A Room with a View

Reread-Started as a 5-star, and absolutely remains a 5-star. I have only one nit to pick, and for me that is pretty amazing. Said nit: Why does Cecil suddenly become human, and not just human but certifiably humble, after Lucy shares her reasons for ending the engagement? Okay, back to work. I do not doubt that I will be thinking about this issue all day despite back-to-back meetings that actually require my focused participation. Full rtf

Back for the review --

It is easy to forget E.M. Forster was a radical, but he most definitely was. He hung out with Virginia Woolf, he was (obliquely) public about being a homosexual at a time when that was a dangerous choice, he championed gender equality, and he rejected the strictures of upper crust show more British life in theory if not always in practice. His chafing under societal pressures is so central not just to this book, but to his next, the beautiful Howard's End, and the frustrating and touching Maurice. When I read this in my 20's I don't think I realized how revolutionary some of this was. That may be in part because discussion about the rights of workers and women gets mashed up with overly romantic somewhat nauseating messaging about how love is the answer to all things. Anyway, reading this many years later I was astonished by how ahead of its time much of this was. George says that the future must be one in which men and women are equal. This is really quite shocking. More shocking though is the subtle way in which Forster conveys Mr. Beebe's homosexuality, and hints at Cecil's in the early part of the last century. Most shocking perhaps is Lucy's rejection of money and family to run off and find passion with a socialist aesthete. Could anything have been a more clear rejection of the tenets of 1920's British mores? And Forster makes the reader feel good about all this, casting the horrid Charlotte and the effete Cecil as the exemplars of things proper and English and casting the sweet, shy, depressive George and his loving and defiantly innocent father as the exemplars of modern thinking. How could anyone root for Charlotte and Cecil in that matchup?

I know this is primarily a love story, passion over propriety and all that. I love a love story, but honestly reading this as just a love story it doesn't really do it for me. There is, literally, not a single conversation or interaction between George and Lucy that would indicate why he loves her. It is hormones. At least Cecil loved her for her music. George thought her beautiful most definitely and in need of his protection (to save her from ugliness like the blood covered postcards) but they never exchange any other information. Lucy loves him in part for his awkward decency shown in the ceding of his rooms and their view and the postcard incident, and for his honesty and spontaneity in expressing his feelings, and hormones too. There is something there, but George, no. There is not a lot to root for when boiled down to romance. Luckily the book is so much more than that. It is a wonderful and witty slice of life, it is a call for a new day in England, it is an ode to Forster's beloved Italy, and it is a coming of age story (as regards Lucy.) A joy to (re)read. But yeah, I still don't get how the scales fell from Cecil's eyes. I really want to understand that better. show less

Some emergency teacher I had one day between the ages of twelve and fourteen told the class about a thing called ‘active reading’. From memory, she engaged us in exercises for predicting and anticipating what is ahead and hence we read both faster, and fuller, absorbing more of the text in this way. Now, I’m not sure what kind of prose she based this idea on, but her ideas came back to me while reading Room with a View. But I realised the opposite of what she was saying. I realised that predictable sentences and action suggest the book isn’t worth reading. I mean, why do you need to read a book if it sets out to fulfil your expectations? Shouldn’t a book (of some literary credibility) aim to introduce something fresh and new show more and provide an expansive experience?

I realised then why I toss books aside or glance at pages of new books in a bookshop only to abandon them. And until now I couldn’t put a finger on what it was that made me discard a book quickly – it was the predictability of the author’s writing. I realised too, that this applied as much today to award winning books as it did to books of genre where predictability is intended. Perhaps writing schools teach this sort of thing, to give the reader what they want, that way you satisfy them. And the common denominator of consumer satisfaction is achieved. So, a $25 book can only give you its cover price value. It can't give you any more than that.

I had disregarded EM Forster for years based on how much I didn’t like A Passage to India and how his books were caught up the Merchant-Ivory film experience. (That and he seemed like yet another English toff member of a Bloomsbury group, something I heard about but ignored in my modern literature studies years ago).

I ended up reading A View because I was reading Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilisation of the Renaissance (1860), the book that gave the world the term Renaissance and a book Forster would’ve known. I thought I had read this book years ago, but couldn’t be certain.

But I was wrong about Forster. I love the writing, though, it’s not an easy read, Forster does something interesting with his syntax and the rhythm of his sentences. They are full of detail, building on details and internally and externally allusive. Good writers like Forster keep me going over the sentences and thinking backwards and forwards through the book for its meaning and the possibilities of the destination (or no destination at all). Forster writes unpredictable sentences, takes my reading experience to places I didn’t expect, works language intelligently and dramatically, and offers more than the price of the book sale. So, the book is no candidate for active reading in the sense my teacher tried to teach. But you do need to read with all your senses and an open mind.

A View is expertly structured. Florence first part, rural-suburban England second part. There are doublings and couplings everywhere (a kind of Shakespearian technique). There’s the Miss Alans, the sisters referred to in singular form, though you know there are two. Pairs of travellers – Lucy Honeychurch and her elder cousin, Miss Bartlett, two Emersons, father and son. Two rooms each in the pension Bertolini. Miss Lavish appears as herself in Italy and with a nom de plume in the second part. There are two sides visible in people, the one that polite society thinks of you and the part you actually are. So, Mr Henderson is both a wife murderer in the eyes of the ridiculously opinionated Beebe because he can easily define and categorise a man with a working-class background. On the other hand, Mr Emerson is wise, polite and considered. Lucy Honeychurch is told what to think of him and his son. But she seems capable from the early pages to see more in people. She has a more direct route to understanding people. If only she was left alone to have and explore her own reactions to people. She has a passion stirring in her that we see in her playing of the piano. Perhaps she is the woman emerging from the constraints of Victorian England, too. Though this direct path to her emotions, clearly evident to the reader early on, will be thwarted by class, circumstances and the inability for people to know what they want in the society she grows up in. And Florence has two sides, too. On the one hand it is considered by our English tourists as the place of culture, art, a high point in human development. Yet its people are venal and base (according to these same English), violent (there is a significant murder in a square). And as I recently learned reading Burckhardt, all this high culture of the 15thC was earned after the violent, tyrannical 14thC where individualism was borne off the back violent ascensions to power on the Italian peninsula.

Chapter fifteen is so brilliant, bringing together so many elements of the story, pairing incidents, referencing itself expertly, as the story approaches its comedic resolution. (Not a funny ending, but comedy in the sense of Shakespeare’s comedies where all the elements are brought together in happy conclusion.)

That’s just one little element I noticed in the story. There are many others. A good read. An active read, but not in the way my teacher explained. You want to read a book like this for the depth of its thinking and style. Thankfully, I’ve had the chance to see it for what it is. Like Lucy sees who she loves more clearly (Shakespearean play on words intended).

I have a copy of Where Eagles Fear to Tread on the shelf for the future. show less

Lucy's only goal when she takes a trip to Italy is to have experiences outside of her small world in Windy Corners. However, her stay at a pension in Florence puts her in the way of a diverse cast of characters including the slightly odd Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Experiences Lucy never imagined ensue with ramifications that will ripple back into her formerly quiet life at home.

The second of Forster's novels that I've read, I found this one to be a fascinating and lyrical read. Forster's descriptions of his characters' thoughts are strange and yet also familiar, leaving you highly sympathetic with almost every character that crosses the page. I also highly appreciated Forster's allusions to the suffragist movement as he explored show more the idea of women being equal to men. In amongst all of these more esoteric elements, is a beautiful tale of travel, the relationships we develop abroad, and the very profound confusion our own emotions can cause us. show less

Lucy Honeychurch, accompanied by her prim spinster cousin, doesn’t realize when she arrives at the pension in Florence that she has arrived at a crossroad. Lucy has lived a most conventional life in Surrey, but, when she meets the Emersons, George and his kind but tactless father, she begins to have second thoughts — although she doesn’t realize it immediately. Old Mr. Emerson, an atheist and a socialist, is oblivious to Edwardian conventionality; the ladies staying with Lucy deem him “not nice” — referring not to his character but to his manners. But Lucy is no longer sure that she should depend on others for her ideas.

Things come to a head when Lucy inevitably returns home. There she meets up again with the rich, show more well-connected Cecil Vyse, George Emerson’s exact opposite. What is Lucy Honeychurch to do? More than a century later, one of E.M. Forster’s best-known novels still remains relevant, humorous and insightful. Five Italian stars! show less

Slighter than Forster's later work, this still-engaging story covers similar ground. It investigates how the social mores of turn-of-century England ran contrary to the exchange of human emotions and equality among classes. Lucy is a young lady being chaperoned on a trip through Italy. She chafes against the oversight when romance blooms between herself and a young man from her country. Back home, she's confronted with falling back on her own resources to figure out the morality of her feelings. The plot thickens when she becomes engaged to another man.

The finest accomplishment here is Forster's accurate capturing of the feeling of being engaged to the wrong person. Lucy reads her unease as a personal failing, something she needs to show more correct in herself. Any longing she feels for an escape, an alternative, she also rationalizes away. Pressure to marry the right person in the eyes of others clashes with personal desire, and her struggle exhibits all the inner turmoil of a real person in this situation. The only portion I doubted was her final decisiveness, but in this George acts as her catalyst, arranging her thoughts for her. Which is a bit ironic when you think about what she says to Cecil, but then I suppose they really were her thoughts, they were just in a muddle.

Mr. Emerson's chapter towards the end ought to be framed in a gallery of Greatest Discourses on Love of All Time. show less

I read this book as part of a class studying the novels of E. M. Forster. Popularized by the film from 1985, the novel is about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century.
A Room with a View is Forster's most romantic and optimistic book. He develops the story through contrasts between "dynamic" and "static" characters. "Dynamic" characters are those whose ideas and inner-self develop or change in the plot, whereas "static" characters remain constant. The novel touches upon many issues surrounding society and politics in early 20th century Edwardian culture. Forster differentiates between show more conservative and radical thinking, illustrated in part by his contrasts between Medieval (Mr. Beebe, Miss Bartlett, Cecil Vyse) and Renaissance characters (Lucy, the Emersons).
Lucy personifies the young and impressionable generation emerging during that era, during which women's suffrage would gain strong ground. The novel could even be called a Bildungsroman, as it follows the development of the protagonist. Binary opposites are played throughout the novel, and often there are mentions of "rooms" and "views". Characters and places associated with "rooms" are, more often than not, conservative and uncreative — Mrs Honeychurch is often pictured in a room, as is Cecil. Characters like Freddy and the Emersons, on the other hand, are often described as being "outside" — representing their open, forward-thinking and modern character types. There is also a constant theme of Light and Dark, where on many occasions, Cecil himself states how Lucy represents light, but Forster responds by stating how Cecil is the Dark as they bathe naked in the Honeychurches' pond, alluding to the fact that they can never be together, and that she really belongs with George.
Forster also contrasts the symbolic differences between Italy and England. He idealized Italy as a place of freedom and sexual expression. Italy promised raw, natural passion that inspired many Britons at the time who wished to escape the constrictions of English society.
All of these themes are brought together through the beauty of Forster's prose in his novel that portends greater things to come. show less

Without a Baedeker, indeed. That nightmare of every conventional tourist overtakes the deliciously-named Lucy Honeychurch on her first outing in Florence. Her companion, an outlandish spinster novelist, Miss Lavish (yes, Forster does overdo it a bit with naming—but to my taste, with good effect), runs off with the indispensable guide book. From that point on, the grand tour of Lucy, an English maiden with inchoate stirrings suggesting there is something more to life, goes off-script.
Lucy is not fully formed. Throughout the book, she tends to borrow the opinions of the last person she was with whenever she tries to voice her own. Only when she sits at the piano does she express, perhaps inadvertently, the depths of possibility within show more her. The point is humorously made by another guest at the Pension Bertolini, Mr. Beebe. She fascinates him (he is one of many who would like to mold her to his ideal). When she embarks on a dubious outing (still without the reassuring guidance of a Baedeker), he ascribes it to “too much Beethoven.”
Beebe is that classic stock figure of British fiction, a vicar. True to form, he does at times add a comic note, yet he seems the most humane and sensible person in the group at other times. Early on, Lucy remarks: “He seems to see the good in everyone. No one would take him for a vicar.” One vicar is standard in a British comedy; Forster doubles this by adding another, Mr. Eager. He has installed himself in Florence, where he shows tourists the sights, glorying in medievalism (as yet untainted by the Renaissance), exemplified by the Giotto frescoes, “untroubled by the snares of anatomy and perspective.”
Eager is what Beebe is not (yet): a pious humbug. Yet he is also more: a fount of slander, which helps generate nearly all the plot complications this slim novel needs. His victim once lived in Brixton, where Eager had a parish before embarking on his current career as a cicerone. The victim’s name is Emerson (no relation, except spiritually, to the American transcendentalist). Emerson, with his son George, is also staying at the pension.
The first part of the book ends when Lucy and her chaperone, her poor relation Charlotte, precipitously decamp for Rome (for reasons I won’t reveal here).
In part two, Lucy has returned to Surrey, where she lives with her widowed mother and her younger brother, Freddy. Lucy, after twice refusing, finally agrees to marry Cyril Vyse (he and his mother had been in Rome). Lucy gamely submits to Cyril’s efforts to mold her until her eyes are opened to what it would be like to be married to him (Vyse/vise, get it?). Just who opens her eyes would probably require a spoiler alert.
One who could have provided the service, but didn’t, is Beebe, who soon recognizes that Cyril shouldn’t marry anyone, least of all a woman. Indeed, celibate characters, male and female, abound in the novel.
A room with a view—that’s a standard request from tourists seeking accommodations. This book opens with a comedy of errors about who gets such a room and who doesn’t. The awkward social transaction (with possible social obligation) of rectifying the situation helps the plot get started.
Yet a room with a view implies more. It is shelter yet lets in light and affords a broader world perspective. It is worth paying attention to scenes involving windows throughout the book: who is near them and whether the drapes are drawn. Fittingly, the final chapter takes place once again in Florence; its title, “The End of the Middle Ages,” expresses the culmination that has been achieved. For Eager isn’t the only one enamored of medieval times. Lucy, in her unformed way, yearned for her own heroic knight. What she gets isn’t exactly that.
I’m a fan of Forster’s books. Perhaps this one isn’t as perfect as Howards End, but it’s an excellent read nonetheless. show less