I don’t know anything about music, but there are a few scholarly papers out there that discuss this topic in depth. The following is from just an abstract, but it refers to what @mathmom noted above:
I think the problem with Forster is that he’s trying to marry novels of big ideas onto more conventional plots. I loved A Passage to India, but the movie completely misses the point. Anyway, it’s also about the sexual awakening of a young woman, but it’s really about the impossibility of two cultures understanding each other. His characters are conflicted stuck between what society demands of them and their true desires.
I think he’s actually best with the minor characters, both Miss Lavish and Charlotte are perfect. (And absolutely perfectly cast with Judy Dench and Maggie Smith in the 1985 movie.)
If you want to know what Forster thought might have become of the characters when asked 50 years later, this makes an amusing read: https://www.nytimes.com/1958/07/27/archives/a-view-without-a-room-old-friends-fifty-years-later.html Possibly a bit tongue in cheek, but I love his solution for Cecil!
^^Oh, that was fun!
Did your versions include the epilogue? Mine didn’t.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/09/a-secret-room-with-a-view/
( same info that @mathmom linked to in ny times, in case you have trouble with link )
Forster was obviously in need of a Snickers bar when he wrote that.
Guess I’ll have to be content with "They are still a personable couple, fond of each other and of their children and grandchildren.” 
I just came across a comment online from a person who is obviously a Room with a View fan:
So going through things I marked that I liked.
Oh here’s the line that made me think there was some past history for Charlotte, last lines of Chapter XVII:
Looking at some popular highlights on kindle version, how uplifting. Below is a clip of Forster talking about writing
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jaRMfAy14jY
He writes about three types of people
The person he is
People who who irritate him
Person he’d like to be
High value on personal relationships, tolerance, and pleasure
Enjoys this wonderful world and hopes he helped others
I’m rereading A Room with a View since I first read it with a decided lack of concentration, i.e. a wandering mind. I find I’m enjoying it somewhat more. I still have to stop sometimes to figure out exactly who says what (dialogue). Bothersome gaps in the narrative bother less. Initially, confusion reigned when Forster jumped from George in Florence to Cecil and engagement. Only Lucy remained of the characters I’d met in Florence, and now Cecil proposed for the third time. Cecil? Third time? I hadn’t been paying close attention to the words on the page but had I skipped an entire section?
However my bottom-line problem remains: I’m not a George and Lucy fan girl, anathema to belief in their happy-ever-after. Forster’s (late) epilogue makes more sense to me than one of happiness. Forster failed to make me believe in their love by telling rather than showing, i.e. Lucy and George love each other, so go with it.
(And while I enjoyed old Mr. Emerson, I wouldn’t have wanted him as father-in-law.)
Overall, I feel sad for Lucy. She has a life of contentment at Windy Corners and a love of family. Cecil intended to curb that contentment but ultimately George does so. To me, Lucy’s family doesn’t dislike George as much as they do the lies told and the elopement. Lucy excludes them first and then wonders at their reaction?
I guess I finished the book with a “Did it have to be either Cecil or George?”
True. But I don’t think Forster’s intention was to make us fall in love with George (or even hate Cecil). George isn’t a fleshed-out character; rather, he represents one choice for Lucy and Cecil represents another — they embody the struggle between physical desire (with little thought of consequences) and societal expectations (where one’s future is carefully plotted out). Forster expresses George-as-symbol in a quote that never made it into the book. From “E.M. Forster: The critical response: early responses 1907-1944” (on Google books):
The writer of the essay goes on to observe that Mr. Beebe’s comment reveals more about himself than about George:
Perhaps that explains, in part, the answer to discussion question #4: Mr. Beebe hopes that “music and life shall mingle” for Lucy, but on a subconscious level, he is discomfited by that goal being fulfilled by someone that he himself is attracted to.
Yes, I agree about Charlotte’s past history. I wrote above that George is one choice for Lucy, and Cecil is another…Charlotte is obviously Door #3. If Lucy marries neither man, her future will mirror Charlotte’s. I think that’s the message in Lucy’s singing of the song by Sir Walter Scott. Lucy breaks up with Cecil, and won’t entertain the idea of George, so at that moment, she sees what she thinks she’ll become without a ring on her finger: “Vacant heart and hand and eye / Easy live and quiet die.”
It’s not too hard to see that Lucy is a younger version of Charlotte – they have similar characteristics. I think the movie emphasizes that they are flip sides of the same coin by using multiple shots where they stand together looking very much alike – same high-necked white blouse and hat, same stance, same tilt of the head, same petulant expression.
That said, I hate it, because it implies that an unmarried woman ultimately becomes foolish, shallow, pitiable and only barely tolerated by those around her. Is that what Forster believed or is he poking fun at the stereotype of the prissy spinster?
No I think Forster showed other options - the Alan sisters and Miss Lavish were other options. Even the Cockney woman running the Pensione! But Lucy’s personality made a Charlotte end more likely.
@Mary13: Re post 69. Therein lies my problem. I want fleshed-out characters, not ones representing physical desire vs. societal expectations. Can’t I have it both ways? Even something as simple as the omitted Mr. Beebe comment to George would have helped: “We all think of you as a hero in a novel…you are young, strong, quite good looking…tinged with an interesting sadness…You’re what the cads call irresistible.” So Lucy has some lust going on. Wow. I never pictured George as much more than a somewhat unhappy immature young man. So now you’re telling me he’s young, strong, and has an interesting sadness rather than depression. Hmm.
@ignatius, you need to watch the movie and then you can imagine him as the brooding Julian Sands!
George, whether depressed, or “interesting sadness” he evoked passion in Lucy, tapped into her adventurous soul.
He acted on his instincts, “wore his feelings on his sleeve”and this intriqued and Lucy, our rebellious heroine.
She followed her heart… and, yes in 1908 one kiss could do it
I’m watching some Israeli tv shows, Shtisel, and now Srugim, (younger thirty something religious and non religious Israelis) and its amusing to see how quickly the characters fall in love, or decide after one meeting arranged by a matchmaker, they are compatible and will marry,
Perhaps, these tv shows ( which I love) made me more accepting of Lucy’s impulsive decisions. A kiss in the park and she’s in love. Ok, I’ll go with the flow.
I read “a room with view” as though was a light romantic- comedy, although with feminist, and class struggle themes, which were progressive for their day, and added to the importance of this 1908 novel.
As @mathmon mentioned I think those spinsters, except poor Charlotte, led spunky lives, Miss Lavish, author and rebel, and the Miss Alan’s traveling the world. Forster did use them for comedic fodder, too.
I noted the progressive feminist and class struggle themes and am duly impressed with Forster for that alone. One thing I’ve picked up rereading: George passionately kissed Lucy on her cheek. Oh my, the scandal of it all.
^^^^ so glad you caught that @ignatius.
I was so confused about the kiss, was it on her cheek, or as the movie depicted a passionate kiss and embrace! Oh , to live in the days when a kiss on the cheek was so scandalous , Charlotte has to rush her charge out of town.
Yeah, it was on her cheek. It’s noted a couple times. One - when Lucy cries out in her sleep at the Vyse London home. When Cecil’s mother goes to Lucy’s room, Lucy has her hand on that cheek. And in Chapter thirteen re the things haunting Lucy: “The original ghost—that touch of lips on her cheek—had surely been laid long ago; it could be nothing to her that a man had kissed her on a mountain once.” I somehow thought it more than a passionate kiss on the cheek. Passionate kiss - cheek seems oxymoron-is to me, but I’m not of Forster’s time.
I really don’t know how a kiss on the cheek can be passionate. But maybe that’s just me and my nun-like experience. (Hah!)