"Howard's End" and Gender Issues

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how E.M Foster's novel, "Howard's End", is an attempt to debunk the gender roles of his era. It explains how this novel is considered to be the best of the author's work as a symbolic exploration of the social, economic, and philosophical forces in England in the first half of the 20th century. Foster uses three English families of different classes to explore the competing ideals of materialism, intellectualism, and aspiration. It shows how Foster, through the depiction of the female characters, claims that gender is a social creation and that gender roles are relative to each period and can be studied in their historical context.

From the Paper:

"How do we conceive of ourselves as embodied beings? How do we come to have a realization of our gendered existence? These are some of the most significant questions in human history. Today scholars and historians believe that gender identity does not exist as primordially and externally fixated but is invented, created, resisted and subverted the fulcrum of multiple identities. So enmeshed is gender in this axis that differences such as race, class, caste and community may be steeped in and spoke through the language of sexual difference. Thus the question of invention of identity is also a question of power wherein gender becomes the signifier of power differences. Gender differences are not modern phenomena it has existed in ancient times and throughout history, the sexual differences were common in Roman, Greek and Egyptian civilization. Even in the mythic stories of Gilgamesh, Norse myths, Code of Hammarabi, Egyptians stories, Iliad, Homer, Arabian Nights and many more depict the sexual differences. Men and women are presented in different ways, assigned different roles and have specific characters."

More papers on "Howard's End" and Gender Issues:

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• Essay # 74351 : "Gender Issues and Stereotyping"

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