Through a Glass Darkly: A Room with a View
by Marilyn Green Faulkner
This business of seeing is a strange process. We know that something mechanical occurs when light hits the retina of the eye, and images are communicated to the brain. That, however, is just the beginning of sight. From quite a young age, we also understand that sight is an inward process as well, and look beyond the surface of faces and objects for their spiritual significance. Perched precariously between the innocence of prewar England and the disasters to come, a young man named Edward Forster penned a novel about a young girl learning to see for herself, and poured into it all of his “insights” (a lovely word) about the clash between civility and nature, between keeping up appearances and living with a vision. He called it A Room with a View.
E.M. Forster was only twenty-eight years old when he published A Room with a View, and its tone reflects the hope and optimism of a young idealist. Forster has been called the expert on spinsters, clergymen and “nervous old ladies,” and peoples his novel with the kind of people who raised him in a nostalgic representation of an era disappearing even as he began to write. (D.H. Lawrence called Forster “the last Englishman.”) Games of lawn tennis, tea in the garden, calls paid to neighbors and returned within ten days, all the conventions of genteel suburban life are chronicled here in delightful detail. There are the Emersons with their “anti-religious” views, and the snobby Vyse’s in London who give dinner parties attended by “the grandchildren of famous people.” We meet the ancient Miss Alans, who traverses the globe armed with Baedekker guides and plenty of digestive bread, the bitter, suspicious cousin Charlotte, and a host of others, Italians and English, all drawn with careful, loving care by a master of characterization.
The central figure of the tale is Lucy Honeychurch, an average girl with a pretty face and an unusual talent for music. (Forster believed in art as a vehicle for inner discovery.) Mr. Beebe, the celibate clergyman who acts as intermediary between the large cast of characters at home and abroad, muses about what might happen if Lucy ever learns to “live as she plays.” Such a development would not be possible in England, but on a tour of Italy Lucy comes face to face, first with death, then with physical attraction, then with love. Whether she will have the courage to bring her new view home with her, and whether she will be able to combine youthful passion with social propriety become the focus of the story, told in a tone of comic irony remarkable in an author so young.
Forster was raised in a setting very like Windy Corner, coddled by his mother and maiden aunts after his father’s death. He has a perfect ear for dialogue, and it is a pleasure to listen in on the Honeychurches at home, or the Vyses in their stuffy, London flat. Forster uses dialogue to help us see into the hearts of these people, but we must attend to the subtle shifts in conversation. No one will shout the message to us here, except old Mr. Emerson, who eschews all forms of “civilized” communication and wishes only to speak from the heart. It is he who possesses the wardrobe upon which is inscribed this motto: “Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.” His loud ranting offends everyone but Lucy, who sees in his indelicacy “something beautiful.” His son George rouses in her a feeling of immediate physical and spiritual attraction, a passion so foreign to her that she attributes it to her Italian surroundings. Her impulse is to flee Italy and her new emotional state. But the winds of fate blow even as far as Windy Corner, and George turns up in her English neighborhood, as full of passion and love as in Italy. By then Lucy has replaced one chaperone for another; she has become engaged to Cecil, snobby, controlling, yet socially desirable. Lucy must choose.
The novel is organized almost as a play, with chapter headings that describe the scene to follow. The two exceptions are titled simply, Fourth Chapter and Twelfth Chapter. These two chapters record events of deeper significance: the death of the Italian that brings Lucy and George together, and the swim in the “Sacred Lake,” where Freddy, George and the clergyman Beebe go “skinnydipping” and encounter Cecil, Lucy and Mrs. Honeychurch in a hilarious clash between nature and civilization. Though Forster makes us laugh in these scenes, his meaning is serious. The trappings of civilization, our manners, civilities, customs and prejudices, may keep us from truly connecting with each other and with the best that lies within us. Lucy, upon hearing that the Emersons will be moving to her neighborhood, rehearses over and over how she will meet George. When, instead of meeting at church or a garden party, she stumbles across him whooping like an Indian at play in the bathing pool, all her rehearsal is in vain. She simply bows to him, Forster says, “across the rubbish that cumbers the world.”
There is a bit of Lucy Honeychurch in all of us, isn’t there. It can be difficult as a young person to reconcile our lofty ideals of eternal companionship with the commonsense requirements of real life. I remember bringing a young man home from BYU to meet my parents. He was serious, righteous, and extremely smart and spiritual. After everyone had been introduced I was anxious to hear my mother’s reaction to my new beau. I found her at her vanity, doing her hair, and as I chattered on and on my mother looked thoughtfully at my reflection in her mirror. Finally she said simply, “Yes, but Marilyn, I wonder, do you want your children to look like him?” I was silenced. With the wisdom of years she correctly saw that I felt no real attraction for this fellow. I did not love him “body and soul,” as Mr. Emerson describes it, but was attracted to his qualities, his intellect, his “trappings.” I had yet to experience the kind of connection upon which a true marriage is made. Ironically, it was in my home, among the mundane details of daily life, that I could see these eternal realities most clearly. Lucy finds the same thing to be true: Cecil is hopelessly out of place in her home while George slips easily into the routine of things. In Windy Corner Forster creates a happy haven of safety, flawed yet perfect in its way, as our own homes are, with a loving family who helps us find our inner vision through acceptance, unconditional love and an occasional dose of the truth about ourselves.
E.M. Forster went on to write two great novels: Howard’s End and A Passage to India. If his artistry appeals to you as it does to me I recommend them both. His prose at its best becomes almost musical, and his use of dialogue always rings true, which cannot be said for most of the novels of today. (All three novels, by the way, have been beautifully adapted for film by the Merchant-Ivory team.) Forster’s own life was, to use his expression, “a muddle,” and he never achieved the happiness he granted to Lucy and George. In them he created a union of body and soul that symbolized the harmony of civilization and nature. It is “a consummation devoutly to be wished” and a beautiful expression of the heights attainable in the midst of everyday realities. Once you gaze into the life of this little novel, you cannot help but enjoy the view, and may gain some insight into the workings of your own soul.
2001 Meridian Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
