A Room with a View

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a British novelist, says that “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.” This idea is crucial in understanding E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. In his work, E.M. Forster brilliantly represents contrastive ideologies on tourism through his character Lucy Honeychurch. Forster uses tourism as a motif to portray the transformation Lucy undergoes as a result of being exposed to authenticity, both in cultures and within herself.

When the story begins, the young English Lucy Honeychurch visits Florence with her set-in-her-ways cousin, Charlotte. Having lived a sheltered life, Lucy believes in the ideals of her proper and socially accepted mother which keeps her from truly immersing herself into the Florentine culture. While Forster alludes to the idea that Lucy desires adventure and authenticity, her words and mannerisms coincide with the beliefs of the strong-willed Charlotte, who feels a sense of responsibility for the innocent Lucy.

In the very opening scene, Charlotte verbalizes her disappointment with their rooms in Florence. Lucy chimes in by saying, “It might be London” (13). This immediately gives the reader the sense that neither of these girls are truly looking for the Italian culture. It is this idea of desiring “staged authenticity” that Urry speaks about in Consuming Places (140). While yes, they desire a different “authentic” view, the satire used by Forster in this opening scene shows their negative attitude about any discomfort or unplanned situation.

In a way, they are using this trip as an escape from their own lives, not as an opportunity to understand a new culture. Urry explains this idea of escape in the following way: “Places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an anticipation, especially through day-dreaming and fantasy, of intense pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered” (Urry, Consuming Places, 132). They come to Italy to experience the relaxing culture of Italy, to escape the confinement of the English society, to be tourists. This goal of Charlotte and Lucy is more specifically characteristic of Urry’s collective tourist. “It is the presence of other tourists, people just like oneself, that is actually necessary for the success of such places which depend upon the collective tourist gaze” (Urry, Consuming Places, 138). Fortunately, through a series of events and encounters with others, Lucy’s time spent in Florence commences an awakening within her which allows her to experience a small amount of raw and authentic culture which foreshadows the future when she faces her raw self.

While in Italy, Lucy experiences several incidents which begin to help break away the naivete and innocence which have consumed her mind for so many years. The character of George Emerson is used as an instrument by Forster to expose Lucy to the true desires of her heart. Through chance encounters after the murder in the Loggia and in the field in Fiesole, Lucy has no choice but to come face-to-face with the realities of her life. The reality that she is living the life her mother and Charlotte have taught her, the life of the simple tourist in a sense—of the person who travels to see what she has expected to see, not to experience life, or another city in its true essence.

Buzard talks about the four keys to achieving authenticity. “I will focus here on four such motifs, which may be called stillness, non-utility, saturation, and picturesqueness” (Buzard, The Beaten Track,177). The most prominent of these motifs in relation to Lucy’s evolution is saturation. Buzard continues to say, “The setting best rewarding travelers is so densely ‘saturated’ in historic and emotional significance that each step of the ground seems able to evoke the most powerful feelings; when ‘truly sensitive’ travelers stand upon this ground, they feel to the fullest extent of their capacity” (Buzard, The Beaten Track, 185). The reason her meetings with George had such a great impact is because it was Lucy’s first true saturation. The murder in the Loggia leaves Lucy constantly obsessed by her emotions about this event. As Buzard suggests, she cannot go a single step in the city without focusing on these ideas. She is filled with the emotion and history of the events that had previously occurred. Lucy also experiences this side of authenticity during her scene with George in the violet field. Each flower in the field reminds her of beauty and she becomes completely aware of her aloneness with George.

Lucy immediately suppresses the realities she faces in Italy, in part due to her social status, and part due to her ignorance of what has occurred. After she shares a kiss with George in the violet field, Charlotte instantly asks, “What is to be done?” (113). Nearly all of the people in Lucy’s life have this mindset of perfection and of status. She aims to please those she loves and therefore follows their lead when choosing how to reflect upon past situations and occurrences in her life. By Charlotte asking this question so quickly, Lucy avoided processing the event in her own mind. She simply looked at it as a problem which needed a solution instead of letting herself feel the emotions linked with the kiss. In the same way, Charlotte and Lucy looked at their lodging as a problem as oppose to truly allowing it to be an opportunity to experience and understand something outside of their own familiarity.

It is not until after two important conversations with the Emersons occur that Lucy begins to liberate her locked-up emotions. After another kiss is shared with George, she has a discussion with him that leaves her perplexed. In response to the kiss, George says, “I don’t apologize. But it has frightened you, and you may not have noticed that I love you” (155). His honesty with Lucy in a way is a mirror for her to see her true self. Forster writes, “But, once in the open air, she paused. Some emotion—pity, terror, love, but the emotion was strong—seized her, and she was aware of autumn” (156). Lucy was beginning to see her authentic self, and while it scared her and made her uncomfortable, just as the authentic Florence did when they first arrived to their pension, she took action upon her feelings. For the first time, she took time to reflect, and to free herself from the control Cecil Vyse had over her. She did not fully understand why, and in several ways was continuing to deceive herself about why she broke off her engagement, but she unconsciously felt a sense of relief because she was that much closer to her genuine happiness.

At the conclusion of the novel, Lucy has a life-altering conversation with Mr. Emerson. He shares with her the need for love and passion to be united with one’s actions in order to achieve true happiness. Mr. Emerson says “We fight for more than Love or Pleasure: there is Truth. Truth counts, Truth does count” (191). Forster reflects on the conversation in the following passage: “She ‘never exactly understood,’ she would say in after years, ‘how he managed to strengthen her. It was as if he had made her see the whole of everything at once’” (191). This line is crucial to understand Forster’s tourism motif. Not only does this conversation with Mr. Emerson open Lucy to herself, it also opens her to the world in a broader aspect.

During her entire life, Lucy feared the unknown and discomfort. She lived under the umbrella of her social status and inherited the fears of those around her. By allowing herself to embrace her love for George, she gained confidence and became an individual, willing to take on the unknown, instead of a Honeychurch or a Vyse. She was able to accept someone of a different class than herself, and by allowing herself to be stripped down of her preconceived notions about other cultures and societies, she was able to truly be saturated. She learned to not only accept, but to cherish something authentic.

Cecil says it perfectly when he recaps his thoughts about Lucy after her return from Italy. “That day she had seemed a typical tourist—shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel. But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and –which he held more precious—it gave her shadow” (83). And while Cecil was able to notice a change at this moment, the true change for Lucy was to come later, after her saturation and acceptance of another culture. She begins the story as a tourist, searching for and thinking about what others suggest to her. She only appreciates those things which give her a sense of comfort and security. The story ends with Lucy as a traveler—original in thought, and searching for the truth and authenticity of life and others.