“Remembering that she was engaged to Cecil, she compelled herself to confused remembrances of George: he was nothing to her; he never had been anything; he had behaved abominably; she had never encouraged him” (A Room with a View). This quotation from E. M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View, published in 1908, shows the protagonist’s, Lucy Honeychurch, confused feelings towards her two suitors. While Cecil is a promoter of the ancient image of womanhood and is regarded as her perfect suitor, George holds a more modern view. In the beginning, Lucy’s conservative upbringing can be accounted for her very conventional view and ambiguous feelings towards the unconventional George. She is mainly shaped through her family and their values and in George, she encounters a passionate and rather individual man for the first time in her life. Both men, Cecil and George, influence Lucy’s development equally and can be considered crucial determinants in her transition from a conventional girl to a freethinking woman.
Literary Analysis
The influences of Cecil and George on Lucy’s development in A Room with a View
“Remembering that she was engaged to Cecil, she compelled herself to confused remembrances of George: he was nothing to her; he never had been anything; he had behaved abominably; she had never encouraged him” (A Room with a View1 150). This quotation from E. M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View, published in 1908, shows the protagonist’s, Lucy Honeychurch, confused feelings towards her two suitors. While Cecil is a promoter of the ancient image of womanhood and is regarded as her perfect suitor, George holds a more modern view. In the beginning, Lucy’s conservative upbringing can be accounted for her very conventional view and ambiguous feelings towards the unconventional George. She is mainly shaped through her family and their values and in George, she encounters a passionate and rather individual man for the first time in her life. Both men, Cecil and George, influence Lucy’s development equally and can be considered crucial determinants in her transition from a conventional girl to a freethinking woman.
Lucy’s conventional suitor, Cecil, has at first appearance solely negative influences on Lucy’s personal development, but a closer examination shows that Lucy also benefits from the experiences made in this relationship. The relationship between Lucy and Cecil is in all aspects a liaison between two unequal partners, which Heath even calls the “mismatch of Lucy and Cecil” (420). Cecil embodies the conventional values of Lucy’s family inasmuch as he represents common sex stereotypes. This includes that Lucy is seen as subordinate to Cecil: “’Come this way immediately,’ commanded Cecil, who always felt that he must lead women, though he knew not whither, and protect them, though he knew not against what” (ARV 122). This restricts her urge for personal freedom and increases her desire to be with an equal partner, which the following quotation illustrates: “He had no glimpse of the comradeship after which the girl’s soul yearned” (ARV 143). Lucy feels caught in their relationship and this constitutes the basis for her betrayal on Cecil with George. Lucy’s relationship with Cecil has a negative impact on her individual development at first, since he keeps her in a “world of oppressive convention” (Wagner 280), from which she finally dissolves herself to make her own decisions. However, the relationship with Cecil and the experiences Lucy makes in it are part of her way to become a woman who is able to lead a working relationship with an equal partner. Cecil is one of the main reasons for Lucy’s happy future with George, as Lucy only learns to value George’s personality and the way he treats her due to her bad experiences with Cecil.
George’s influence on Lucy is in every respect positive and initiates her final development into a self-reliant woman. George evokes her passion and despite Lucy’s emotional confusion in the beginning (cf. Fordonski 97), he is the main catalyst of her final awareness of her real feelings, which allows her to lead a fulfilled and thoroughly satisfied life with George: “Youth enwrapped them, the song of Phaeton announced passion required, love attained. But they were conscious of a love more mysterious than this” (ARV 196). Due to George, Lucy is confronted with a picture of free and emancipated women who are supposed to make their own decisions and judgments. In the beginning, she tries to run away from her now role, but in the end she accepts it with the help of George, who symbolically stops her mending his socks and pulls her to the window as his equal in the final scene of the novel (cf. Finkelstein 78, 88): “He carried her to the window, so that she, too, saw all the view” (ARV 194). The view Lucy sees is a symbol of her newly-gained freedom and equality with George. They perceive the world from the same perspective and a new era has begun, as the title of the final chapter, “The End of The Middle Ages” suggests. Thus, Lucy is able to live as an unlimited free individual who is not restricted by her partner in any way; George’s intentions can be seen in his utterance: “I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms” (ARV 155). This forms a considerable contrast to her old life, which was controlled by conventions and gender roles that made it impossible for her to open up for her true self. Not only is Lucy able to take on the role of an emancipated woman in the end, but also to accept her sexuality (cf. Finkelstein 83). As a consequence of Lucy’s passionate encounters with George, she “experiences a renaissance” of her own and finally reaches insight into her own mind and develops an understanding of herself when she breaks free of social conventions imposed on her (Edwards 79).
All in all, Lucy’s relationships with Cecil and George play an important role in shaping her personality and influence her development into a free and individual woman in the course of the novel. As Womack points out, she is only able to discover herself with the help of these two males, as she is unable to progress on her own (cf. 30-31). Through Cecil, Lucy was able to discover what was is essential for her in a relationship and with the help of George, Lucy has gained a new view on life and the world, which includes the notion of equality of sexes, freedom, and the acceptance of people with opposing opinions. Keeping an open mind and following one’s heart always seems to be the best solution in order to achieve happiness in life.
Primary Sources
Forster, E. M. A Room with a View. New York: Penguin, 2000.
Secondary Sources
Edwards, Mike. E. M. Forster: The Novels. Analysing Texts. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Finkelstein, Bonnie Blumenthal. Forster’s Women: Eternal Differences. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1974.
Fordonski, Krzysztof. The Shaping of the Double Vison: The Symbolic Systems of the Italian Novels of Edward Morgan Forster. European University Studies Ser. XIV AngloSaxon Language and Literature 414. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2005.
Heath, Jeffrey. “Kissing and Telling: Turning round in A Room with a View. Twentieth Century Literature 40.4 (1994): 393-433.
Wagner, Philip C., Jr. “Phaeton, Persephone, and A Room with a View. Comparative Literature Studies 27.1 (1990): 275-284.
Womack, Kenneth. “Lucy Honeychurch’s Rage for Selfhood: Family Systems Therapy, Ethics, and E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View.” Reading the Family Dance/Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study. Ed. by John V. Knapp and Kenneth Womack. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. 29-45.
[...]
1 In the following quotations from A Room with a View will be abbreviated with ARV and the number of the page.
- Citar trabajo
- Anónimo,, 2010, The influences of Cecil and George on Lucy’s development in "A Room with a View", Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1360402
