Howards End- Love Vs. Lust
...g into lust. “Helen has many flaws in her ability to love” (Lavin, 104). Helen may Briones 2 not be able to fully love someone, but she gets jealous of people that are able to give themselves to a single being for the rest of their lives. She is very jealous of Margaret and Mr. Wilcox. She’s jealous of what they have and is afraid of losing her sister. “Helen points out the contrast of the ropes of life and the telegrams and the anger with personal relations when she begs Margaret not to marry Mr. Wilcox” (Levin, 116). Though Helen is a romantic at heart and yearns to be loved, she makes bad decisions in the men she gives herself to. Margaret, unlike her sister, has only one man in her life and is very content with the situation she’s in. Margaret is a very strong willed woman and believes in her beliefs thoroughly. She “differs from the earlier Foresterian heroines in that she needs no vision to awaken her responses” (Martin, 110). Ms. Schlegel was a woman with her own opinions until the day she and Mr. Wilcox became a couple, but during their relationship she began to gain her strength back. Mr. Wilcox is “successful, confident, optimistic to all outward appearances, within he is fragmented, in a state of chaos” (Edwards, 138). In their relationship, Mr. Wilcox is the authority figure and Margaret is meant to feel submissive. “Margaret and Henry are clearly not equal partners in their relationship” (Edwards, 137). Mr. Wilcox and his new bride, I believe, are in it for love. Although I believe that Mr. Wilcox at the beginning of the relationship was lusting after Margaret, is now in love with her. “Henry is attracted to Margaret, and sees her resemblance to Ruth’s integrity, placidity, and understanding” (http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/howardsend.html, 2003). Mr. Wilcox is very demanding of his wife, yet Margaret is able to overcome his wishes and become stronger Briones 3 than ever. “At the same time he is able to show us that Margaret is not diminished by submitting to Henry: she remains greater than ‘her lord’ and grows in strength as she meets the demands he makes upon her” (Edwards, 142). Henry was no longer able to keep his wife under submission and is forced to watch her rise above him. Henry and Margaret’s marriage is based on love rather than lust, but Henry once lusted after Mr. Bast’s wife. Leonard Bast and had a wife that was full of jealousy and alcohol. She belittled Leonard and made him work so that she could have a better life. “Jacky’s belief that marriage will make everything all right stresses that fact that for the poor, marriage is an economic, not spiritual state” (Finkelstein, 97). Jacky also worked, but it was on the streets. For a short moment in time, Leonard lusted after Helen Schlegel. “For a brief moment Helen and Leonard came together…there is no love, but on Leonard’s part a desire to please and perhaps a need to forget his despair, and on Helen’s, the wish to know the ultimate, in whatever form” (Wilde, 111). The two conceived a child, which Jacky was not pleased to hear of. Alth...