The "Voiceless Language" of Sisters: Queer Possibility in E.M. Forster's Howards End

Given the energy with which E.M. Forster's Howards End sermonizes about the value of personal relation, it's puzzling that the relationship the novel proves most able to sustain is one between a pair of biological sisters. Queer theoretical approaches to the novel have not attended to the significance of the sibling bond as such, tending to focus instead on relations of choice. But the distinctive features of the Schlegel sister relationship—their unspoken mutual understandings, their grounding in shared genealogy—provide an essential means through which Forster both expresses the wish for alternatives to heterosexual narrative structures and questions the tenability of that project.