Book Review: A Room With A View
‘“This desire to govern a woman – it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together… but I do love you surely in a better way than he does” he thought “yes – really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms”’
Lockdown has meant that I have read a lot of books. And I mean A LOT and not all of them happy. I’d just finished reading the monumental book ‘The Handmaids Tale’ by Margaret Atwood and needed something light-hearted and warming. E. M. Foster’s ‘A Room With A View’ was a perfect ‘something happy’. Upon opening its pages, I was transported from London, England to the warmth of the Italian, Florentine sun where we meet our lovely young protagonist, Lucy. Turbulent times are ahead in Florence, a city that has so much romantic history. It’s the setting for some of the most romantic classical works, it is where Dante met his beloved Beatrice and followed her into the bowels of Hell. It was where the renaissance was born, some of the world’s most famous renaissance art is found in Florence. And it is in this beautiful, romantic city that our protagonist has a renaissance of her own. Lucy’s renaissance is somewhat slow coming, she is sheltered, young and, well, naïve. Her safe, British polite little world is turned upside-down with the arrival of Mr and George Emerson who are somewhat un-couth, but George ignites Lucy’s imagination and causes an enormous emotional upheaval.
Mr and George Emerson are viewed as lower class by Lucy and her chaperone Miss Bartlett. George Emerson is young, unsure but deeply, deeply passionate and Mr Emerson, the father, is direct and clumsy in his mannerisms, something that offends the upright and proper Miss Bartlett. The bond between George and Lucy forms in the Piazza Signoria, where Lucy witnesses the murder of a local man, and as she faints, George rescues her; George recognises that what they’ve experienced that day has been extremely profound, but Lucy doesn’t want anything to do with it, she doesn’t want to share anything with him. She sees him as unruly, unlike any man she has ever met before in polite society; it’s not his fault that British society, obsessed with class, has placed him lower in their eyes than that of Lucy.
In a whirlwind, our heroine Lucy runs away to Rome, away from the stunning buildings, away from the romantic atmosphere of Florence, away from George to the sturdy politics of Rome. Upon her return to England, all seems well. Lucy even accepts a proposal from the pretentious Cecil, who projects his own ideals of femininity onto her, his ‘Venus’ or, at the very least an abstract vision of an old Italian master. Cecil by all means is supposed to be a better candidate for the hand of Lucy, yet it is George who is the one who catches her imagination and is more daring. But there is a point of consent. Cecil, who imagines her in this abstract, and nonsensical, vision dares to make her more into something that she is. He doesn’t touch her, as his propriety has told him not to, he is overly formal as a means to show Lucy and her family the proper way to act and behave. George kisses her after the murder in the Piazza Signora and later in a poppy field in Italy, much to her surprise. But being honest, this was the brainchild of another time. But, as a reader in the 20th century, especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement it is more than frowned upon. Even though it’s just a kiss, in terms of harassment, it’s not too high on the Richter Scale. However, it does shake Lucy’s foundations to the core. So, when George re-appears in her quite English country setting, those quite passions, normally supressed by English society, are re-awakened. No matter how hard Lucy tries to supress those emotions a book appears, written by a Miss Lavish, that includes the encounter Lucy has with George in the poppy field much to the dismay of Lucy and her chaperone, Miss Bartlett. Lucy breaks off her engagement to Cecil, much to his surprise or rather, insulting his inflated ego. Everyone agrees that marrying Cecil would be dreadful, even though in societal views he’s perfect. Yet Lucy’s choice of husband, George, means that everyone turns away from her.
If we imagine this as a Dante like odyssey, then I would argue that this quite little English world is Lucy and George’s ‘Purgatoria’ stage, an in between of misunderstandings and navigating a world of who we are, who we want to be and what wider society wants us to be. In the end we find ourselves sharing in the happiness of George and Lucy’s marriage. Dante has found his Beatrice and they have entered into marital paradise and they find themselves back where it all began in a room with a view overlooking the river Arno in the heart of Florence.