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Paradox
Definition of Personification
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the... read full definition
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Oxford:
In this passage from Chapter 12 the author depicts Tibby Schlegel’s reaction to Oxford University, where he is going to take a scholarship exam. Forster makes use of allusion, visual and tactile imagery, and personification to give a sense of place for the reader:
The august and mellow university, soaked with the richness of the western counties that it has served for a thousand years, appealed at once to the boy’s taste: it was the kind of thing he could understand, and he understood it all the better because it was empty. Oxford is—Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another: such at all events was to be its effect on Tibby.
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Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—England was Alive:
Helen's musings about England in Chapter 19 weave a rich tapestry of imagery and metaphor. Forster evokes the country’s natural majesty and personifies its geography:
Unlock with LitCharts A+England was alive, throbbing through all her estuaries, crying for joy through the mouths of all her gulls [...] For what end are her fair complexities, her changes of soil, her sinuous coast? Does she belong to those who have moulded her and made her feared by other lands, or to those who have added nothing to her power, but have somehow seen her, seen the whole island at once, lying as a jewel in a silver sea, sailing as a ship of souls, with all the brave world’s fleet accompanying her towards eternity?
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Chapter 23
Explanation and Analysis—A Comrade:
In Chapter 23 of Howards End, the wych-elm tree on the estate is personified and described with intense and paradoxical visual language. Through this, it seems to embody the English life Margaret Schlegel desires, as it makes the tree seem friendly and the house welcoming:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in none of these rôles do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade. House and tree transcended any similes of sex. [...] [T]o compare either to man, to woman, always dwarfed the vision. Yet they kept within limits of the human.
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Chapter 31
Explanation and Analysis—A Corpse:
In this passage from Chapter 31, Forster personifies the Schlegels' house, Wickham Place, as a living entity, describing its death as if it were a human being. He also uses the metaphor of a corpse to describe the “death” of the Schlegels' childhood home:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Houses have their own ways of dying, falling as variously as the generations of men, some with a tragic roar, some quietly, but to an after-life in the city of ghosts, while from others—and thus was the death of Wickham Place—the spirit slips before the body perishes. [...] By September it was a corpse, void of emotion, and scarcely hallowed by the memories of thirty years of happiness.
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