Connection
The central theme of Howards End is connection—linking private and public lives, connecting individuals—and the challenges in forming and maintaining these connections. The novel centers on two families: the Schlegels, who embody intellectualism, imagination, and idealism—the inner workings of the mind—and the Wilcoxes, who symbolize English practicality, expansionism, commercialism, and the external world of business and politics. For the Schlegels, personal relationships take precedence over public ones, and the individual is more significant than any organization. Conversely, for the Wilcoxes, social formalities and business rules are paramount.

The marriage of Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox bridges these two contrasting worlds. Unlike her extremely idealistic sister Helen, Margaret comes to understand the Wilcoxes. Helen's first interaction with the Wilcoxes ends disastrously, but Margaret realizes that many of the values she cherishes, such as art and culture, rely on the economic and social stability provided by people like the Wilcoxes. "More and more," she observes, "do I refuse to draw my income and sneer at those who guarantee it."

However, Margaret and Henry's marriage almost collapses when Henry fails to connect his own sexual indiscretion with Jacky Bast to Helen's affair with Leonard Bast. Margaret and Helen wish to spend the night at Howards End before Helen returns to Germany to have her baby. Yet, the hypocritical Henry cannot accept the presence of a "fallen woman" on his property and denies them permission to stay. As critic Malcolm Bradbury notes, Margaret upholds the "primacy of the standard of personal sympathy," whereas Henry emphasizes "the standard of social propriety." Defying Henry, Margaret and Helen stay the night at Howards End, rekindling their bond. By the novel's conclusion, circumstances compel Henry to reassess his values. He reconciles with Helen, and together with Margaret and Helen's illegitimate son, they make a home at Howards End under Margaret's care.

Class Conflict
Another significant theme in Howards End is the struggle and conflict within the middle class. The aristocracy and the very poor are absent from this novel; the author explicitly states, "[w]e are not concerned with the very poor," but rather with "gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk." The three families in Howards End each represent different strata of the middle class. The Schlegels occupy the middle ground, situated between the Basts, who are on the lower fringes of the middle class, and the Wilcoxes, who belong to the upper-middle class. Leonard Bast, the clerk, lives near the "abyss" of poverty, while the Schlegels live comfortably on inherited wealth, and Henry Wilcox, a prosperous businessman, continually accumulates wealth, affording "motors" and country houses.

Leonard Bast is deeply concerned with class distinctions and strives to elevate himself by becoming "cultured." He reads works like Ruskin's Stones of Venice and attends musical performances. At a concert featuring Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, he encounters the Schlegel sisters and becomes intrigued by them, largely because they appear to respect his intellectual goals. The Schlegels, equally fascinated by Leonard and his circumstances, ultimately find their connection to him to be disastrous. When Margaret and Helen learn from Mr. Wilcox that Leonard's employer is on the brink of bankruptcy, they advise him to seek new employment. Although the information turns out to be incorrect, Leonard acts on it, securing and then losing another job, which leaves him and his wife Jacky nearly destitute. In a dramatic scene where Leonard, Jacky, and Helen disrupt Evie's lavish wedding, Forster vividly portrays the vast social and economic divide between the impoverished Basts and the affluent Wilcoxes. As critic Frederick P. W. McDowell notes, this scene "suggests that the...