evidence to suggest that Forster was deeply troubled and preoccupied by