A Room with a View - E.M.Forster

THE AUTHOR

E.M.Forster was born in England in 1879 and died there in 1970. He attended King´s College at the University of Cambridge. There he was active in a discussion group, many of whose members were later closely or loosely connected with ´The Bloomsbury Group.´ After coming down from Cambridge, he travelled extensively, first with his mother, with whom he shared a house until her death in 1945, and later with a close friend. He went to Egypt, worked for a time in India and wrote novels, essays and criticism.

His novels fall into several categories, reflecting his travel and personal experiences, but all share his belief in the potential of human love to conquer class and cultural barriers. The ´Italian´ novels (Where Angels Fear to Tread and Room with a View) the ´English´ novels (Howard´s End and Maurice) and his masterpiece, A passage to India , all brilliantly explore the encounters of people whose culture, class, gender, sexuality and temperament differ. At times, their inability to understand each other is merely comic, at others tragic, but always subtly rendered and with great compassion.

Forster was a conscientious objector during the First World War and declined the offer of a knighthood in 1949, always retaining his intellectual independence. Living at a time when homosexual relationships were illegal and books such as Radcliffe Hall´s The Well of Loneliness were actually banned, Forster nevertheless wrote novels informed by his own experiences and feelings. Above all, he wrote novels which explore the contrast between sexual relationships as conventional social arrangements (´good marriages´) and as passionate and authentic love affairs.

Forster died in 1970 at the Manchester home of his long term friend and lover and the latter´s wife, perhaps demonstrating with his own life the possibility of love to ´´conquer all.´´

ROOM WITH A VIEW

Room with a View is Forster´s most comic, romantic and optimistic novel, with a wonderful cast of eccentric characters and it has remained the most popular of all his novels. The protagonist, Lucy Honeychurch, is a likeable romantic heroine; in spite, or perhaps because, of all her faults.

The novel opens in a pension in Florence, where, seeing Lucy´s disappointment in not having a room with a view, George Emerson and his father offer her their room. Aunt Charlotte, Lucy´s chaperone, reluctantly agrees but continues to suspect the radical politics of father and son. A spontaneous kiss between the two young people leads to Lucy being hastily bundled off to Rome and England by her aunt. We later find her engaged to the pompous Cecil Vyse, who hopes to mould Lucy into the perfect bride. However Cecil´s snobbish disdain for her family, along with the reappearance of George in their village, lead Lucy to break off her engagement, even though she is not completely aware of her own motives in doing so. The novel ends with Lucy choosing the possibility of lifelong love and growth with the partner of her choice, but with the dark possibility that she will not be ´forgiven´ by either family or society.

Room with a view is a wonderful portrait of English village life at the turn of the 20^th century, a comic depiction of Edwardian manners and an exploration of self-delusion, family obligations and romantic love.

QUESTIONS WHILE READING

How does Forster highlight the differences between George and Cecil? What social forces do they represent?

To what extent is Italy (and the English characters´ perceptions of Italy) important to the novel?

How are people connected and divided in the novel? What are their criteria for connecting?