Howard's End

Yes, closing the shutters was the clue. Old movies showed a train going into a tunnel, or waves crashing on the seashore!! These days you get to see practically the whole performance with nothing left to the imagination. Ugh!
I need to watch the last episode again as there was a lot of detail crammed in and I think I missed bits. But it was well done, well acted and very enjoyable.

Gosh - I must have gone for a pee and missed the bit with the shutters!

BTW I think Leonard had his wicked way with Helen
DannieRae I thought that it was Helen having her wicked way with Leonard!!

Mr W's view of getting the sister locked up would have been the accepted one for that time and long afterward Yes, trisher, sadly, and there she would have remained in an asylum probably for the rest of her life and the child adopted. It's not that long since women were released from asylums after years having been sent there because they fell pregnant, I can remember it.

Spoiler alert for looplooo - don't read!

I'm not sure about Margaret wanting to be in control; she had been left at a young age to bring up two much younger siblings (albeit with plenty of money to help), so perhaps a great sense of responsibility rather than control? She manages to change Mr Wilcox's attitudes and, of course, the final irony is that it is Leonard Bast's son who will inherit Howard's End.

Glad it wasn't just me. So shutters closed meant Helen was about to jump on Leonard, right. I was rather hoping it was the younger Wilcox son who fathered the child before leaving for Africa! He and Helen ran hand in hand through the gardens in a carefree idyll one afternoon.
The ending looked like one of those Fields of Barley Cancer Appeal commercials.
What was the significance of the crimson flowers at Mrs Wilcox's funeral? Obviously a huge faux pas but why? Only white flowers 'the done thing' at Edwardian funerals? Mr W said it might be 'a foreign thing'. Those flamboyant Germans with their gaudy tributes, eh?

the final irony is that it is Leonard Bast's son who will inherit Howard's end. The penny hadn't dropped with me on that one! So there was a point to the whole tale after all. I watched the film years ago and never got that bit.... thanks Jalima

Is Margaret too old to have a child?

I am now reading the book and finding that the serial has been quite true to the original, although they have had to make some changes. Really enjoyed it.

This was the era of the Suffragette movement and Margaret would, I'm sure, support the principles of equality for women.
Margaret did defy her husband in staying at Howards End with her sister. She was then leaving him to go to Germany. In the day this would put her completely beyond the pale and leave her with no social standing. Suffragettes may be regarded as heroic today but they were not well regarded at the time. They wore white dresses in the summer to indicate their purity as many consideered them sacrilegious. The white in the WSPU colours also stands for purity. Finally the term "suffragette" was coined by the Daily Mail as a term of abuse. Equality for women wasn't possible then.

I did enjoy it, although I am grateful to several posters above for pointing out some of the subtleties that I missed. Makes me want to read the book now. Very well cast, acted and fimed.

Just one point: when Dolly came to see Meg, one said, "How are you?" and the other replied, "Good, thanks!" Nononono! She would not have said this even 25 years ago, let alone 100. I will have to read the book now, just to check!

willsmadnan
I was thinking about it this morning and that just suddenly struck me.
Of course, I should have been writing Christmas cards and letters .....

Anyone know what happened to Leonard Bast's wife?

I haven't read the book.

Morgana I did wonder that too as my mind meandered this morning; even if Mr Wilcox popped off, whether she would marry someone else - surely she was only in her 30s by then and could have had a child of her own.

I think I'll read the book too, rather than watch the film version which I missed somehow.

'Good, thank you' No, no!

I think suffragettes were so named to differentiate them from 'suffragists'.

The suffragists believed in peaceful campaigning, whereas the suffragettes believed in direct action

I found Tibby intensely irritating & unpleasant throughout - pompous, superior & patronising. Then there were the final scenes through the fields - that Edwardian idyll - all very Merchant Ivory - about to be shattered by WWI - and I realised that young lads like Tibby were soon to be made army officers and slaughtered at the Somme and Paschendale - lives cut tragically short.

He was an absolute pain, wasn't he dbDB77

But the thought of what he may be facing in the future is chilling - actually I didn't think of it before you mentioned it because he seemed so very young, although he was supposed to be at university.

Jalima1108 they were te women activists who damaged property but the word was coined in order to demean and trivialise them.
^First used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Daily Mail in 1906, suffragette was not only new but a deliberate (and deliberately negative) coinage, intended to divide the suffragists, whose campaigns remained peaceful, from those who, as Pankhurst urged, should henceforth adopt more ‘militant’ methods. Suffragette, as a compound of suffrage (“The casting of a vote, voting; the exercise of a right to vote,” as the Oxford English Dictionary would confirm) plus the suffix -ette, was by no means complimentary. On one hand, -ette was a diminutive and was often seen as trivialising in intent, as well as distinctly patronizing; a lecturette (first used in 1867) was “a short lecture,” a meteorette “a small shooting star.” Both were very different from their non-diminutive counterparts.
-ette had moreover another meaning which had become familiar in recent years. This, as in leatherette, first used in 1880 and cashmerette, used in 1886, signalled the idea of imperfect imitation, as well as inauthenticity. As a result, just as leatherette was a fake version of leather, so too, by implication, were the suffragettes ‘fake’ — and profoundly improper — versions of the suffragists^

I was confused by all the action appearing in the final 15 minutes. Also I thought Charles Wilcox (the son) went to Howards End to confront the sisters and make them leave, he was in a furious temper about not being treated fairly business/ inheritance wise by his father since the marriage. Mr Bast was unfortunate in turning up at the moment he did.
Just goes to show we all interpret things in a different way.

That's why it's such a fabulous book. Everyone sees the actions of the characters in a different light.

I was hoping the movie version with Emma Thompson would be on Netflix but no such luck. Saw it years ago and would like to see it again, to compare them.
Have enjoyed this and sorry it has ended.

I'm glad I stuck with it, I nearly gave up because I found everyone talking over the top of everyone else extremely irritating in the earlier episodes.

Wasn't Margaret aged 28 in the first episode? Though I'm not sure what length of time the entire book is set over. Mr Wilcox seemed to get over Mrs Wilcox's death rather quickly, unless the series telescoped time.

Yes, she was 28.

I thought he moved on rather quickly, but then I have known some men do that in RL

Yup. Usually takes them a couple of weeks......

I ‘sort of’ enjoyed it but it did feel as if it needed another episode between the last two.
The field of corn ending was (sorry) corny.
Good acting from all though.
Was Bast as wishy washy in the book, can’t remember.

I ended up feeling rather let down. I had to check with the RT that it was the last episode. It should have been a 6-parter rather than 4 so that the gaps could have been filled.