A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

A novel of manners by a master. It is set in England in the early 1900’s -- the Edwardian era. As we are told in the introduction, D. H. Lawrence wrote “About social existence, E. M. Forster knew everything.” Christopher Isherwood called him the expert on “My England.” If we switched the setting to the USA, I would think I was reading Edith Wharton. Or Henry James without the subclauses.



We start off with a young upper-middle class British woman visiting Florence. She is chaperoned by a much older cousin. They are disappointed that their room in the pension does not have the promised view. An older man and his son offer to exchange rooms with them. In a private moment the young man, the son, kisses the young woman. She also has another “adventure:” she witnesses a murder in the street.

Such were Edwardian times that the social complexities of the two women accepting or rejecting this offer of the room, and the young woman’s reaction to the kiss, sets the entire plot in motion for 200 pages. Of course in that era the burden of dealing with that stolen kiss falls entirely on the woman. It affects her relationship with her cousin, her mother, her fiancé back in England, her uncle who is a minister and more.

The first half of the story is set in Italy and the second half back at her home in England. We learn a lot about how the British took great pains to avoid (apparently) “getting contaminated” by Italians! The women stay at a pension run by an English woman; they attend services conducted by a British minister. They have a prescribed list of what must be seen. (There were multiple references to Della Robbia babies, so I looked them up – see picture.)



In a remarkable coincidence, the man who kissed her ends up an immediate neighbor back in England, now friends with her brother and fiancé. The young woman has to wrestle with social propriety, gossip and the choice of ‘doing the right thing’ or following her heart. Her fiancé is controlling and she revolts against him trying to shape her into his opinion of what a woman ‘should be.’ So we can also see the story as a feminist text. Here’s some of what the young woman is up against:

“Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte [her cousin] had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would first be censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point.”

There is good writing, biting social commentary and humor:

“He seems to see good in everyone. No one would take him for a clergyman.”

Of her mother: “…she doesn’t like anyone to get excited over anything…”

Of the father and son duo: “They must find their level.”

Advice to the young woman from her cousin: “…this our life contains nothing satisfactory.”



E. M. Forster was a gay man, publicly in the closet, although open to his best friends. He lived a long life: 1879 to 1970. A Room with a View is his best-known work according to GR, with about twice as many ratings as either Howards End or A Passage to India. Very early in his life Forster wrote a novel about a gay love affair, Maurice, but it was not published until the year after his death. He must hold the record for being nominated for the Nobel prize but never being awarded one: 16 times. The book was made into a Merchant Ivory film in 1985.

Top photo: the apartment in Florence where the author frequently stayed with his mother, from Wikipedia.
Della Robbia babies from

Reread-Started as a 5-star, and absolutely remains a 5-star. I have only one nit to pick, and for me that is pretty amazing. Said nit: Why does Cecil suddenly become human, and not just human but certifiably humble, after Lucy shares her reasons for ending the engagement? Okay, back to work. I do not doubt that I will be thinking about this issue all day despite back-to-back meetings that actually require my focused participation. Full rtf

Back for the review --

It is easy to forget E.M. Forster was a radical, but he most definitely was. He hung out with Virginia Woolf, he was (obliquely) public about being a homosexual at a time when that was a dangerous choice, he championed gender equality, and he rejected the strictures of upper crust British life in theory if not always in practice. His chafing under societal pressures is so central not just to this book, but to his next, the beautiful Howard's End, and the frustrating and touching Maurice. When I read this in my 20's I don't think I realized how revolutionary some of this was. That may be in part because discussion about the rights of workers and women gets mashed up with overly romantic somewhat nauseating messaging about how love is the answer to all things. Anyway, reading this many years later I was astonished by how ahead of its time much of this was. George says that the future must be one in which men and women are equal. This is really quite shocking. More shocking though is the subtle way in which Forster conveys Mr. Beebe's homosexuality, and hints at Cecil's in the early part of the last century. Most shocking perhaps is Lucy's rejection of money and family to run off and find passion with a socialist aesthete. Could anything have been a more clear rejection of the tenets of 1920's British mores? And Forster makes the reader feel good about all this, casting the horrid Charlotte and the effete Cecil as the exemplars of things proper and English and casting the sweet, shy, depressive George and his loving and defiantly innocent father as the exemplars of modern thinking. How could anyone root for Charlotte and Cecil in that matchup?

I know this is primarily a love story, passion over propriety and all that. I love a love story, but honestly reading this as just a love story it doesn't really do it for me. There is, literally, not a single conversation or interaction between George and Lucy that would indicate why he loves her. It is hormones. At least Cecil loved her for her music. George thought her beautiful most definitely and in need of his protection (to save her from ugliness like the blood covered postcards) but they never exchange any other information. Lucy loves him in part for his awkward decency shown in the ceding of his rooms and their view and the postcard incident, and for his honesty and spontaneity in expressing his feelings, and hormones too. There is something there, but George, no. There is not a lot to root for when boiled down to romance. Luckily the book is so much more than that. It is a wonderful and witty slice of life, it is a call for a new day in England, it is an ode to Forster's beloved Italy, and it is a coming of age story (as regards Lucy.) A joy to (re)read. But yeah, I still don't get how the scales fell from Cecil's eyes. I really want to understand that better

This is me coming late to Forster. I read and loved A Passage to India in university, but a person hardly wants to start at the peak and then circle back to earlier comedies of manners, and somewhere along the line I started conflating Forster with Evelyn Waugh, who I’ve never been terribly impressed by, and I never cared much for the Merchant Ivory films either and so here we are, twenty years later, reading A Room With a View and OH!

It reminded me quite a bit of Austen, with its decorous romances and social satire, but somewhere along the line it takes a stranger tone, people start throwing around the words Love and Passion and Youth not entirely satirically and the mild diversion of seeing whether Lucy Honeychurch will marry the right man or the wrong man suddenly becomes very serious, this is not about romance, this is about darkness and light, the state of one’s soul, the way to be a real person in the world. And there is a dizzying reversal in the line, late in the book: “the night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thirty years before.”

So: Forster is not Waugh, and this is a charmingly serious book or a seriously charming book, one thing or the other, and Forster had mastered a tone of knowing everything, and also of knowing what’s important, and of maintaining the reader’s confidence in that tone, at the age of 29, the bastard.

Страхотна класика. Фино написана и забавна, страшно забавна. Героите са интересни, а авторът те оставя сам да прецениш качествата и недостатъците им; оставил ги е да живеят в книгата без изобщо да се меси във възприятията на читателя. Това е роман, който може да се обсъжда с часове - и историята, и постъпките на героите.

Засичал съм в есета на Вирджиния Улф, както и в дневника ѝ, да пише с възхищение за Е. М. Форстър. Сега разбирам защо тези два ума са си били така близки. И двамата са извор на истинска литература.

It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master's horse up the stony hill.




Fiesole, in the hills northeast of Firenze 9/2/2007


I read this lovely little novel about three months after taking the picture above. I was so thrilled that I had actually been in Florence, where a part of the story takes place. The "main event" of the Florence episode occurs when the English ladies take a chaperoned carriage ride into the hills near Fiesole.

Don't dismiss this "romantic comedy". As noted in Wiki, Modern Library has ranked the book on its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the 20th century. And the "comedy" aspect is not a laugh-out-loud variety, rather a gentle, mildly mocking satire of manners. It could probably be compared to some of Jane Austen's novels - not as great a work as Pride and Prejudice, but in a similar vein.

A few months after reading it I saw the 2007 ITV1 adaptation of the story on PBS. This tacked on a very poignant, and different, ending to the novel, I thought very well done. This is available on Netflix (DVD)

Yawn, got to Chapter 5 must have been mad to get that far.

4.5 stars

"Italians are born knowing the way. It would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a chess-board, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well as the squares. Any one can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God."

Ah, there is nothing like a vacation to rest the body and soothe one’s soul… well, this would be the ideal holiday in any case. Family trips to Disney World would not fall in this category. Nor would my latest adventures – college visits. Even last year’s escape to a gorgeous beach resort to celebrate my 20 year anniversary could not be termed serene or inspiring or meditative; after all, two teens tagging along on that momentous occasion changes the entire tone of a trip as well. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a lovely celebration, and who better to spend it with if one can’t go alone than with the two greatest accomplishments of your twenty years of marriage?!

Apparently, what I am in desperate need of, however, is a trip to Italy. Or someplace that will infuse me with such a feeling of life as it did Lucy Honeychurch in this unforgettable novel! I first read this book at the tender age of 17 when I was assigned E.M. Forster as ‘my author’ to delve into for an AP English project. I successfully completed the task, but I can tell you that there is no way this book had the same effect then as it did now. This book was brilliantly written and such a joy to read. I commend Forster for his progressive feminist views. While in Florence with Charlotte, her much older cousin and chaperone, Lucy meets the Emersons. The elder Mr. Emerson and his son George are not the ‘typical’ tourists of this new Edwardian society, nor are they your average English gentlemen. This is quite evident from the start when they offer to change rooms with Lucy and Charlotte. While the ladies have simple rooms with a view of a courtyard, the Emerson’s view is a marvelous one that takes in both the Arno and the Apennines. It also becomes quite apparent early on that these men offer not just a different view of Italy, but perhaps of societal norms, love, and life itself. "… she had an odd feeling that whenever these ill-bred tourists spoke the contest widened and deepened till it dealt, not with rooms and views, but with—well, with something quite different, whose existence she had not realized before." Trapped between the old Victorian mores and the developing and less constricting Edwardian values, Lucy’s world is shaken up as she struggles with the conflict between her own true desires and the more rigid expectations of her gender and her place in society. A chance encounter with the young, tender and tragic George Emerson leaves Lucy feeling alternately awakened and yet sincerely confused.

The second half of the novel shifts the setting to Lucy’s home at Windy Corner in England. Here it becomes perhaps easier to accept the social codes without the ‘threat’ of the Emersons or the seductive allure of Italy. Or does it? Soon it becomes quite clear that Lucy’s soul-searching has not come to a halt. "… she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much." I hesitate to give away any real details of the plot any further as not to spoil it; you really just need to pick this one up and observe Lucy’s struggles and transformations for yourself. Forster also introduces us to Lucy’s brother, Freddy, who is rather refreshingly unconventional, as well as the puffed up prig, Cecil Vyse. In fact, Forster introduces an array of characters that you will not soon forget, and I love the various names attached – Mr. Beebe, Miss Lavish and Mr. Eager. The character development of each and every one is brilliant.

I highly recommend this as a very accessible classic novel. Not too heavy yet very forward-thinking. The romance is endearing without being sappy. There is some wonderful satire about social conventions that I very much appreciated. I seem to need a bit of humor in these classic works to lighten the mood just a bit, so well done Mr. Forster. The book is simply enchanting and I can’t wait to watch yet another highly regarded screen adaptation. 4.5 stars rounded up since I just can’t stop thinking about this one.

"I must get away, ever so far. I must know my own mind and where I want to go."
"The world is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them."

Who doesn't love a classic love story?
This was definitely interesting and a bit different from other classics I've read but still a wonderful story.

3,5. En la primera parte, nos encontramos con Lucy Honeychurch y su prima, la señorita Barlett de vacaciones en Florencia. Allí harán amistad con un grupo de personas que también pasan unos días en Italia. Principalmente, se verán inmersas en varias situaciones que las obligarán a entablar relación con los Emerson, un padre y un hijo bastante peculiares. Cierto suceso, servirá de excusa para desencadenar toda la trama. En la segunda, nos encontraremos con que Lucy se ha prometido repentinamente. Y no digo más.

Esta novela tiene varios puntos muy interesantes. En primer lugar, el señor Emerson. Este personaje huye del puritanismo de la época, de esa conciencia de lo "discreto" y se comporta de manera natural y cercana con todo el mundo. Tiene varios momentos brillantes donde cuestiona la fe religiosa de manera fánatica, o cuando alaba la actitud de la "nueva mujer" que busca su libertad a través de una mayor independencia. Me ha parecido un personaje espectacular. He tomado muchas notas de citas de la novela y casi todas eran de este personaje.

Por otra parte, tenemos la increíble evolución de Lucy. En las primeras páginas, Lucy aparece como una niña de buena familia que acata lo que su desagradable prima considera "buenos modales" en una señorita. Parece estar muy acostumbrada a hacer lo que le dicen y a vivir con ese absurdo decoro que limita cualquier deseo propio. Pero en la segunda parte de esta novela, veremos como Lucy empezará a cambiar y poco a poco irá ganando confianza en sí misma. Hasta que llegue la ruptura final con la antigua Lucy, a través de una gran discurso que me cautivó por completo.

La pega es que, aunque la primera parte de la historia me enganchó rápidamente, el inicio de la segunda parte me resultó algo cansino y se me hizo un poco cuesta arriba. Sin embargo, lo ha compensado todo este tramo final. Me ha gustado ver en el autor un adelantado a su época. Otro claro ejemplo de que la época no justifica que un autor sea conservador e intolerante en su contexto. Los hay como Forster que critican esos ideales anticuados y los ridiculiza. Y cuando te encuentras autores así, es una gozada. Estoy deseando leer Maurice.