A Room With a View was an altogether fascinatingly and tersely written book. Lucy Honeychurch visits Italy with her spinster cousin, Miss Bartlett. Lucy is surreptitiously kissed by a passionate, unconventional, handsome young man, but their relationship ends when she leaves the country. She meets up with a more conventional acquaintance and becomes engaged to him back in England. She is kissed by the first man again and the experience causes her to break off her engagement.
She eventually marries her primary love, but before she commits to him, she discovers who she is and what she wants in life. Her dilemma was such: should she marry Cecil, a well-to-do traditionalist with stifling views toward women, or should she choose George, the middle-class paradoxical non-conformist with more liberal outlooks on a woman's place in society? Forster puts it excellently: "It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, 'She loves young [George] Emerson.' A reader in Lucy's place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome 'nerves' or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?" (Chapter 14: How Lucy Faced the External Situation Bravely)
Lucy, in fact, comes very near to emulating Miss Bartlett's spinsterhood. Ironically, thought, it is Miss Bartlett who essentially saves her from this fate.
I caught an allusion and felt wonderfully intelligent about it. "...Nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it." (Chapter 17: Lying to Cecil) A Macbeth line if I ever heard one. There were myriad references to subjects canvassed in my Art History class, which also made me feel smart. That's always fun, reading a book that flatters one's intellect.
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