All right, you fans of Tibby (he does look quite cute in those John Lennon glasses), let's get him out of our system!

Henry Wilcox says: "lack of education makes people very casual." That is to say, UNeducated people are indifferent, apathetic, uncaring, flippant. Then, his conviction is that those with education are careful, thorough, concerned. Yet, it seems to me that some of the most careless people in Howards End are those with education...Tibby for one, with his Chinese grammar books.

If we have to place Tibbikins somewhere in the scheme of things: with the Wilcoxes at the far right and Leonard Bast at the far left, where would you place him? Is he more like the Wilcoxes or more like Leonard? Between Tibby and Leonard, who is the more noble?

Oh sorry, did you think we were going to discuss Tibby's smooth skin and floppy hair?

 I don't know about you city-slickers, cosmo-gals, but Howards End has just about decimated any ounce of tolerance I have (or had?) for city life. A couple of weeks ago, I experienced an epiphany of sorts as I was herded across the pedestrian walkway from Wheelock Place towards Wisma Atria: as the mega-mall development (I've since learned its name: ION Orchard) loomed before me, I felt an utter sadness, depression and horror of lostness in our city-state. The once lush-green knoll on that site is now one ugly monster of grey. (I suppose the primest of prime land was too valuable to have foreign workers sitting on it once a week?) I remember as a teenager sitting up high on a similar knoll -- now Takashimaya -- with friends, just hanging out. Lamenting is no good, or unproductive -- got to get practical, you say. We need to bring in the tourist dollar, you say. Can't fight that, I know. For some strange reason, I can almost 'feel' Ruth Wilcox's desperation to preserve the life of Howards End -- it's not just a house; it's not even just rural life; it's something larger than all of us.

But back to Howards End. How has Forster effectively contrasted modernisation and the preservation of the rural? Do you think he has reconciled himself to the unstoppable developments of industrialisation and urbanisation?

I know I'm done for. Maybe I'll go lease a farm in Kranji. Or maybe I can find a village school in Kuching to teach in. If I can't overcome this fear of citified life, I might just...die, or more accurately, something in me might just die.

 I am fascinated by the class's reception of and reaction to the film adaptation of Howards End (1992), and am curious about this question: Much as we must credit cinematic possibilities and its commercial appeal (and therefore the usefulness of film in teaching), how is it that to the modern audience, a 'true' or close interpretation and adaptation of a 'heritage' text into film, still evokes a certain 'repulsion' or resistance or rejection?

• Can it be the cast of actors, I wondered? But with a stellar cast in the likes of Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Bonham Carter..., we can't attribute it to bad acting, surely!
• Is it Margaret Schlegel's hairdo? But this is period drama after all! (Are we so repulsed by Jacky Chan in a plait in Shanghai Noon?)
• Are we repulsed by the ideas presented in the story of an older man marrying a younger woman? A man marrying his late wife's friend? A teenage boy living with a 'used' woman, with the promise of marrying her when he comes of age? A woman having an affair with a man from a different social standing? Perhaps the images in film make the ideas more 'real' to us then the words in the text. If that's the case, has canonical texts become irrelevant to the modern audience -- that we're better of teaching film? Perhaps we are more prudish than we think we are. Then how do we explain our unprocessed acceptance of who sleeps with whose girlfriend, while dating someone else...in teen dramas like the O.C.? Morality aside, how do we explain our double standards when judging the actions of characters in a 'heritage' text?

Perhaps, critic Marcia Landy is right:
"Adaptation is now 'neither translation nor interpretation, neither incarnation nor deconstruction; rather it is a mutual and reciprocal transverse transformation that nevertheless restores neither to its original place.' In other words, the traditional hierarchy between canonical novel and commercial film, words and images, is being undermined, and the door left open for reflection on the cultural character and effects of adaptation." (in her essay, "Filmed Forster")

Well, with that out of the way (but still throbbing), let's consider our text, Howards End, and talk about how the film adaptation has or has not been true to it.

For the benefit of those who missed the presentation on Margaret's decision to marry Henry, let's discuss the following: Is Henry not worthy of Margaret? Considering Margaret's situation in life and Henry's character and situation, do you think Margaret was pushed or pulled into marrying Henry? How does love figure in their relationship?

 Discuss this quotation: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." -- Chapter 22

 In your final patchwork for Howards End, you will be reflecting on your reading of E.M. Forster’s Howards End, especially his epigram ONLY CONNECT.