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Chapter 6 - The End of the Line

Howards End

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2025

Nicola Kirkby
Affiliation:
City St George’s, University of London
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Summary

This final chapter traces railway infrastructure’s lasting impact on novel form through structural and affective dimensions of the railways in E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel, Howards End. A text poised in a transitional period in transport and literary history, Forster’s novel passes traverses the range of infrastructures examined through this book. This chapter provides a much-needed railway reading of a novel critically framed to date through its representation of motor cars and their attendant geographies. I explore how characters personalise public infrastructure in Howards End by unpacking the parallels Forster establishes between domestic space (the house at Howards End) and railway termini. While hypermobility via the motorcar affords a new kind of freedom of movement, it cannot match the established infrastructure in enabling imaginative mobility. Characters with a social outlook entrenched in railway infrastructure move less but see more than those who prefer the motorcar. This chapter argues that this work’s enigmatic instruction to ‘only connect’ is rooted in infrastructural railway poetics.

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  • The End of the Line
  • Nicola Kirkby, City St George’s, University of London
  • Book: Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
  • Online publication: 12 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009295598.007
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  • The End of the Line
  • Nicola Kirkby, City St George’s, University of London
  • Book: Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
  • Online publication: 12 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009295598.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The End of the Line
  • Nicola Kirkby, City St George’s, University of London
  • Book: Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel
  • Online publication: 12 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009295598.007
Available formats
×