Howards End & The Spoils of Poynton Flashcards
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Inch; Colour; Character
‘know them by every inch of their surface and every charm of their character’
Wrong colour; nightingales tune
‘go wrong in colour and the nightingales sing out of tune’
Presentable woman; wall-paper awake
‘it was hard for her to believe a woman could look presentable who had been kept awake for hours by the wall-paper in her room’
Leonard Bast’s mind and body
‘alike underfed’
French literature and oriental china tone down the noise of the…
‘struggle against life’s daily greyness, against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion’
Poynton is described as…
‘being written in great syllables of colour and form’
Poynton’s […] substances and […] holds and […]’
‘wrought substances and old golds and brasses’
Mrs Gereth’s attitude to Waterbath:
where the flowers ‘would probably go wrong in colour and the nightingales sing out of tune’
[Mrs Gereth] cannot ‘leave her […] without peril of exposure’
‘leave her own house without peril of exposure’
The house has a shortage of…
‘advantages that are usually spoken of as natural’
‘an ugliness fundamental…’
‘an ugliness fundamental and systematic, the result of the abnormal nature of the Brigstocks, from whose composition the principle of taste had been extravagantly omitted’
HE: ‘the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence…’
‘that chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead to nowhere’
The tragedy of preparedness
‘The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe’
Thomas J. Otten: Fleda’s bodily and behavioural infections are:
‘signalled by her name alone: a vetch is a plant that takes its form from another plant, adapting its structure to something outside itself’
Indeed, Fleda is fashioned like a piece of handsomely wrought pottery, Mrs. Gereth comes to circulate a
‘handsomely published puff of Fleda Vetch’
‘rare […] literature and […[ china
‘rare French literature and oriental china’
Gross avidities passed off…
‘as a sense of the beautiful’
‘Mrs Gereth left her […] to finger […] the brasses’
‘Mrs Gereth left her guest to finger fondly the brasses’
‘to sit with the […] just held in a loving palm’
‘to sit with Venetian velvets just held in a loving palm’
Mrs Gereth’s words to Fleda…
‘You feel as I do myself, what’s good and true and pure’
‘a wondrous texture’ of…
‘an old velvet brocade’
Tibby at Magdalen
‘Tibby wished neither to strengthen the position of the rich nor to improve that of the poor, and so was well content to watch the elms nodding behind the mildly embattled parapets of Magdalen’
Rarefied strands of England
‘brasses and china, enamels and cabinets’
At a stretch… [Mrs Gereth]
‘could at a stretch imagine people’s not “having”, but she couldn’t imagine their wanting and not missing’
