Few topics seem more suited to traditional conversation in Victorian drawing rooms than that of social class. Written in 1910, E. M. Forster's Howards End has just enough Victorian influence to deal with class struggles, and at the same time is Edwardian enough to allow Forster to peer from the drawing room into England's future. Throughout the novel, Forster contrasts the wealthy Schlegel and Wilcox families with the economically struggling Basts. Forster gradually interweaves the three families, blurring social boundaries and using their eventual confluence to represent the hope for a kind of classless utopia in England's future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe Schlegel and Wilcox families both represent the privileged upper class, with their main contrast in ideology. While the Schlegels adhere to liberal and emotional ideas based on art and literature, the Wilcoxes represent a more traditional and materialistic background. Margaret summarizes these ideological differences, observing of the Wilcoxes: “Personal relationships, which we hold to be supreme, are not supreme there. There love means marital agreements, death, obligations of death" (18). From the beginning, the Wilcox family is obviously associated with money, with Helen herself admitting that she “instinctively associates them with expensive hotels” (1). Although the Schlegels also come from a privileged background, their observations of the Wilcoxes cause them to fear the threat that wealth poses to their idealism. Helen confesses that she fears that behind their money "the whole Wilcox family was an impostor, just a wall of newspapers and cars and golf clubs, and that if it fell I would find nothing behind it but panic and emptiness" (17 ). Margaret also fears the power of her own wealth, observing: “You and I and the Wilcoxes stand on money as if on islands. Last night… I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the deepest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of money” (42). Here, Margaret laments society's dependence on wealth, echoing the earlier fear that "this outward life, though obviously horrible, often seems like the real one," since behind their wealth there may be nothing but "panic and emptiness" (18) . By uniting the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes through the marriage of Margaret and Henry, Forster attempts to dispel this fear of panic and emptiness, suggesting that as England continues to change, the lines between materialism and idealism blur, giving rise to a society in where “relationships” have the same weight as “telegrams and anger” (18). Forster's definitive confluence of social classes, however, is not possible without his third interlocutor, Leonard Bast. Unlike the wealthy Schlegel and Wilcox families, Leonard finds himself “at the extreme limit of kindness. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it” (31). While the Schlegels fear that wealth will overwhelm their ideals of culture and “personal relationships,” Leonard believes he can only achieve wealth through culture, feeling “obliged to affirm kindness, lest he slip into the abyss” (32 ). However, although Leonard has clear ambitions, his social status continually frustrates his pursuit of culture, causing him to wonder “how it was possible to catch up with well-to-do women who had read constantly since childhood” (27). Throughout the novel, Leonard's interactions with wealthier families repeatedly end in disaster, ultimately leading to Leonard's death. In presenting Leonard as a tragic figure who never realizes his cultural aspirations,.