How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the sun retreats into the Welsh mountains, and the tower chimes, "See the Conquering Hero." But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind. (29.25)
Wilcoxes are not made for permanence. They represent the kind of progress and change that Margaret's afraid of – they don't just settle in the same place, nor do they invest in homes the same way Mrs. Wilcox believed in Howards End, or that Margaret longs to have a house of her own forever.
Quote #8
Houses have their own ways of dying, falling as variously as the generations of men, some with a tragic roar, some quietly, but to an after-life in the city of ghosts, while from others--and thus was the death of Wickham Place--the spirit slips before the body perishes. It had decayed in the spring, disintegrating the girls more than they knew, and causing either to accost unfamiliar regions. By September it was a corpse, void of emotion, and scarcely hallowed by the memories of thirty years of happiness. (31.1)
The passing of Wickham Place is as tragic but inevitable as a human death – this description of the Schlegels moving from their childhood home is full of unease and more than a bit creepy. It contributes to the feeling of impermanence that pervades the whole text.
Quote #9
Margaret was silent. Marriage had not saved her from the sense of flux. London was but a foretaste of this nomadic civilization which is altering human nature so profoundly, and throws upon personal relations a stress greater than they have ever borne before. Under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that they once exercised on character must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to the task! (31.13)
Margaret thought that getting married would help her escape from the sense of things slipping away that has worried her all along, but now that she and Henry aren't settling down at Oniton, she still feels the inevitable change. Love, says Forster, is the only thing that can possibly save us all from the crumbling away of the world as we know it!