Adela Quested

I have seen the film Howards End many times, but I had not read the book until last week.

In one of the early chapters EM Foster describes a luncheon of blue-stocking women, and one of the party is referred to as "Miss Quested" who plays an unidentifed musical instrument.

Is this the same Adela Quested from Forster's A Passage to India?  If so, it helps to explain the development of one of the most complex and enigmatic characters of twentieth-century literature.  Howard's End was written in 1910 and A Passage to India in 1924, so assuming Miss Quested was 20 in the first book, she would have been 34 in the second - just desperate enough to go out on the "fishing fleet" to India.

A Passage to India is on one of the satellite channels on 29th January.