'You're always protecting....I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place!.....conventional, Cecil, you're that.....I wont be stifled'
Cecil listens to Lucy and concedes that she is right;
'It is a question of ideals, yours and mine- pure abstract ideals, and yours are the nobler. I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time you were splendid and new.'
Then Mr Beebe is portrayed as somewhere in the middle of the two groups, he is a Vicar therefore he symbolises religion and convention but he is kind, and Christian which makes him liberal, and the reader believes that he is quite socialist as well. However, at the end of the novel he does not forgive Lucy and George because as Mr Emerson says passion and love is the part of people Mr Beebe does not understand.. Although there is another theory that Mr Beebe himself is in love with George.
Forster confuses the reader intentionally by making them unsure of what each character's principles and morals are because he is trying to convey how uncertain people of this era actually were.
Lucy is probably the most obvious example of an uncertain character but whether this is a result of her era's uncertainty or just her age is arguable. Even so, Forster often describes Lucy as 'bewildered' or 'again conscious of some new idea'. Lucy's development throughout the novel is a metaphor for her society's development, Forster uses Lucy as another method to portray the social change. It is a more effective for Forster to write A Room With A View in the third person - but with Lucy's thoughts included - rather than simply writing the novel from Lucy's point of view, because this gives the book perspective; this perspective is possibly an explanation of the title.
When Forster describes an important scene in the novel, he always includes a description of the natural surroundings, Before the murder which Lucy witnesses in the square, Forster describes the twilight; the twilight is significant because it symbolises a transition for George and Lucy, as it is a transition between day and night. Similarly the scene of George and Lucy's kiss is preceded by a description of the surroundings;
'From her feet the ground sloped sharply into the view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.
Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man.....George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves...He stepped forward and kissed her.'
The way the water 'gushed' out describes how natural and unrefined it is, just as George's love for Lucy is. He acts on instinct and out of passion, water and nature is everywhere and they influence George because he embraces nature. Cecil is a complete contradiction to this, 'I have got an idea... that you feel more at home with me in a room.' He says once to Lucy, she replies
''Do you know that you're right?...When I think of you it's always as in a room.' To her surprise, he seemed annoyed.
'A drawing room, pray? With no view?'
'Yes, with no view, I fancy. Why not?'
'I'd rather,' he said reproachfully, 'that you connected me with open air.'
This paragraph both describes what Lucy thinks of Cecil and Cecil's own obsessions. Cecil preaches that embracing nature is wonderful but fears he is not the type of man that does. George just naturally embraces nature.
The scene then leads on to Lucy and Cecil's kiss, set besides a motionless pond in a wood. There is no passion or impulsion in the scene because Forster makes the surroundings appear so dismal and Cecil is so awkward. Cecil and Lucy's kiss is passionless, awkward, in a dark wood by a still pond; by contrast George and Lucy's kiss was passionate and sudden, set by a gushing river, on a hill covered in bright blue violets overlooking Florence, Forster uses the two kisses to compare the two men. George is renaissance and follows his heart, and Cecil is medieval and as George says is 'the sort who can't know anyone intimately.'
Forster is not just describing the changes occurring during this period, he is clearly also in favour of them since the culmination of the plot is Lucy's rejection of Cecil, symbolising inhibition and constraint, and her acceptance of George, symbolising liberalisation and passion.
A Room With A View is not just about social changes generally but also about matters of the heart. Love is beginning to replace Religion in this era. Lucy, as said above, represents society and when she chooses love over social obligation she is demonstrating society's loosening of its old restraints. When Mr Beebe rejects her and George, he is rejecting secularisation. People of this era are losing faith in religion and replacing it with faith in soul mates, however social restraints increased the difficulty of following one's heart because society felt it was 'improper' to admit to one's true feelings. Freddy calls Lucy and George's marriage an 'elopement' because they have married for love.
Forster's novel is almost an encouragement to people of his era to lose their inhibitions and follow their hearts; he highlights the stupidity of the times, where people believed in love, but despise those defied convention to marry for love.
His novel is successful at doing this because it glorifies passion and impulsiveness; he mocks those symbolising convention such as Cecil, Mr Eager and Miss Bartlett and endorses those that represent love and liberalisation. Cecil doesn’t just represent convention he also represents 'culture'. Lucy and George marry in the end to everyone's surprise because it is Forster's hope to encourage romance. Although Forster's novel is dealing with specific events occurring in English history it never the less remains a novel which is still enjoyed today because it deals with the universal theme that love conquers all. The characters are creations that live today just as they did as when the novel was first published, because they are so realistic and familiar to the reader.
