Room With a View: Notes, Part One

[jennie fitz]

E. M. Forester, 1908
Dover Thrift Edition, pub 1995
172 pages

I am enjoying this book. This is one of the first "classics" we are
reading, and I really love the classic novel set up - a detailed time
and place, a young girl, an intriguing stranger, a scandal.

The Notes and the back of the book prepared me for a social comedy
that brings the "hypocrisy and restrictions of Edwardian English
culture into sharp relief." (iii)

Hypocrisy is represented quite hilariously by Cousin Charlotte, who
gets some of the best lines: "It is so difficult - at least, I find it
difficult - to understand people who speak the truth." (7) and the
whole scene with only two blankets for three ladies. Poor Charlotte
takes it like a modern martyr: " 'Here we are, all settled
delightfully. Even if my dress is thinner it will not show too much,
being brown. Sit down dear; you are too unselfish; you don't assert
yourself enough.' She cleared her throat. 'Now don't be alarmed; this
isn't a cold. It's the tiniest cough, and I have had it three days.
It's nothing to do with sitting here at all.' " (53)

And the writing is beautiful and evocative; here is the little terrace
in the wood where George kisses Lucy: "...violets ran down in rivulets
and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying
round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering
the grass with spots of azure foam." (54)

The structure, the themes, the characters, and the writing all make
this a well-praised novel. We know what's going to happen; Lucy is
going to experience some kind of self-awakening and she's going to
choose the intriguing but unsuitable George Emerson over whatever
safe, simple fiancé her family arranges. The pleasure will be in
watching her go through this difficult but ultimately liberating
struggle.