This summer I treated myself to re-read of A Room With A View, a book that gets better every time I read it. While Lucy Honeychurch is in a “muddle” for sure, she wants to do the right thing, and seeing her struggle to become her authentic self is thrilling. Plus, the book is hilarious in so many subtle ways that I keep finding new things to enjoy.
A Room With a View was first published in 1908. It involves the gloriously named Miss Lucy Honeychurch, a young women from the upper middle classes, who meets an unconventional young man while traveling in Rome Florence, and who is thrown back together with him in England. Lucy is, in most ways, a completely conventional girl. However, the local clergyman, Mr. Beebe, who is staying at the same pension as Lucy in Italy, notices that there is a discrepancy between how Lucy lives her life and how she plays the piano.
Miss Honeychurch, disjoined from her music stool, was only a young lady with a quantity of dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face. She loved going to concerts, she loved stopping with her cousin, she loved iced coffee and meringues. He did not doubt that she loved his sermon also. But before he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he now made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily towards him:
“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting-both for us and for her.”
The story begins with Lucy’s chaperone, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, complaining that their room in the pension lacks a view. Fellow traveler Mr. Emerson and his son are quick to offer to exchange rooms, as they have a view and don’t especially care about it. This throws Charlotte into a complete tizzy because to her such a direct offer is both rude and dangerous – she wishes to avoid putting Lucy under any “obligation.” The conflict between open kindness and honesty, as represented by the Emersons, and strict adherence to manners, as represented by pretty much everyone else, is a central theme of the book and the cause of much caustic hilarity.
Mr. Emerson’s son, George, is awkward and poetic. If he had gone to college with me, he would be a big fan of The Doors and The Cure and Jack Kerouac and we would have been broody best friends. His flirtations with Lucy are brief and awkward but intense and include an impulsive kiss – you can guess what Charlotte thinks about that! Charlotte manipulates Lucy into keeping the kiss a secret, and thus commences Lucy’s “muddle” (as Mr. Emerson calls it) as she heads home and gets engaged to poor Cecil, the stuffiest guy in the universe.
As events conspire to complicate Lucy’s life, the chapter headings becoming increasingly funny: “Lying to George,” “Lying to Cecil,” “Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddie, and the Servants.”
The romance here is just barely sketched in – George and Lucy barely know each other, and – let’s be honest here – they are babies. They are undergraduates wearing black and drinking coffee in the dorm basement while discussing Walt Whitman and Sylvia Plath. I’m not judging. I was totally that undergraduate and that time of life served me well and I can still come up with a good barbaric yawp today. I’m just saying that these people are less equipped to work through a real relationship that involves budgeting and children and working through conflict than two adorable lemurs on LSD.
And yet, how can we not root for Lucy and George? Their love story works for two reasons. The first is that they are both adorable. They are a pair of Golden Labrador Retrievers. By the way, the excellent movie adaptation stars both a young Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands, and the puppy eyes are strong with those two. All shall fall before them.
The second reason that the romance works is that the romance is clearly symbolic. In throwing off the conventional Cecil, who is perturbed when Lucy plays music too passionately, behaves too erratically, or any other way displays true personality and autonomy, Lucy is choosing to live as she plays. She also considers being a spinster like Charlotte, but Charlotte is not a role model of happy spinsterhood. Charlotte is dependent on others and passive aggressive to the point where it’s a true work of art to watch that woman work a room. Lucy wants physical and emotional passion and art and romance and adventure with George, she will by golly get it.
George and Lucy do grow up considerably in the course of the book. Lucy has to be honest with Cecil, who grows up himself as a result. George has to realize that he has some of the same faults as Cecil, such as in a speech with is both an incredibly self-aware and progressive acknowledgement of internalized sexism and an incredibly romantic and telling moment:
I’m the same kind of brute at bottom. 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. Yes – really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.
This book is lovely and lyrical and both ferociously biting (the English tourists are SKEWERED) and surprisingly sweet. The bond between Lucy and her family, and the concern and tenderness that Mr. Emerson and George have for each other, feel authentic and heartwarming, and Mr. Beebe’s continual championing of Lucy is very kind.
And did I mention that the book is hilarious? From the set pieces (Exhibit A: the skinny dipping scene) to the one liners, as when Miss Lavish derides Tennyson by saying, “Tut! The Early Victorians!” and the elderly Miss Alan replies, “My Dear, I am an Early Victorian!” the book is wickedly funny without being cynical.
In discussing the Emersons and their constant social gaffes, Mr. Beebe Miss Alan says, “Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?” It’s this sense of beauty, both in the natural world that surrounds the characters and in their inner, though muddled, goodness, which keeps the book from being hopelessly dark. The romance between Lucy and George is like one of the songs Lucy plays that startles her audiences – it startles Lucy out of her complacency and helps her become her more authentic and amazing self.
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Oh, thank you for writing this review! I’ve loved this book for years for these exact reasons. I care nothing for the romance in it other than finding it cute, but everything else is just lovely.
I’m going to be pedantic, but with good reason: it isn’t Mr. Beebe who says the line you mentioned at the end, it’s one of the Miss Alans. I’m correcting it because this is one of the lines I always remember from the book. Not for the sentiment itself – as a person living in the world today I of course take it for granted. But there was something so lovely, so human and human-loving and wise and clear-eyed, in Forster writing that line. In him writing an elderly, kind and endlessly proper lady who’d be so much part of her time and culture that she’d say that sentence, that she’d find it surprising that something could be indelicate and still beautiful – and still, that she could see enough through all of her assumptions and culture and limitations to glimpse the beauty, to want to comment on it and wonder at it and acknowledge it in Mr. Emerson’s actions.
Sorry, that was a giant paragraph! But that’s my favorite thing about this book, and E.M Forster. That he saw people with such clarity, and still loved them to the degree I saw in every detail of that book. I probably explained it badly, but I hope anyone who’s read it recognizes that feeling.
I haven’t read the book, but the movie is wonderful. It is one of my favorites.
I love both book and movie. So many great actors … Denholm Elliott, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis, and a very young Rupert Graves as Freddie. It’s 30 years old now, which is rather frightening. I’ve read all of Forster’s most well-known novels, but this one is my favourite.
I love this book and studied it for A Level. Just one tiny thing is that the first part of the book is set in Florence not Rome.
I love both the book and the movie (Merchant/Ivory version). It’s one if the rare instances where I love the movie a little more. The cast was so amazing. I had a crush on Julian Sands when I was young. And I love how romantic and hopeful the movie ending is, whereas the book is more bittersweet.
I also love the book and the movie. It’s all about inside (Cecil) v. outside (George) too. I remember watching the movie when I was in high school and was shocked! SHOCKED! I tell you by the totally appropriate full-frontal male nudity. I think there was a fair bit of pausing on the VCR too.
I just watched the movie for the first time on Monday–I’d forgotten the skinny dipping scene in the book somehow, so that was fun ;)– and suddenly references to it are showing up everywhere I turn. Strange how that happens. I tend to think that Forster is one of the funniest writers in the English language, even with all kinds of references probably going over my head.
Thank you Mara and Ruth – you are both correct! I apologize for the errors.
Thank you so much for this, Carrie. You’ve brought the book to life. I’ve got a dusty copy somewhere. I’m going to go look for it.
I have never read the book OR seen the movie, which I now believe to be a pair of grievous oversights. Will amend the situation asap.
Back when I worked for a video rental firm, I was fortunate enough to go to a Merchant Ivory retrospective and ended up sitting one row in front of Simon Callow when they played the skinny-dipping scene from the film. I will regret to the end of my days not turning around and telling him that watching it at school when I was 14 was a landmark moment of my adolescence!
I looooove the book, I loooooove the film, I have issues about the more recent TV adaptation, but I loooooved Rafe and Timothy Spall as George and Mr Emerson. Honestly, just thinking about Room With A View puts a huge smile on my face. It’s one of the best coming of age stories ever.
Love, love, love this book! In high school and college, I kept a copy of this book in my backpack and just read and re-read it to pieces. It’s such a comfort book for me now, for all the reasons you describe!
I have such fond memories of the Merchant Ivory film. I saw it in a theater (on Christmas day, I think) with my parents. I would have been about eight, and it was the first “grown up” movie we saw on Christmas. I’m sure I missed lots, but I was so proud of myself for “getting” the story. And I fell out of my seat laughing at the skinny dipping scene, and giggled about it for weeks afterward. I’ve read/seen it since, but that first viewing was special.
Yea gods I have tried three times to read this book and can’t make it through. It’s a source of shame to me. I waded through The Mill on the Floss. I thought most of Henry James was terrifically clever. And yet I can’t with this one. I read Remains of the Day four times, so restrained romance isn’t the problem…I just can’t. /hangs head/
Thank you for this wonderful review, I’m re-reading Room With a View with so much enjoyment. Both the book and movie are favs…it was the first Forster novel I read so long ago and fell in love with his writing.
I love the film, and was so incredibly disappointed with the novel. The movie is so incredibly romantic, and the book was, in my opinion, not. It was well-written, but not at all what I was expecting, and I found it really very dull.
I have loved this book for decades–read it (and other EM Forster novels) multiple times. I’m somewhat surprised to see it showing up here as a “romance” novel. I never thought of it as such, although I guess it does have more romance than other Forster novels. Those who are disappointed with the book may be expecting more romance, or more action. But Forster’s focus was, I think, usually more on the intricacies and foibles of middle-class Edwardians. (Now I think I want to go reread A Passage to India.)
Huh, I actually do own a copy of this–I picked it up way back when Barnes and Noble originally launched the Nook, and they gave out ebook editions of a lot of their in-house editions of various classics for free. This thing has been waiting in my To Read queue for ages. Perhaps I should fix this problem. 🙂
I love this book! Although it’s written over a century ago, it stands the test of time and still feels fresh and relevant. George Emerson’s line especially – “I want you to have your own thougts even as I held you in my arms” – really resonates with me because I’ve seen far too many friends completely changing their personality and bending over backwards for the sake of their partners. And I know plenty of men who are needlessly overprotective and controlling that they wouldn’t tolerate their partners thinking about anything else beside them.
It’s sad that a book written over a century ago is more feminist than some men I know in real life.
It’s so lovely to be reminded of this story. I was first introduced to it when the movie came out. It played in my home town in a dedicated theatre room for years (literally years – it was that popular) and I went back and saw it countless times both with friends and on my own after I’d exhausted their patience with it.
After my first viewing of the film, I haunted the library and read all of Forster’s books and I’ve been so pleased over the years to see them, in turn, be made in to films which is a pretty rare thing for me because I generally despise the story compromises that are required to translate a book into movie form. Don’t even get me started on the abomination of the film version of Brideshead Revisited! Ahem. Anyway. Somehow Forster’s novels managed to be turned into films with their hearts intact.
We recently purchased a new TV for our home and my husband’s gift to me for allowing the extravagance of a new TV was playing the anniversary version of the film for me as our new TV’s first act of service. It was as delightful as ever and it was so fun to marvel at the talent in the cast and the variety in their work as their careers blossomed.
Yet, for all that, I didn’t think to re-read the book! A gregious oversight indeed! This review has inspired me to take it off the shelf and delve in again. I can hardly wait to get home and dig in.
Ser mexicano ccon residencia permanente enn México.