Earlier in the novel, she and Helen befriended a young man named Leonard Bast, and became troubled by his financial hardship and his difficulties achieving his modest dreams of becoming knowledgeable about art. Her relationship with Henry leads her to forgo some of her former principles. Margaret then gradually develops an affection for Ruth’s widowed husband, Henry, despite their dramatically different temperaments, and marries him. Ruth leaves her old house, Howards End, to Margaret, but Ruth’s family refuses to accept her wishes and keeps her will a secret. She makes a sudden and profound connection with Ruth Wilcox, a woman her mother’s age, before Ruth’s death at just fifty-one years old. She loves deeply, as well, and her generous love for her family, her country, and her husband can compel her to overlook their worst flaws. With an inherited fortune ensuring lifelong financial security, she enjoys unlimited leisure time to study art, literature, and philosophy, and tends to muse deeply about human nature and society. Never having been to university, Margaret is nonetheless highly educated and cultured. Their mother was an English heiress who married a German intellectual. She has been watching over her younger siblings, Helen and Tibby, since the age of thirteen, when their mother died. Margaret is twenty-nine years old and unmarried at the beginning of Howards End, unusual for a woman at the time.
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