Fitxa de lectura: Room with view

A Room with a View: One of E. M. Forster's most celebrated novels, "A Room With a View" is the story of a young English middle-class girl, Lucy Honeychurch. While vacationing in Italy, Lucy meets and is wooed by two gentlemen, George Emerson and Cecil Vyse. After turning down Cecil Vyse's marriage proposals twice Lucy finally accepts. Upon hearing of the engagement George protests and confesses his true love for Lucy. Lucy is torn between the choice of marrying Cecil, who is a more socially acceptable mate, and George who she knows will bring her true happiness. "A Room With a View" is a tale of classic human struggles such as the choice between social acceptance or true love.

About the author: Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879, attended Tonbridge School (boarding school) as a dayboy, and went on to King’s College, Cambridge University, in 1897. With King’s he had a lifelong connection and was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 1946. He declared that his life as a whole had not been dramatic, and he was unfailingly modest about his achievements. Interviewed by the BBC on his eightieth birthday, he said: ‘I have not written as much as I’d like to... I write for two reasons: partly to make money and partly to win the respect of people whom I respect... I had better add that I am quite sure I am not a great novelist.’ Eminent critics and the general public have judged otherwise and in his obituary The Times called him ‘one of the most esteemed English novelists of his time’.

He wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howard’s End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. It won both the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Maurice, his novel on a homosexual theme, finished in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971.

He also published two volumes of short stories; two collections of essays; a critical work, Aspects of the Novel; The Hill of Devi, a fascinating record of two visits Forster made to the Indian State of Dewas Senior; two biographies; two books about Alexandria (where he worked for the Red Cross in the First World War); and, with Eric Crozier, the libretto for Britten’s opera Billy Budd.

He died in June 1970.

Watch the 1985 film adaptation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd1_zKPjlog Other interesting links: http://www.openculture.com/2012/08/em_forster_why_i_stopped_writing_nov els_.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvrGUnIFuRs http://www.online-literature.com/periods/bloomsbury.php

Questions: 1. How are Lucy's character and mood captured in the descriptions of her piano playing throughout the novel?

2. 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.

3. Lucy and George both stand outside Britain's traditional class structure.

What role does social class play in the novel?

4. Mr Beebe is portrayed early in the novel as an observant, thoughtful counsellor with a good sense of humour and an unusually open mind for a clergyman. Why does he fail, in the end, to support her decision to leave Cecil for George?

5. In comparison, Charlotte Bartlett is absurdly prudish, forbidding her cousin even to sleep in the bed where George Emerson had slept. What motivates her to help bring the lovers together by facilitating Lucy's fateful meeting with Mr Emerson?

6. Do you think Forster believes, as Lucy says, "if we act the truth, the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run"?

7. What is "medieval" about Cecil's attitude toward women in general and toward Lucy in particular?

8. 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"?

9. 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?

11. Although he doesn’t include descriptions of physical love, Forster often expresses the physical component of spiritual passion indirectly; can you find some of these expressions?