A Room With A View

1. A Room With A View Mock Exam Review 2012

2. Essay Question • In what ways does Forster present the snobbery and self-consciousness of the society the novel reflects?

3. Techniques (How) • The novel is narrated in a third-person omniscient tone. Forster's characters are revealed through both their own dialogue and the narrative, which tends to probe their thoughts and expose what they are really thinking. • The petty snobberies of the pension guests are easily exposed by Forster's pen, especially regarding attitudes toward the British lower classes and the Italians. • Often, Forster gently pokes fun at his characters or belittles them, showing their fallacies, confusions, and weaknesses as well as their good intentions. • Lucy receives much of this inward attention, and most of the other main characters receive some. However, Forster does not enter the minds of the Emersons, so these two men appear as mysterious to the reader as they do to the rest of the pension guests.

4. Techniques (How) • Use of dichotomies to bring out the irony; English vs Italian, Medievalism vsRenaissance • Allusions to art and music: • “Art is valuable because it has to do with order, and creates little worlds of its own, possessing internal harmony, in the bosom of this disordered planet. It is needed at once and now” • Allusions to Mythology: introduces free spiritedness

5. Techniques & Principal Focus • The amusing and at the most annoying and irritating English preoccupation with propriety and conventions is presented through Forster’s blunted satire as he mocks characters, their mannerisms, beliefs and values subtly and humorously through the: • extensive use of free indirect speech, in order at once to access characters’ mental processes and to give shape to their impressions and emotions. • The principal focus was on the individual’s dilemma evident largely from the psychological negotiations brought to us through free indirect discourse wherein judgments are cast by the narrator subtly.

6. Themes / Dichotomies Some themes you may want to present for discussion: • beauty vs delicacy, private vs public, • hypocrisy vs honesty, medievalism vs renaissance, • nature vs society, truth vs ideals.

7. Important Passage (e.g.) • Within the first chapter, Lucy asks Charlotte about Mr. Emerson, questioning "Have you ever noticed that there are some people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time--beautiful?" Charlotte responds "Are not beauty and delicacy the same thing?" These questions form the crux of Forster's exploration of the nature of beauty and the ways in which refined society can fail to apprehend a wilder, less authorized kind of beauty and truth. Lucy begins to understand that she can harbor a personal, individual idea of beauty that exists outside of society's official standards.

8. Context Question b) Write a critical commentary on the following passage, paying particular attention to the effects and importance of setting in the novel.

9. Florence vs England • “They were now in the newspaper-room at the English bank. Lucy stood by the central table, heedless of Punch and the Graphic, trying to answer, or at all events to formulate the questions rioting in her brain. The well-known world had broken up, and there emerged Florence, a magic city where people thought and did the most extraordinary things. Murder, accusations of murder, A lady clinging to one man and being rude to another—were these the daily incidents of her streets? Was there more in her frank beauty than met the eye—the power, perhaps, to evoke passions, good and bad, and to bring them speedily to a fulfillment?”

10. Place and Perspective • Narrative voice echoes Lucy’s sense of displacement and the ensuing muddle that begins to form in Lucy’s head through the third person omniscient narrator who gives his readers insights into Lucy’s thoughts after she encounters the true terrible beauty of Italy. • Forster creates the deep connection between place and perspective in this passage. The place comes with a perspective: values, beliefs, prejudices, fears and a character that defines its people. Florence introduces to the protagonist a real world with the “good and bad” that is able to “evoke passions” that Lucy is currently experiencing but unable to voice given the rigid and uncompromising Middle Class English Conventions. The narration offers us Lucy’s secret admiration for the “lady” who expresses her passion “clinging to one man and being rude to another” without fear. Forster captures Lucy’s secret thoughts artfully through this narrative device: Free Indirect Discourse.

11. Florence vs Sussex Weald • There were letters for her at the bureau—one from her brother, full of athletics and biology; one from her mother, delightful as only her mother's letters could be. She had read in it of the crocuses which had been bought for yellow and were coming up puce, of the new parlour-maid, who had watered the ferns with essence of lemonade, of the semi-detached cottages which were ruining Summer Street, and breaking the heart of Sir Harry Otway. She recalled the free, pleasant life of her home, where she was allowed to do everything, and where nothing ever happened to her. The road up through the pine-woods, the clean drawing-room, the view over the Sussex Weald—all hung before her bright and distinct, but pathetic as the pictures in a gallery to which, after much experience, a traveller returns.

12. Florence vs Sussex Weald • Forster presents contrasts once again in perspectives, values, norms and expectations by providing us with glimpses of Englishness evident in the description of the landscape that the narrator provides in such detail but the beauty of the English landscape is undercut through Lucy’s response presented through free indirect discourse “where nothing ever happened to her”…where everything was “bright and distinct” but “pathetic”.

13. The country of Italy is portrayed by Forster as containing a “frank beauty” that is at once refined and majestic (great artwork and architecture) and pedestrian (its people and countryside). Italy is "chaotic," and "dangerous," and its unpredictability opposes the rigidity of Britain and its upper classes. The influence of this foreign land is seen to challenge and possibly nullify the usual ties that hold British high society together. Lucy, though the product of years of English breeding, is still susceptible to other influences evident in the questions that are raised in her concerning “beauty”. A thing of beauty she reckons must “evoke passions, good and bad, and to bring them speedily to fulfillment.”

14. Florence vs Walls of the English Bank • Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that did not matter, seemed obliviousto things that did; who could conjecture with admirable delicacy "where things might lead to," but apparently lost sight of the goal as she approached it. Now she was crouching in the corner trying to extract a circular note from a kind of linen nose-bag which hung in chaste concealment round her neck. She had been told that this was the only safe way to carry money in Italy; it must only be broached within the walls of the English bank.

15. Lucy’s Dilemma vs Charlotte’s Dilemma • This truthful (frank) narration of Lucy’s deep-seated thoughts and emotions are contrasted in the following paragraph with Charlotte’s “Happy” state. Here the narrative voice mocks and satirises English superficiality and their concern with the frivolous at the expense of what really matters. The wry humour at the expense of Charlotte is evident as the narrator bemuses with mock seriousness “who could conjecture with admirable delicacy…but apparently lost sight of the goal as she approached it. Now she was crouching in the corner …linen nose bag…which hung in chaste concealment…she had been told that this was the only safe way to carry money. We are reminded once again of the comic tension that exists between the English perspective of “beauty and delicacy”

16. Charlotte Exemplifies Englishness • Forster thus provides us with a caricature of Charlotte amplifying her obsessiveness with being prim, proper and safe with the high modality words “must” and “only”. She preserves her delicacy and chastity at the expense of living life and exploring the true Italy, and is about to influence Lucy who is at the brink of discovering herself through her encounter in the real Italy.

17. Englishness & Frivolity • As she groped she murmured: "Whether it is Mr. Beebe who forgot to tell Mr. Eager, or Mr. Eager who forgot when he told us, or whether they have decided to leave Eleanor out altogether—which they could scarcely do—but in any case we must be prepared. It is you they really want; I am only asked for appearances. You shall go with the two gentlemen, and I and Eleanor will follow behind. A one-horse carriage would do for us. Yet how difficult it is!"

18. Charlotte shields herself from the real world • The preoccupation with the frivolous, who did what and who goes with whom, is further reinforced with Forster’s inclusion of direct speech to highlight Lucy’s secret thoughts with Charlotte’s self proclaimed “dilemma”.

19. Lucy allows herself to be touched by the real Italy • “Yet how difficult it is!" • "It is indeed," replied the girl, with a gravity that sounded sympathetic. "What do you think about it?" asked Miss Bartlett, flushed from the struggle, and buttoning up her dress. • "I don't know what I think, nor what I want."

20. The Encounter in the Real Italy has Evoked Thoughts and Emotions • Forster further highlights in this direct discourse between Lucy and Charlotte the humorous yet pathetic situation. Lucy’s sense of displacement evident in her outcry “I don’t know what I think, nor what I want” falls on deaf ears emphasizing once again the English preoccupation with appearances at the expense of apprehending the beauty in truth for oneself, outside of society’s standards or norms.

21. Exploring beyond Place • They're nice people, the Vyses. So clever—my idea of what's really clever. Don't you long to be in Rome?" • "I die for it!" • The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance—unless we believe in a presiding genius of places—the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood, nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before.

22. The Fetish for the Untainted (Prim and Proper) • Forster mocks the response of the typical English visitor who is unable to see the beauty of the place beyond the physical. The narrator satirises the voice of English supremacy and their acute disappointment of not being confronted with the picture perfect evident in glossy travel brochures. The lack of depth of the English is emphasized through the repetition of ‘no’. The landscape it suggests defines peoples’ expectations, values, beliefs and cultural norms.