A Room with a View

by E.M. Forster

Mr. Beebe, sitting unnoticed in the window, pondered this illogical element in Miss Honeychurch, and recalled the occasion at Tunbridge Wells when he had discovered it.

Mr. Beebe met Lucy Honeychurch at Tunbridge Wells

his composure was disturbed by the opening bars of Opus III.

This made me listen, out of curiosity. I like it!

Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if anything, disturbs.” “Introduce me.”

I love this. He is unfazed -- or rather, impressed -- by the man calling her song selection "sheer perversity."

“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her.”

“Doesn’t Mrs. Honeychurch like music?” “She doesn’t mind it. But she doesn’t like one to get excited over anything; she thinks I am silly about it.

"They heard me singing and they told me to stop/Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock"

All his life he had loved to study maiden ladies; they were his specialty, and his profession had provided him with ample opportunities for the work. Girls like Lucy were charming to look at, but Mr. Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather than enthralled.

Ew

It is so sad when people who have abilities misuse them, and I must say they nearly always do.

The poor thing was very ill after it, and so got tempted into cigarettes.

Been there

A delicate pathos perfumed her disconnected remarks, giving them unexpected beauty, just as in the decaying autumn woods there sometimes rise odours reminiscent of spring.

baize

Mr. Beebe smiled nonchalantly. He had made a gentle effort to introduce the Emersons into Bertolini society, and the effort had failed. He was almost the only person who remained friendly to them. Miss Lavish, who represented intellect, was avowedly hostile, and now the Miss Alans, who stood for good breeding, were following her. Miss Bartlett, smarting under an obligation, would scarcely be civil. The case of Lucy was different. She had given him a hazy account of her adventures in Santa Croce, and he gathered that the two men had made a curious and possibly concerted attempt to annex her, to show her the world from their own strange standpoint, to interest her in their private sorrows and joys. This was impertinent; he did not wish their cause to be championed by a young girl: he would rather it should fail.

He wanted to ingratiate them to this society, but maybe not to the chick he finds "interesting." Also, Miss Lavish should not represent intellect.

They don’t understand our ways. They must find their level.”

They must assimilate. They must acquiesce. They must dilute themselves down to be more palatable and approachable. Barf

Lucy never knew her desires so clearly as after music.

Conversation was tedious; she wanted something big, and she believed that it would have come to her on the wind-swept platform of an electric tram.

It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves.

restive.

But though she spent nearly seven lire, the gates of liberty seemed still unopened. She was conscious of her discontent; it was new to her to be conscious of it. “The world,” she thought, “is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.” It was not surprising that Mrs. Honeychurch disapproved of music, declaring that it always left her daughter peevish, unpractical, and touchy.

Suffering from the same depressing expansion of consciousness afflicting George

“Nothing ever happens to me,” she reflected, as she entered the Piazza Signoria and looked nonchalantly at its marvels, now fairly familiar to her.

Daring something tragic to happen. Ad isn't something tragic better than /nothing at all/? How we love to suffer

Lucy desired more.

The root of suffering

Even as she caught sight of him he grew dim; the palace itself grew dim, swayed above her, fell on to her softly, slowly, noiselessly, and the sky fell with it.

Fun way to describe fainting. Still, I don't generally love it when the female protagonist faints. Maybe this symbolizes a new life or rebirth. Some type of transition. She wished for something to happen, and now she's gotten a shock to the system

“Oh, what have I done?” she murmured, and opened her eyes. George Emerson still looked at her, but not across anything. She had complained of dullness, and lo! one man was stabbed, and another held her in his arms.

He said imperiously: “The man is dead—the man is probably dead; sit down till you are rested.” She was bewildered, and obeyed him. “And don’t move till I come back.”

Oh okay (o )(o ) if you insist imperious George

In the distance she saw creatures with black hoods, such as appear in dreams. The palace tower had lost the reflection of the declining day, and joined itself to earth. How should she talk to Mr. Emerson when he returned from the shadowy square? Again the thought occurred to her, “Oh, what have I done?”—the thought that she, as well as the dying man, had crossed some spiritual boundary.

Adding to the rebirth/transformation/consciousness expansion theme here

garrulous

didn’t know what to do with them,” he cried, and his voice was that of an anxious boy. Her heart warmed towards him for the first time. “They were covered with blood. There! I’m glad I’ve told you; and all the time we were making conversation I was wondering what to do with them.”

Aw :/ Feeling compassion for a man who summons the courage to be vulnerable (to admit-- "I'm scared") Too real.

It was useless to say to him, “And would you—” and hope that he would complete the sentence for himself, averting his eyes from her nakedness like the knight in that beautiful picture. She had been in his arms, and he remembered it, just as he remembered the blood on the photographs that she had bought in Alinari’s shop. It was not exactly that a man had died; something had happened to the living: they had come to a situation where character tells, and where childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth.

This solitude oppressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.

The river was a lion that morning in strength, voice, and colour.

Reading this just before Leo season. Just before Mercury goes retrograde in Leo as well

Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to re-enter it.

That doesn't work, sis

“literary hacks are shameless creatures. I believe there’s no secret of the human heart into which we wouldn’t pry.”

Always funny to resd how writers write about writers. Self-deprecating

The two men had quarrelled over a five-franc note. For the five-franc note she should substitute a young lady, which would raise the tone of the tragedy, and at the same time furnish an excellent plot.

Killing somebody over a five franc note is a more tragic story. It's one that speaks to class struggle-- and therefore over Miss Lavish's head. Her dramatized version is not only unoriginal; it flattens and trivializes

“What is the heroine’s name?” asked Miss Bartlett. “Leonora,” said Miss Lavish; her own name was Eleanor.

Lmao

plashed

satyrs

Of course, this is the barest outline. There will be a deal of local colouring, descriptions of Florence and the neighbourhood, and I shall also introduce some humorous characters.

All talk, no action, I'm sure. Just like she "lost" the first novel, this one probablg ain't goin nowhere

Miss Lavish gave a Machiavellian smile.

Bro, I can't lol. This girl is almost /too/ big a joke. Forster, please give her at least one redeeming quality

Mr. Eager!

Another revealing name?

Of the many things Lucy was noticing to-day, not the least remarkable was this: the ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble after blood. George Emerson had kept the subject strangely pure.

vellum;

She had been a little frightened, both by Miss Lavish and by Mr. Eager, she knew not why. And as they frightened her, she had, strangely enough, ceased to respect them.

For the first time Lucy’s rebellious thoughts swept out in words—for the first time in her life.

He gazed indignantly at the girl, who met him with equal indignation.

Yessss Lucy

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?

Florence as a character

A one-horse carriage would do for us. Yet how difficult it is!” “It is indeed,” replied the girl, with a gravity that sounded sympathetic.

/sounded/ sympathetic. Lucy's going through the motions

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.

First world problems. The boredom and manufactured drama of an idle life

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. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god.

Like the experience that Lucy and George shared: witnessing a murder. I lve the line "Though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before."

The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them

Crazy chapter title. "The Italians" being a footnote. Driving yet passive. /Frequently/ appearing, but strictly in caricature. And then, of course, we have a party of wealthy Brits driving out to see a nice view. It's worthwhile to consider the theme of "viewing" more closely. To "view" something is different than to really see it. It suggests distance. It's almost clinical really-- when compared with truly seeing or comprehending something

Phaethon

it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister—Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the Spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.

Like Lucy grappling with her newfound enlightenment. God, Forster's GOOD

She looked on the expedition as the work of Fate.