Part of my study abroad trip to London and Rome in September is a series of blog posts about some assigned readings, and reflections upon them. This is the second such post, and is two of two about E. M. Forester’s A Room with a View.
“But in Italy, where anyone who chooses may warm himself in equality, as in the sun, this conception of life vanished. Her senses expanded; she felt that there was no one whom she might not get to like, that social barriers were irremovable, doubtless, but not particularly high. … She returned with new eyes.”
– from page 130 of the Penguin Classics edition of E.M.Forster’s A Room with a View
Lucy changes from Italy to England, from a girl exploring on her own, seeing Italy at the last with her own eyes, to returning to the stilted stuffy British society where she accepts a suitor she doesn’t particularly like, and is fenced in by the rules of her society. She grows increasingly muddled as she came back with new eyes, rejects what she sees with them, and can’t reconcile the contradictions of her new view with life in England. Finally reaching a point where she attempts to flee to Greece to escape it all.