This name, though seemingly rather puzzling upon first glance, is actually thankfully straightforward: Howards End is a house. Not just any house, a very special house, that provides both the geographic and emotional center for the characters in this book. Its meanings are many and varied, and span both the literal and figurative; while Howards End is primarily a country home, one that is visited with fairly regular frequency by a variety of the characters in Forster's novel, it's also a metaphorical home. Howards End represents a kind of vision of family, of tradition, and of Englishness that runs through the entire book until, fittingly, we (and our main characters) take refuge there in the end.