A Room With A View
Product Description
This 1908 novel is about a young woman in the repressed society of Edwardian England. The setting is both Italy and England. Two cousins travel to Italy. Their hotel rooms have no view and they change rooms with two other gentlemen. Sounds harmless, but at the beginning to the 20^th century this was unseemly. After several plot twists the girls return to England with one of them engaged to a proper Englishman, but the man she met in Italy shows up. The story concludes with an elopement to Italy…. More >>
A ROOM WITH A VIEW depicts a young Englishwoman’s adventure trying to come to grips with the conflict between her desires and society’s expectations. Lucy Honeychurch is a well-bred young middle class girl on holiday in radiant Florence. She comes from a family overconcerned with respectability and is therefore overprotected by a dessicated spinster named Charlotte Bartlett. One wonders if Forster had in mind a more famous Charlotte B. when he drew Lucy’s protector, a woman “much discomfited by [any] unpleasant scene[s].” Forster playfully tosses barbs at this don’t-let-the-servants-hear-you world the English try to maintain on foreign soil. Less playful with sanctimonious Puritans or hypocritical clergymen, Forster lets them foil themselves.
Under no circumstances will Miss Bartlett allow Lucy to pursue (or even examine) her affection for the handsome young George Emerson–his father is far too unconventional with his modern notions about honesty and freethinking. Duty must reign . . . mustn’t it? Ah, that wild transitional phase between the late-Victorians and the early-Moderns!
Forster writes gently and calmly, but with a passion for life and love welling up beneath the surface. A ROOM WITH A VIEW is a lovely book, vital with the force of a sensitive and empathetic mind. There’s even more to this book than it seems–highly recommended!
Concerning Lucy’s passionate playing of Beethoven upon the piano, the Rev. Mr. Beebe once said, “If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting–both for us and for her.” At the time of the remark, Lucy is a very conventional young woman, with perhaps occasional rebellious thoughts. The Emersons, father and son, are somehow not quite acceptable in her social circle, and though George is so bold as to kiss her impulsively, she is determined to forget him. Instead she finally gives in to the repeated proposals of Cecil Vyse, a thoroughly fashionable young gentleman, if not very exciting. So the stage is set for this splendid satire on the English social strata of the early part of the 20th century, a time when the formal structure of the Victorian era was beginning to fray at the edges. Vyse is a delightfully drawn male chauvinist prig; nobody likes him, but everyone is willing to accept him, and Lucy convinces herself that she is in love with him. However, Vyse’s own penchant for getting his way by playing rather cruel practical jokes brings the Emersons back into the picture. Confronted by the contrast between the not quite classy but intelligent, thoughtful (and bold) George Emerson and the arrogant, boorish, but elite Cecil Vyse, Lucy finally decides to live as she plays Beethoven, with exciting results. This early work of Forster’s is a pure delight, with a light and well-controlled tone throughout. Although there would be a danger of stereotyping to illustrate the different social classes, Forster skillfully makes the characters well rounded and unpredictable, as in the scene when Lucy breaks her engagement to Vyse, expecting his feelings of masculine superiority to precipitate an argument, but instead being somewhat dismayed when he behaves as a perfect gentleman. Although HOWARDS END is usually rated above A ROOM WITH A VIEW, I prefer this slighter, but consummately well-done, novel.
I have long been a fan of Jane Austen and have become so spoiled by her wonderful writing and complex yet perfect sentences that I seldom find anything enjoyable by comparison. However, “A Room with a View” was one of the most wonderful non-Austen books I have ever read. I laughed out loud many times at the way Forster worded things, especially the chapter titles (eg. “How Ms. Bartlett’s Boiler was so Tiresome”). At the beginning, he seemed to be making fun of his characters – at their simple-mindedness and lack of depth – but then he commenced to transform them (mainly Lucy) and make them into wonderfully admirable people. It seemed that justice was served to Cecil when he served as the means through which Lucy and George were finally united. I enjoyed every minute of this book but would recommend it only to those who would appreciate it and who would be reading it by choice.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Best of all, this is one of the very very few books to be made into a movie and come out unscathed, perhaps even improved in certain aspects. If you can’t stand to take a chance and read it, see the film at least.
Yes, the premise is somewhat similar to Madame Bovary. However, I found the difference between them to be that I hated Mme. Bovary and adored A Room With a View. To clarify, there is a part in the latter where Forster, discussing some sonatas of Bethoveen writes, “they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph.” Flaubert plays on the side of despair, while Forster, like his character, “loved to play on the side of Victory.”
All of the characters are vividly drawn. They speak as real people speak and act as real people act, or once did. The language and mores have changed since the Victorian era, but they are motivated by similar things to those that motivate people today and they are fully-developed.
Forster has the knack of describing his characters in a few well-turned sentences that tell you all you need to know to picture them. They get themselves into situations you can believe, and they do not always act in their own best interests, just like real life.
I have re-read this book several times over the past 10 years, and what strikes me is how much detail Forster managed to sneak in with out making the book feel weighted or heavy. It is a light read, and yet every time I pick it up to reread it I find some new passage I had overlooked previously, each lovlier than the one before. He also makes some very interesting philosophical statements, without bogging down plot or pacing. Forster was obviously influenced by the Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau), one of the main characters is even named Emerson, so if they are of interest to you, this may be as well.
I’m embarrassed to say that I had avoided Forster’s work because I had wrongly assumed that, given the time in which he was writing (early 20th century), his fiction would surely be stuffy, dry and dull. I was completely wrong. In fact, this short novel’s charm stems from it’s casual, leisurely pace and the surprisingly winning chances it takes in terms of style (the chapter titles, Forster’s penchant to pause the action and speak directly to the reader).
Others have noted disatisfaction with the ending. I partially agree. I think the conclusion does wrap up things a little too neatly. But since this is an early Forster effort, it’s understandable that he hadn’t quite discovered how to end a novel with a bit more complexity. On the other hand, I cannot help but read A Room With a View through the lens of the classical definition of Comedy (which is the antithesis of Tragedy) where we are given a situation that begins with harmony/order and slowly slips in to crisis/chaos, only to surface in again, in the end, in a state of general cheer. And if one compares A Room With a View to, say, the Comedies of Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing, for instance), I think that Forster was very much trying his hand at novelistic Comedy: the foreign setting, a quirky cast of loveable (yet somewhat typecast) characters, chapters that function as Acts, and a somewhat formulaic (yet Classical) plot structure. I heartily recommend this slim wonderful novel.