Helen and Margaret Schlegel are a pair of vibrantly intelligent sisters.  They live comfortably in London, enjoying the arts and participating in intellectual discussions with like-minded friends and acquaintances.  At the book’s start, Helen is visiting the Wilcox family at their home, Howards End.  The Schlegels and the Wilcox family had become acquainted while both families were traveling in Germany.  The Wilcoxes are very different from the Schlegels – more conventional and ‘practical.’  The two families seem fated to be intertwined, in ways that are unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable, as each family has suspicions about the ‘ways’ of the other family.