Mary13
February 12, 2019, 4:00am
1
It’s time for a classic! Our April selection is A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, a brilliant comedy of manners written in 1908 and set in Florence, Italy and Surrey, England. The novel tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch and her often humorous struggle against the social mores of the Edwardian Age.
As a domestic comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen, it brilliantly skewers the world of Edwardian manners and social codes, providing some of Forster’s most riotous and revealing portraits in the characters of Cecil Vyse and Charlotte Bartlett. It also can be enjoyed as a book about the contradictions and conflicts of being human: how we reconcile our inner lives with outside expectations, and how it is possible, by opening one’s mind, to find faith and love in unexpected places. - Penguin Random House introduction
In a 1949 essay, historian Lord David Cecil praised E.M. Forster’s intelligence, sensibility, and unique moral vision, noting that, “He tells a story as well as anyone who ever lived.” More recently, British biographer Lucinda Hawksley described A Room with a View as "the literary equivalent of hot buttery mashed potato on a miserably cold day.”
Discussion begins April 1st. Please join us!
I’m looking forward to book and discussion. Thanks, Mary.
mathmom
February 16, 2019, 3:35pm
3
Great book, and I will put in a plug for the movie too.
2VU0609
February 16, 2019, 4:25pm
4
I saw the movie years ago, but only read the book last year. I think I will watch the movie again for my refresh. Looking forward to the discussion:)
Mary13
February 16, 2019, 5:48pm
5
The Merchant Ivory movie is quite faithful to the book, for anyone who wants to “cheat.”
But not the 2007 BBC version–that is pretty faithful until the last 5 minutes where it tacks on an entirely new (and awful) ending not in the book!
The 1985 movie is much better anyway in my opinion, wonderful cast. “You do love me, little thing!”
Hanna
February 16, 2019, 11:54pm
7
Oh, is the 1985 movie wonderful! Any reason to re-watch it is a good reason.
HImom
February 17, 2019, 2:53am
8
My local library sent the notification to pick up the hard copy in the next few weeks.
Anyone with Amazon Prime – this is available as a free download for your Kindle (or free Kindle app on your phone/computer). It has audio, too (included in the free download), but I haven’t played with that yet.
I thought I’d pull up A Room with a View as a reminder that discussion starts April 1 for any who want to join in. I started the book today and should have no problem finishing in time.
I read it on my Kindle. I’m going to try to get the hard copy from the library.
I just finished it. It came bundled with Howard’s End on the Kindle which I had forgotten so it took me by surprise how short it is. This is a super quick read so you can start now and easily be done in time.
I read this years ago and remember that I loved it. I am going to get it from the library and re-read for the discussion
Mary13
March 29, 2019, 1:17am
14
I finished last night. Delightful!
I’ve been too busy to join you! I’ll check back on this thread to see what the next pick is going to be!
Last night I started reading it (free from Kindle) and it does go fast.
HImom
March 31, 2019, 3:22pm
17
Yay! Just finished it — free Gutenberg edition—on my iPhone!
I read it once on Kindle and just last night I finished the real book, a paperback edition. I’m beginning to think I should stop reading on my Kindle – it’s an entirely different experience.
I finished a couple of days ago,and have the movie DVD on hold at the library.
Mary13
April 1, 2019, 12:35pm
20
Happy April and welcome to our discussion of A Room with a View by E.M. Forster!
I read this book several years ago, and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. There’s plenty of dry wit, which made for a lot of laughs. And I’m a romantic, so I applaud the ending and refuse to believe anything other than Lucy and George live happily ever after.
Questions to ponder, if desired:
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How are Lucy’s character and mood captured in the descriptions of her piano playing throughout the novel? Why does she refuse to play Beethoven in Mrs. Vyse’s well-appointed flat? What compels her to sing, after breaking her engagement with Cecil, the song that ends with the line “Easy live and quiet die”?
Forster’s use of light and darkness, vision and blindness, day and night has transparent meaning in many passages: Lucy throws open the window of her room with a view while Charlotte closes the shades. Cecil is best suited to a room, while George is in his element in the naked sunlight of the Sacred Lake. Discuss the variations on the theme of clarity and shadow in the book, for example the twilight on the Piazza Signoria before Lucy witnesses the murder, or her attempts to flee “the king of terrors—Light” in the novel’s second half.
Lucy and George both stand outside Britain’s traditional class structure. George is a clerk, the son of a journalist and grandson of a laborer. Lucy is the daughter of a lawyer and her social status is “more splendid than her antecedents entitled her to.” What role does social class play in the novel? Why did Forster choose Cecil to deliver the statement: “The classes ought to mix…There ought to be intermarriage—all sorts of things. I believe in democracy.”
Mr. Beebe is portrayed early in the novel as an observant, thoughtful counselor with a good sense of humor and an unusually open mind for a clergyman. Soon after meeting Lucy he predicts that “one day music and life shall mingle” for her. Why does he fail, in the end, to support her decision to leave Cecil for George?
In comparison, Charlotte Bartlett is absurdly prudish, forbidding her cousin even to sleep in the bed where George Emerson had slept. If George’s surmise at the novel’s end is correct, what motivates her to help bring the lovers together by facilitating Lucy’s fateful meeting with Mr. Emerson? What does this turnabout suggest about the repressive forces in society? Is she, as George jokes, made of the “same stuff as parsons are made of”?
“Muddle” is one of Forster’s favorite words and seems to carry more weight in his work than in current colloquial usage. Lucy declares at the end of Part 1, “I want not to be muddled. I want to grow older quickly.” What does Mr. Emerson mean when he uses the word to describe Lucy’s state of mind near the novel’s end, saying, “It is easy to face Death and Fate…It is on my muddles that I look back with horror”?
Lucy and George’s final happiness is clouded by their severed relations with those she left behind. The Honeychurches “were disgusted at her past hypocrisy,” and Mr. Beebe will never forgive them. Do you think Forster believes, as Lucy asserts, that “if we act the truth, the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run”?
What is “medieval” about Cecil’s attitude toward women in general and toward Lucy in particular? What role is she allotted in his notion of chivalry? Why does Lucy feel, after George throws her blood-stained photographs into the Arno, that it is “hopeless to look for chivalry in such a man”? What kind of companionship and protection does George offer in exchange?
Forster, who was greatly influenced by the art of Italy during his first visit there, not only explores the proper relationship of life and art in A Room with a View but also uses art to illuminate his characters. What do we learn about the inner lives of George and Mr. Emerson from their views of Giotto’s fresco in Santa Croce (Chapter 2)? Why is Lucy’s outburst over Mr. Eager like “Leonardo on the ceiling of the Sistine”?
A frequent criticism of Forster’s plots is his reliance on coincidence and chance. What improbable circumstances are required to unite Lucy and George? Is George right when he says of their reunion in England, “It is Fate. Everything is Fate”? Does the novel suggest an external force that brings the lovers together?
There are many kinds of deceit in the book: betrayal by friends, secrets between lovers, and most importantly Lucy’s self-deceit. Four of the last five chapters show Lucy lying to nearly everyone else in the book. Which kinds of lies are most harmful to the “personal relations” that Forster cherished?
Though sparing in his descriptions of physical love, Forster often expresses the physical component of spiritual passion indirectly, as in his description of Lucy’s piano playing: “Like every true performer she was intoxicated by the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.” What balance between the physical and emotional expressions of love does Mr. Emerson suggest in his statement, “I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal. . . . I only wish poets would say this too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the body”?
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/296528/a-room-with-a-view-by-e-m-forster-introduction-by-wendy-moffat-notes-by-malcolm-bradbury/9780141183299/readers-guide/
