A Room with a View

by E M Forster

Oliver Stallybrass

This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England.

A charming young Englishwoman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson—who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist—Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England, she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion.

The enduring delight of this tale of romantic intrigue is rooted in Forster’s colorful characters, including outrageous spinsters, pompous clergymen, and outspoken patriots. Written in 1908, A Room with a View is one of E. M. Forster’s earliest and most celebrated works.

• ISBN10: 0141182644
• ISBN13: 9780141182643
• Publish Date: 24 February 2000 (first published 1 June 1908)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 August 2006
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

3.5*

‘Bless us! Bless us and save us! We’ve lost the way.’
Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the tower of which had been plainly visible from the landing window. But Miss Lavish had said so much about knowing her Florence by heart, that Lucy had followed her with no misgivings.
‘Lost! Lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would jeer at us! What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is what I call an adventure.’
Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution, that they should ask the way there.
‘Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not, not to look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan’t let you carry it. We will simply drift.’

Drifting is a huge theme in this book. At least, from where I'm reading, or rather re-reading it.

Our main character, Lucy Honeychurch, is a young woman on the cusp of emancipation, who travels with her older cousin as a chaperone.

It is in opening chapter in Italy, that the ladies are offered a room with a view by a father and son duo. As it turns out, the father and son, the Emersons, will offer up a number of views to Lucy and her circle throughout the novel, few of which are met with enthusiasm by the Edwardian mores.

Nevertheless, my take on Forster's aim here is to portray that break in generations and that break in thinking from the old and established to the progressive. He does this with great subtlety in the form of Lucy, who first looses her guide book and has to find her way through a foreign city, and later has to make a choice to either pick a path that has been set out for her by her family and the unbearable Cecil, who is best described in these lines:

‘Come this way immediately,’ commanded Cecil, who always felt that he must lead women, though he knew not whither, and protect them, though he knew not against what.

Or to make her own path with the young George Emerson, who has his own ideas but has no illusions about life being uncertain.

I really like Forster's writing in this book but it is still a far cry from the excellent - and much more forthright - Howards End, which followed two years after this one.

The subtlety in his writing is delightful in parts, but I find it hard in this book to sustain the same enthusiasm as I have for the much more twisted Howards End.

Of course it is unfair of me to judge this book by comparison, but there are parts of A Room with a View that are, while lovely, quite boring.

And yet, I loved the re-read of this for being able to notice again how progressive Forster was. This book was written in 1908 and Forster dares to ask questions, not just about class, and national identity, but there is also a discussion of feminism. Of course, the suffrage movements (both suffragists and suffragettes) had been in full swing at the time of writing, but I am rather impressed at how clearly Forster illustrated some of the salient questions that are still causing debate today:

It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point.

And I am still more impressed that Forster made a choice to support the emerging demand for women (and other groups as we'll see in his subsequent books) to be heard:

Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for you to settle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren’t let a woman decide. He’s the type who’s kept Europe back for a thousand years. Every moment of his life he’s forming you, telling you what’s charming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks womanly; and you, you of all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own.

[jamiereadthis]

It was the old, old battle of the room with the view.

Wow. Re-read in one sitting. I was only going to read the Florence bits, but then I just didn’t stop. This is why I’m a fan of coming back to books at different ages with different eyes and different contexts, because it makes them different books. I don’t think you can even know a book if you only read it once.

This time: I completely love Lucy. I don’t just feel patience with her, but kinship. It’s not even her book; she’s just the girl within it, growing up in a country in the throes of growing up. Looking at it through Renaissance-colored glasses (and of course Enlightenment-colored glasses) changes everything. I remembered some violets and the Baedeker; I missed the whole tension and tumult of a world that hasn’t found its way into new roles yet, but is on its way there.

Of course it’s Italy that sparks the rebirth. Of course the last chapter is “The End of the Middle Ages.” The whole novel is like the scene of George and Freddy at the pond— dunked underwater, coming up slipping and spluttering, naked, reborn. (My kingdom for the scene of George and Freddy at the pond.)

The old mannered England is felled like a tree in the forest. It’s all new growth and wildness. Active, alive.

Cecil, the Fiasco, enacting the old scripted rules of manhood with utter ridiculousness— and he comes to realize the folly. Miss Bartlett, ever inscrutable, who can’t be confined to her role. Freddy and George, who each reveal their different selves slowly. Lucy, the rebel, the masterpiece she will be once learns who she is and what’s within her power.

A cast of newborns in a newborn world, the great flux of society changing around them. Hypocrisy gets forgiven, possibly even treated kindly. The definitions get built up from the beginning again, the same old muddles muddled through. No wonder I loved it. And no wonder I missed the whole point when I was too young to know.

“Is it worth it?” asked the other, Michelangelesque on the flooded margin.

The bank broke away, and he fell into the pool before he had weighed the question properly.