The Home-Maker is in some ways DCF's most profound novel as it says so much about marriage and life with children. And life. This is why she is a great novelist. Forget works of art (Woolf, and some would say Cather, or Joyce - tomorrow is Bloomsday) concentrate on novels which SPEAK TO US. Which TELL US THINGS. Which help us to lead better lives. It is this last quality for which we value DCF so hugely. She is heir to Forster in her moral vision (funnily enough The Home-Maker was published the same year as A Passage to India. What a year!).