Title: A Room with a ViewAuthor: E.M. Forester
Publication Date: 1908
Synopsis: Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George.
Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
Discussion: This book was chosen because it has similar qualities to Persuasion and Emma. Unlike out last book discussion book which was a kind of rewriting of Sense and Sensibility.
A Room with a View, Emma, and Persuasion are all classic love stories. They are all about young women, coming of age in England and dealing with the defined rules of society and customs of their social class. The difference is that A Room with a View takes place nearly 100 years after Emma and Persuasion. Yet still we read about a girl who feels torn between doing what she feels is best for her and doing what society and family think is best.
Jane Austen Society of North America - New Jersey Region 