Comparing Howards End 'And Grant's Christ In Glory'

The Berwick Church in Charleston, England houses some of the most notable pieces of art manufactured by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant from the mid-twentieth century. The two were part of the well-known Bloomsbury Group, and their home in Charleston as well as their work on the Church constitute the remaining evidence of the group's involvement with each other outside of London. Grant's painting Christ in Glory sits above the Berwick altar, demonstrating how the Bloomsbury Group took traditional Victorian values and flipped them on their heads by his extraordinary use of color and the inclusion of lay people in the piece. The presence of a multitude of easily identifiable classes within one portrait would have, in that period, been something …show more content…
In Forster's Howards End, readers are introduced to a dynamic group of characters from differing social climates who are forced to interact. The Wilcoxes, of newly acquired wealth, must struggle ceaselessly to maintain their social status and constantly fear falling off the precipice which their success has placed them upon. The Schlegel's, on the other hand, have want for almost nothing and instead spend much of their time feeding their intellect and finding ways to keep busy. Helen Schlegel, the younger sister of the female protagonist, eventually finds herself in a rocky position when she chooses to defend the poor and wretched Leonard Bast, requiring that people of higher standing in society offer their assistance in getting this man on his feet. The narrative does not end well; the upper class citizens who were not born into their status, in their selfish attempts to maintain their social standing, end up murdering the working class man. Forster's work therefore suggests that so long as society maintains this antagonistic rift between social classes, no good can come of it. Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway gives us insight into the social climate after the Great War, and demonstrates the ignorance of the upper class as to the grave situation that shrouded darkness over England during this time of reparation. Her novel is a criticism of the shallowness one's personality takes on when they hide behind the veil of financial security and don't open their eyes to the larger, dreadful issues in a society as a whole. Both authors attempt, in some way, to bring recognition of the economic and social issues of the day in the most potent way—through the imaginations of the upper