A Room with a View
An Introduction to the novel
What is the novel about?

It is a novel of initiation and discovery

A bildungsroman that traces the progress of
its protagonist (Lucy) to ‘enlightenment’.

A novel of ideas – shifting in modes from
realism to romance; at once celebratory and
melancholic
Satire: the English in
Italy
A social comedy of morals
and manners (Jane Austen)
Foster’s ideas

Foster saw through the shallowness of middle class
culture, the rigidity of its constricting conventions, its
neglect of the emotional and spiritual life.

Essentially to Foster, to lead a good life, a man must
learn to establish personal relations and accept the
equal claims of body and spirit, heart and mind.

He felt most Englishman can’t – hence, they cannot
connect.

The phrase ‘only connect’ in ‘Howards End’, sums up
his ideal harmony.

He stressed the need to combine head and heart;

he appreciated the wisdom of the body

the regenerative power of love’

he believed that the imagination had the power to
seize on symbolic moments of truth.
Setting: Florence
Place names

Italian place names – largely genuine

English place names – often fictitious (with genuine
locations in mind – see explanatory notes p197)
 e.g. “Summer Street”
 “Windy Corner”

Note the views associated with each place or building.

Note that the description of Italy is fictionalised /
romanticised rather than realistic. Local Italians are
depicted as caricatures rather than realistic eg Phaeton and
Persephone.
Character – what’s in a
name?

Throughout the novel, Forster uses names to indicate
certain characteristics
Eg What is implied by the names “Honeychurch” or “Vyse”
for example?

Differentiate between the flat and more complex
(‘rounded’) characters.

Which characters are merely caricatures?

Which characters develop throughout the novel? Which
characters remain static? Why?
Binaries and polarities

The novel is, from the start, full of opposing forces and
concepts.

One of the earliest concepts introduced is the
difference between BEAUTY and DELICACY

Note Charlotte’s statement:-

‘Beautiful?’ said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word.
‘Are not beauty and delicacy the same?
Restraint v passion
Passion is disturbing
A Room With a View: The key thematic binaries
CLARITY OF VISION (HAVING A VIEW)
INDIRECTNESS, HYPOCRISY
DISHONESTY LIES, ARTIFICIALITY,
MUDDLE (NO VIEW)
LOVE, ROMANCE, DESIRE
‘CHIVALRY’, REPRESSION OF DESIRE
ITALY
ENGLAND
NATURE
SOCIETY
EQUALITY, INDIVIDUALITY
Emersons
CLASS SYSTEM, SNOBBERY
SPIRITUALITY
CLERICALISM/RELIGIOSITY
ART AND CULTURE: PAINTING, MUSIC,
LITERATURE, ARCHITECTURE
ENTERTAINMENT, CULTURAL TOURISM,
SPORT, ELITISM
FREEDOM ,BOHEMIANISM, PASSION
RESTRAINT: SOCIAL CONVENTION,
MANNERS, ETIQUETTE, PROPRIETY,
DELICACY, GENTILITY
TRUTH, HONESTY, DIRECTNESS,
Key Symbols
(settings and language)
LIGHT (n.b. Lucy)
DARK
NATURAL SETTINGS –
views (George)
INTERIORS – rooms without
a view
RENAISSANCE and
CLASSIC
MEDIEVAL, GOTHIC
SACRED (natural)
RELIGION (institutional)
Eager
ALLUSIONS TO WATER, WEATHER, TREES AND
FLOWERS, THEATRE AND ACTING, MUSIC, MUDDLE
Binaries in Characterisation
Note characters move to one side or the other compared to our first
impressions
Freedom Love
Truth Desire
Restraint Repression
Falseness
Emerson
Beebe
Eager
George
Freddy
Vyse
Lucy
Mrs Honeychurch
Miss Lavish
Charlotte
The Italian couple
in the carriage
Minor characters at the
Pension Bertolini/
Summer Street
Early chpts

We are presented with 2 groups of people: the
people who ‘do’ and the people who do not ‘do’.

The word ‘do’ represents membership in the
group => suggest the existence of common
values and prejudices among the English people
of the middle class.

Membership is restricted and controlled by peer
assessment. Within members there are differences
too eg Mr Beebe; Women are more ‘sensitive’ than
men to the nuances of delicacy.

The pre-eminent ‘contest’ (pg 5) is between what
Forster's narrator calls "the real and the pretended"
(150).

It is a battle between the spontaneous response to life
(the direct, open, sincere, and childlike) and the
muddled response (the self-conscious, rehearsed,
ostentatious, inhibited, and excluding).

Muddle is what results when people ignore their
deepest promptings and respond dishonestly and
indirectly to experience as they are expected or told to
do.

Eg the ‘squabble’ between Charlotte and the Emersons over the
rooms. =>muddled propriety interrupts sincere reciprocation.

NB: Charlotte’s hyper-sensitivity to Emerson’s innocent but
direct offer of the rooms. Her every action is calculated &
manipulative

She treats frank talk of ‘bath’ as indecent. She ‘represses’ Lucy
and speaks with ‘more restraint’ vs the more spontaneous,
natural responses of the Emersons. Lucy is unable to speak her
true feelings or thoughts.

‘He has the merit - if it is one- of saying exactly what he
means. …I find it difficult – to understand people who speak
the truth.’ Mr Beebe (pg8) Mr Beebe – although more
understanding of the Emersons => still finds them ‘peculiar’.

Although Lucy is accepted by the group, she is not wholly
part of it, she reacts with and against them – assessing them
as they make judgments of her and the Emersons.

On departure she bows to them a ‘nervous bow’ P7=>
minor rebellion against the judgment of the social group.
The bow is formal enough to satisfy her class and springs
from honest goodwill.

As she passes through the curtains, she feels that they
‘seemed heavy with more than cloth’ P7. Earlier these
curtains were ‘stout but attractive’. Curtains now take on the
added symbolic significance of the ‘shackles of convention’
– to Lucy conventions are a barrier and she passes with some
difficulty thru’ them ‘they smote one in the face’ where
Charlotte walks through easily.

The difficulty with which she moves through the
curtains and the sadness she feels at the ostracism
of the Emersons, foreshadows Lucy’s attempt to
break thru barriers and obstacles society has put in
her way to ‘protect’ her or ‘protect’ itself.

At this stage she can’t do it herself and needs help
=> possibly from the Emersons especially George
– there is communication btw them and he smiles
at her ‘ smiling across something’ referring to the
artificial barriers of human communication raised
by convention.

For charlotte, beauty is delicacy.

There is something wrong with the kind of
"development" in a code of behavior which can
mistake delicacy for beauty as Charlotte has done. This
is not an "education" (from the Latin educere, "to lead
out"); it is a form of imprisonment.

It is this duplicitous world view that shapes (and
spiritually starves-P6) Lucy with the result that she
longs to "give and receive some human love," to
experience "love felt and returned" (71). Unfortunately
for her, she turns for reciprocation first to Charlotte
and then, even less suitably, to Cecil, while ignoring
the genuine appeal of George

Miss Bartlett & the others like her want to "wrap up"
unruly and vibrant real life under the cloaks and hoods
of cultured and fitting behavior. => to obscure truth.

Eg Miss Lavish. Described as being ‘clever’ 3 times by
narrator – too often to be sincere.

She is a hollow figure => she is tainted with the shallow
sincerity of the habitual tourist who delights in a place becos
it is ‘sweetly squalid’. This oxymoron has little objective
meaning and reflects the predatoriness of the speaker’s
perception. She cares little for the real Italy – she only wants
local colour for her novels. ‘Real life’ that she sanitizes and
fictionalizes into an artificial semblance of itself in lurid
prose.

The conservatism of the group can also be seen in the
physical description of the pension.

The pension is a little enclave of Englishness comparable
to a ‘solid Bloomsbury boarding house’ P7 and is a
suitable abode for English tourists who want to be ‘safe as
in England’ p10– who are here affecting to see Italy but
have difficulty coming to terms with even English people
outside their own class.

This world is marked by the 3 decorations on the wall –
late Queen, the late poet laureate and Cuthbert Eager’s
notice of the English church=> 3 pillars of royalty,
church and culture are fittingly enshrined there. P3

At the end of the chpt, Charlotte is confronted by a
question mark pasted in the room. (representing the
questioning of norms by Lucy and George)

Miss Bartlett, who respects both propriety and
property, flattens George's menacing question mark
"between two pieces of blotting-paper to keep it clean
for him” => repressing her own desire to destroy the
paper.

She cannot stop the questioning of convention or life
that the young will ask BUT she will try to ‘squash’ it

Appropriately, the chpt ends with Charlotte’s deep sigh
of complacent satisfaction and this symbolic act.
The opening chpt

How effective was this as an opening to the novel?

Are major themes and characters introduced?

Is the main plot apparent from the opening?

How did the writer try to grab our interest? Excite
the reader? Comment on his style and effects.