by Dana Mena Cueto
During the climax of Forster’s celebrated novel A Room with a View, its main character Lucy Honeychurch excuses her actions and dishonesty towards her own family by explaining to Mr. Emerson, “please not, Mr. Emerson—they trust me” to which he replies: “But why should they, when you have deceived them?” (Chapter XIX Lying to Mr Emerson). This small exchange, in a way, is part of the central thesis of the novel, which exposes the little ways in which people often make themselves miserable in the hopes that they are doing the “right thing” to appease others. This is not entirely Lucy’s fault, however, as there are many elements putting pressure on her to make these decisions throughout the novel. For instance, when the story starts, she is accompanied by a strict chaperone in the form of her cousin Charlotte Barlett, and even though she has escaped England, the little pension where she spends her time in Florence is full of English people, many of whom even make appearances in the second part of the novel. She is also terribly young, which explains why others’ opinions weigh heavily on her. Therefore, Lucy is not trying to deceive her friends and family as Mr. Emerson puts it, rather she is hoping not to disappoint them. In this context, Forster’s A Room with a View explores how a repressed society can foster inauthentic living and examines the journey toward achieving genuine authenticity, as exemplified through the analysis of George Emerson and the protagonist Lucy Honeychurch.
Even though Lucy never quite escapes England while in Florence, her time there does represent a liberation of certain repressive societal rules. The most obvious example of this being her short but meaningful interactions with the Emersons. When she arrives to the pension, Bartlett complains about not having a “a room with a view” and Mr. Emerson, being a kind soul, offers them their rooms. The reason he does this is simply because he is kind, as George later explains to Lucy: “[…] he is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or frightened” (Chapter II In Santa Croce with No Baedeker). However, as George described, Mr. Emerson is sometimes rejected from English society, in part, because he is not afraid to be himself. It is that courage that leads him to live authentically and ignore many societal conventions, but it is also that courage that causes many to snub him. The same cannot be said of Lucy or his son, George. Despite being raised by Mr. Emerson, who thinks he has given his son the best possible education by freeing him “from all the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God” (Chapter II In Santa Croce with No Baedeker), George is not immune to understanding how people view him or his father, and he suffers greatly trying to find meaning in his life. Being raised to live authentically but feeling that is impossible while interacting in a society that cares deeply about rules causes him to be depressed. Nevertheless, that changes the day Lucy witnesses the murder in the Piazza Signoria. After he holds her in his arms when she faints, he declares to her by the river: “I shall probably want to live,” (Chapter IV Fourth Chapter) and this declaration of intention takes shape in his interest and pursuit of Lucy.
This new will to live that George found in Lucy is rooted in his father’s teachings as Mr. Emerson states in his conversation with Lucy nearing the end of the novel:
“I taught him,” he quavered,“ to trust in love. I said: ‘When love comes, that is reality.’ I said: ‘Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand. (Chapter XIX Lying to Mr Emerson)
In this manner, George finds the meaning to life that he was looking for in Lucy. This is apparent in the liveliness that he gains after the incident. Certainly, kissing Lucy by the flowers causes her to leave Florence the very next day, but it also furthers the novel’s plot by throwing her into the arms of Cecil Vyse. After her return to England and her engagement to Cecil, George still has not surrendered in his pursuit of Lucy’s love, not believing her capable of truly marrying somebody like Cecil. In this way, George never truly looks defeated even after learning of the engagement. When he sees Lucy for the first time since Florence, never minding that he is not presentable after bathing in a pond, he exclaims excitedly, almost like a child, “‘Hullo, Miss Honeychurch! Hullo!’” (Chapter XII Chapter Twelvth). No trace of his former reserved self is found in sight of her, just excitement in seeing her again, which demonstrates that even though he knows of her engagement, he is full of hope. In a sense, the reason why he cannot accept that Lucy will marry Vyse is that he considers his love for her to be superior as he is adamant that he, unlike Cecil, does not view Lucy as a trophy. To Lucy, he explains:
This desire to govern a woman—it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden. 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. (Chapter XVI Lying to George)
Even though George and Lucy’s interactions may seem scarce for a “romance” novel, the sincerity and simplicity of George contrasts perfectly with Cecil’s more pompous nature. While Cecil looks at Lucy as a work of art, George cares about her as a person. In short, once George Emerson finds his will to live, he hangs onto it as an escape to the deep unhappiness he had been feeling by not living authentically.
Likewise, despite the book focusing primarily on Lucy’s thoughts, her mind can seem a bit more difficult to comprehend. Originally, the dilemma resides in Florence being an extension of England in many ways, therefore Lucy can never truly free herself of the imaginary rules of conduct guiding her. In his article “Kissing and Telling: Turning Round in A Room with a View,” Heath cleverly pokes fun at this incapability of separating England from Italy:
Like characters with scripts who posture affectedly, it is hard for the stuffy inmates of the Bertolini to relax and be spontaneous. They can barely imagine that just outside the confines of their sham bit of England, there sprawls Italy, passionately real and intensely alive. (396)
This is partly why when Lucy appears in Florence, her mind is already full of contradictions. For example, at the beginning of the novel, Lucy clearly likes the Emersons, but she refrains from spending time with them or even defending them at length because more “credible” authorities do not like them. Similarly, while declaring that “nothing ever happens to her” (Chapter IV Fourth Chapter), she freaks when life does start happening to her. From the moment the incident at the Piazza Signorina takes place, she finds herself in a “muddle” (as Mr. Emerson wisely puts it) as she is conflicted by both the revelations that witnessing the incident invoked in her and by the new prospect of secrecy, which means nobody can tell her what to think for a period of time: “This solitude oppressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong” (Chapter V Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing).
This informs Lucy’s behavior for the rest of the novel. She is not used to making her own decisions or having her own thoughts. Perhaps at times she may know what she wants or what she thinks, but she is conflicted in whether she should act on them for fear of disappointing others. As the story moves forward and Charlotte discovers George and Lucy kissing, the repressive nature of English society takes center stage in Lucy’s thoughts keeping her from living as authentically as she possibly can. Suddenly, she must protect Charlotte by promising not to tell her mother of the event, and she must also flee Florence not on her own terms but on Charlotte’s, where she meets Cecil, who provides the perfect opportunity to leave Florence in the past.
Back in England, Lucy tries to pretend that the events of Florence were of no importance, and this is easy at first because she is newly engaged, Charlotte is absent, and there is no danger of running into George. This does not last long, however, as her mother and brother Freddy do not particularly like Cecil, which highlights the ways in which Lucy herself also does not like him. As Wagner Jr. states in his article “Phaethon, Persephone, and “’A Room with a View,’” “Cecil’s conventionality traps him in the lifeless London environment as symbolized by a room with no view,” (280) but at this point in the story, Lucy believes she wants that conventionality. With Cecil, she has a safe space where she can continue to be told what to do and think. Indeed, when she and Cecil go visit his mother in London, the way they discuss Lucy is as if she were a fairly smart investment. Cecil’s mother tells him to “‘Make Lucy one of us,’ […] Lucy is becoming wonderful—wonderful’” (Chapter XII n Mrs. Vyse’s Well-Appointed Flat) and even states that they can rid her of the “Honeychurch taint,” to mold her fully into a Vyse. In contrast to Lucy’s apparent welcome with the Vyses, when Cecil is placed directly in her home or with people Lucy esteems, she is able to see Cecil for what he is: a pompous snub, a fact she tries to deny to herself and defend from her family. Indeed, when her mother confronts her about Cecil’s attitude, Lucy justifies Cecil, explaining that he is simply upset by “ugly things” to which her mother cleverly replies: “Is it a thing or a person when Freddy sings?” (Chapter XIII How Miss Bartlett’s Boiler Was So Tiresome). In other words, Lucy is aware of the chasm between her family and Cecil but is not ready to confront that yet because that would mean that her ideas of right and wrong are not correct and that the effort she put in order to not hurt and disappoint others was in vain. Eventually, these decisions and the past do catch up to Lucy as Cecil, hoping to teach a lesson to the classist Sir Harry, brings the Emersons to town.
The main issue with the Emersons being in town, however, is that it forces Lucy to see the differences between Cecil and George even more clearly. For example, when Freddy takes a liking to George, she knows that George will become a recurring figure at home. This is even more significant because it perfectly contrasts George and Cecil’s estimation in her family’s eyes. George becomes friends with her brother, and Lucy notices that her mother and George share a sense of humor: “George’s eyes laughed, and Lucy suspected that he and her mother would get on rather well” (Chapter XV The Disaster Within). On one hand, Forster shows the reader and Lucy that George fits in with her family in Windy Corner. On the other hand, George fitting in makes the fact that Cecil does not even more apparent than before. Furthermore, the element that most differentiates George and Cecil to Lucy is in the subject of passion as they are once again heavily contrasted. While in both instances that lead George to kiss Lucy, he acts on the passion he feels, Cecil’s first kiss is lackluster in comparison. He asks to kiss her, and even he, considers the moment a failure:
Such was the embrace. He considered, with truth, that it had been a failure. Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way. (Chapter IX Lucy is a Work of Art)
While consideration is a sign of chivalry, an in love couple surely would not act this restrained when they are already engaged. The failure of this first kiss is even more evident when a few chapters later, Lucy makes an “unfortunate slip” when justifying George’s kiss in Florence:
“What I mean by subconscious is that Emerson lost his head. I fell into all those violets, and he was silly and surprised. I don’t think we ought to blame him very much. It makes such a difference when you see a person with beautiful things behind him unexpectedly. (Chapter XIV How Lucy Faced the External)
The “unfortunate slip” that the narrator refers to is, of course, that she is talking about herself (she says “behind him” instead of “behind her”) as well as George. She is of the same belief that passion makes a person lose their head; passion, she believes, should not make a couple self conscious. In short, George’s presence this close to home forces Lucy to compare him with Cecil, which leads her to confront truths she had been avoiding, highlighting the ways in which her decisions are affecting her happiness.
In conclusion, George and Lucy were destined to elope and marry at the end of the novel, not simply because “fate” wills it as George thinks but because throughout the novel they are made to learn the same lessons, albeit at different speeds. They are both products of a repressed society that cares more about keeping appearances and social conventions than people’s wellbeing, but they are also fortunate enough to have been raised in families who want them to be happy. Mr. Emerson, forever worried about his son, urges him to live the life he wants, and Lucy’s family is not interested in giving consent to Cecil because they believe she should decide what she wants for herself. Additionally, Mrs Honeychurch is not even upset when Lucy breaks the engagement to Vyse and accepts her proposition of going to Athens because she thinks her daughter needs it. Both Lucy and George have supportive families who want them to live their lives however they desire it. Notwithstanding, learning to live authentically does have consequences, especially when deception is involved. When the truth is revealed, the Honeychurches are upset, and the last chapter claims that Lucy and George eloped because Mrs. Honeychurch would not give her consent. Nevertheless, by this point, Lucy is happy. She is no longer in that awful “muddle.” While there is some “bitterness” to how everything played out, she has learned to live for herself, authentically, accepting the consequences of such deeds. She is no longer confused or denying her wants. For the reader, it is easy to imagine that eventually her family will welcome them back as Forster took the time to establish the ways in which George is compatible with them and how much they love Lucy. For the moment, however, the story ends with the uncertainty of the future coupled with the certainty of their decisions.
Works Cited
Forster, EM. A Room with a View. Project Gutenberg, May 2001, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2641
Heath, Jeffrey. “Kissing and Telling: Turning Round in A Room with a View.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 40, no. 4, 1994, pp. 393–433. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/441598.
Wagner, Philip C. “Phaethon, Persephone, and ‘A Room with a View.’” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 27, no. 4, 1990, pp. 275–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40246766.