A Room with a ViewBut you do he went on not waiting for contradiction You love the boy body and soul plainly directly as he loves you and no other word expresses it Lucy has her rigid middle class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight 45 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 suares Any one can find places but the finding of people is a gift from GodAh 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 EM 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 uite 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 uite 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 uite different whose existence she had not realized before Trapped between the old Victorian s 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 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 confusedThe 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 uite 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 brilliantI 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 45 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

Epub ¹ A Room with a View ó E.M. Forster

A Room with a View Ù And most of all his passionate son GeorgeLucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse Will she ever learn to follow her own hear 35I am in a classics mood but after my recent completion of War and Peace I decided to try something a little lighter and less than one tenth of the size This is how I found my way towards E M Forster's 130 page novel about a woman who is forced to make a decision between marrying a wealthy man she will never love and a man of lower class who she knows she can be happy with Funnily enough I think it was this story's length that slightly let it down for me had it been a longer book I'm sure I would have fallen in love with George as everyone else seems toThis book was published in 1908 a time somewhat between eras for British society Women could own property and were becoming increasingly free authors like Jane Austen George Eliot Charlotte BrontëCo had taken the nineteenth century by storm and yet women still did not have the vote and they would be expected to get married young stay at home and have babies for decades to come Into this world strolls Lucy Honeychurch at first a very naive and typical young woman of the time period But a woman who as the book progresses eventually challenges societal conventions and limitationsE M Forster is famous for his stories about British society and class and hypocrisy He was a gay man who spent his entire life hiding his sexuality from an unforgiving world made up of expectations and a very black and white view of what was right and wrong Though his personal struggles weren't made clear until after his death with the publication of Maurice it is obvious to me that A Room with a View is just one of his various attempts to poke fun at the rigidity of class gender and sexual boundariesLucy longs for independence freedom from the constrictions of being a woman in 1908 being upper middle class being a label with a set of rules that she is expected to follow She wants to live as she goes and define herself in that way not in a predetermined fashion that stems from centuries of ineualities and the desire for appropriateness I cannot tell you just how much I loved this idea I only wanted a longer story to make it perfect Lucy is such a charming and interesting character that she could have easily held my attention for double the amount of pages in this incredibly short book Also I wasn't uite sold on George and I think I was supposed to be that the point was that the reader would come to love the man who wasn't as wealthy who wasn't as well educated A little time to get to know George would have made me happy Epub ¹ A Room with a View ó E.M. Forster

E.M. Forster ó A Room with a View Kindle

E.M. Forster ó A Room with a View Kindle Cousin Charlotte and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish the Cockney Signora curious Mr Emerson A Room with a View by E M ForsterA 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 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 freuently stayed with his mother from WikipediaDella Robbia babies from