![]() ![]() In To the Lighthouse, modernity takes the guise of war and in Howards End it takes on the form of the Wilcox craze for motion and the creeping red rust of London. Howards End, meanwhile, threatened as it is by Edwardian urban sprawl, is a vestige of yeoman England, an unlikely survival which offers Margaret the hope that “our house is the future as well as the past.” Both houses barely survive the death of their mistresses, and the ravages of time and of modernity. Victorian in aspect, it is Appleton House, Cliveden Court, Kingston Lacey, Knole and Penshurst in miniature. On the remote Isle of Skye, the Ramsay home stands as a center of art and culture. ![]() Avery is of Howards End.Īs for the loci, both the Ramsay home and Howards End are emblematic as islands of threatened civilization. Bast is every bit as much the genius loci of the Ramsay home as Mrs. Bast: both are elderly village women, both are devoted to the memory of the dead lady of the house, both are engaged in cleaning and restoring the house after a long period of neglect, both rescue books and furniture, thereby saving the house from the sands of oblivion, and both salvage enough of the past to offer hope for the future. Wilcox, Lily to Margaret, the Ramsay home to Howards End, Charles Tansley to Leonard Bast, and Mrs Bast to Mrs. Once looked for, the parallels between Howards End and To the Lighthouse are impressive. Bast, like so much else in Woolf’s writing is deliberately over-determined and, whatever other meanings it may contain, it still connects strongly to Howards End. ![]() Yes, Bast is also the name of the Egyptian goddess of cats, women and secrets, and To the Lighthouse is freighted with an important Pharaonic subtext and, yes, bast also refers to Russian peasant shoes, shoes referred to in Anna Karenina, another major To the Lighthouse hypertext yes, but no matter. Bast’s name builds a powerful bridge by way of poor Leonard Bast. Just as the Marlow name provides a connection to Heart of Darkness, the Bast name links To the Lighthouse with Howards End. Howards End, Sony Pictures Classics, 1992 by Andre GerardĪfter Macbeth, Heart of Darkness. ![]()
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