Why this book

Published in 1908, Forster's novel maps two Englands, abroad and at home: one that hoards propriety like a locked room, and one that flings open the shutters. Its warmth, and its quarrel with hypocrisy, have kept it beloved for over a century.

The Story

Our story opens in Florence, where young Lucy Honeychurch has come to see Italy, guarded by her older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. At their guesthouse, both women are quietly wounded: they were promised rooms with a view, and given windows facing only a dull courtyard.

At dinner, an old man overhears their complaint. Bluntly, kindly, Mr. Emerson offers to trade: he and his son George hold the rooms with views, and would gladly swap. But Charlotte stiffens, for such frankness from strangers strikes her as improper, almost indecent.

Charlotte refuses at first, therefore the evening curdles into awkwardness. Yet a mild clergyman, Mr. Beebe, assures her the Emersons mean only generosity. Persuaded, she accepts the exchange, but insists on taking George's larger room herself, sparing Lucy any debt to a young man.

Lucy has a secret fire. At the piano she plays Beethoven with a passion that startles those who hear it, as though another woman lived inside the well-behaved girl. Mr. Beebe muses that if she ever lived as she played, it would be very exciting indeed.

Alone in the city, Lucy feels Italy working on her. The churches, the light, the reckless beauty stir longings her tidy upbringing never named. Something in her wants to break free, therefore she wanders out one afternoon into the great Piazza Signoria, restless and alone.

There, without warning, two Italians quarrel over money, and one stabs the other. The man staggers, bleeding, and collapses near her feet. The square seems to spin, therefore Lucy faints, and George Emerson, who happens to be close by, catches her before she strikes the stones.

George carries her to safety and fetches water. Recovering, Lucy remembers her photographs, but George has quietly thrown them into the Arno, for they were spattered with the dying man's blood. Something wordless has passed between them now, undeniable, and it frightens her.

A few days later the guests drive up into the hills of Fiesole for a picnic. Lucy, still unsettled, asks the Italian carriage driver to lead her to the chaplain. But the driver, misreading her heart, guides her instead toward George, waiting among the trees.

Lucy steps out onto a terrace flooded with blue violets, and there stands George. Overcome by the beauty and by her, he crosses the flowers and kisses her. For one bright instant she does not resist, but then Charlotte's voice cuts across the field, and the spell shatters.

Charlotte has seen everything. Alarmed, she treats the kiss as a scandal to be buried, therefore she hurries Lucy away, extracts her silence, and within days sweeps her cousin out of Florence entirely. Italy, and George, are left behind like a dream Lucy resolves to forget.

Home in Surrey, at her family's house called Windy Corner, Lucy tries to become sensible again. Soon she accepts the proposal of Cecil Vyse, a clever, cultured London gentleman who admires art, quotes cleverly, and regards Lucy herself as his finest acquisition.

But Cecil is refined and cold, and he cannot love a person, only possess a picture. He sees Lucy as a work of art to be framed, not a woman to be known. Her mother and her brother Freddy find him tiresome, therefore the whole household chafes beneath his polish.

Then chance plays a cruel joke. A small villa in the village falls empty, and Cecil, delighting to spite a snobbish neighbor, fills it with two travelers he met by accident in a gallery, the Emersons. So George comes to live a short walk from Windy Corner.

One warm afternoon Freddy invites George to bathe in a woodland pond the family calls the Sacred Lake. Mr. Beebe joins them, and the three men splash and laugh like boys, careless and free, until Lucy, her mother, and Cecil stumble straight upon them.

The sunlit accident unsettles Lucy more than she admits, for George's ease shames Cecil's stiffness. Then, at a garden party soon after, George finds her alone for a moment and kisses her once more, sudden, honest, and impossible to explain away.

Lucy, furious and afraid, demands that George leave and never return. But George stands his ground and tells her the truth: Cecil will never let her think or breathe as herself; he wants a possession, not a partner. George, by contrast, wants her whole and free.

His words lodge in her like a splinter. That evening Cecil, asked to join a game of tennis, refuses with lazy contempt, and Lucy suddenly sees him plainly, a man who looks down on everyone she loves. Therefore she breaks their engagement that very night.

Yet Lucy will not admit why. She tells herself she loves no one, that she is simply free, and to everyone, including her own heart, she lies. Forster calls it the muddle: the darkness we choose when the truth would cost us far too much.

To escape George, Cecil, and the whole tangle, Lucy schemes to flee to Greece with two elderly acquaintances, the Miss Alans. She deceives her family with cheerful lies, therefore the muddle deepens, and she stands one step from throwing her own happiness away for good.

But at the rectory Lucy meets old Mr. Emerson, unaware she has jilted Cecil. Gently, unbearably, he strips away her disguise: she loves George, has always loved him, and to deny it betrays her own life. As Forster wrote, we cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

Lucy weeps, for the old man has torn away every disguise. The room she has hidden in falls open at last, and she sees the view, clear and wide and hers. Therefore she stops lying, and chooses, finally, the man and the life she truly wants.

Defying convention, her mother's dismay, and her own long fear, Lucy marries George. Together they return to Florence, to that very pension, and take a room with a view across the city that first woke her. Charlotte, it emerges, had secretly helped them find each other.

What it means

That is the heart of Forster's book. A room is safety, custom, the life others choose for us; a view is truth, love, the wide world honestly seen. To grow up, he says, is to fling open the shutters, and refuse the comfortable lie.

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