Dec 11, 2009

A Room with a View | Introduction

An essayist, lecturer, tutor to the working class, and travel guide, Edward Morgan Forster is recognized chiefly for his five novels published up to 1924. For those works, Forster has been proclaimed one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century though he has no school of followers or even an obvious apostle. Instead, Forster holds his position of influence on the novel in solitude. Though Forster would not approve of his works being adapted to film, a renewed appreciation of Forster in the late twentieth century coincided with film adaptations of his works.

Forster's belief in personal relationships and his experience as a globetrotter allowed him to be a staunch advocate of multiculturalism long before the term came into academic vogue. His stories and writings are rife with a permissive transgression of social, racial, sexual, and cultural strictures. Forster's egalitarianism found a large audience during a time when his intellectual contemporaries were elitist, conservative, and still trying to transition from Victorian to Modern England.

Forster contributes to this transition with his third novel, Room with a View, which he started in 1902 but did not publish until 1908. In this novel, Lucy finds completeness in an ending of unabashed happiness after journeying through a story of textbook comic structure. She has found love, adulthood, and happiness—all things lacking in the beginning. The work celebrates youth, nature, and the comic or Greek spirit with Lucy a light that illuminates a path for both men and women to follow. Lucy, with her husband, takes the best of radical politics and Victorian society and makes a place of equanimity.

A Room with a View Summary

Italy
When Lucy Honeychurch and Charlotte Bartlett arrive at the Bertolini Pension, the women are upset that their rooms view a courtyard instead of the promised view of Florence. An uncouth man, Mr. Emerson, offers to swap rooms but Charlotte refuses. Clergyman Beebe, however, rescues the situation and the swap takes place. Lucy, a young woman in Italy for the first time, wants to take in all the sights but is slowed down by Charlotte, her spinsterly chaperone. Fortunately, another English tourist, Miss Lavish, offers to take her to Santa Croce. After an exciting walk, Miss Lavish abandons Lucy who enters the church alone.

Since Miss Lavish kept the guidebook, Lucy finds herself “in Santa Croce with No Baedeker.” She has no choice but to tour the church in remembrance of what she has read. By accident, Lucy meets the Emersons, who show her how to enjoy the church with their own unfiltered senses. Lucy insists on points the book had highlighted but “the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.” While his son, George, is at a distance, Mr. Emerson proposes that Lucy take an interest in him. Despite this insult, Mr. Emerson helps her to not have the proper aesthetic experience. Rather, she is “inflated spiritually,” “thoroughly happy, and having a splendid time.”

Invigorated by a rainy afternoon spent playing the piano, Lucy avoids being ensnared by Pension gossip with Beebe and Miss Catherine Alan and walks into the now sunny Florence. After purchasing some photos of famous paintings, Lucy witnesses passion boil over into murder in the Piazza della Signoria. As an Italian is knifed, he looks to Lucy and opens his mouth as if to give a message “and a stream of red came out.” Lucy faints and her pictures are soiled with blood. George, who happens to be in the Piazza, rescues Lucy and tosses the besmirched photos into the River Arno. Art has met life and “something happen[ed] to the living: they had come to a situation where character tells, and where Childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth.” While they recover, they watch the River Arno.

Lucy’s confrontation with reality disables any chance of a “return to the old life!” Fearful of her feelings for George, she shops with Charlotte the next day instead of joining a tourist excursion. They run into Miss Lavish in the Piazza trying to salvage the murder scene for use in her novel. Lucy and Charlotte leave her and bump into Mr.... » Complete A Room with a View Summary