A Room with a View

Written at the end of the Victorian Era and dawn of the Edwardian Era in England, E.M. Forester's A Room with a View comments on the new liberal and open-minding ideals were replacing old social norms. The protagonist is Lucy Honeychurch, on holiday in Italy with her straight-laced, snobbish, and narrow-minded aunt. A "classic exploration of passion, human nature and social convention," Forester's novel is both delightful and insightful.

But Lucy had developed since the spring. That is to say, she was now better able to stifle the emotions of which the conventions and the world disapprove...Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it. (132)

Lucy struggles with identifying her emotions and defying the social constructs of the time period she's living in. It was wondrously written, letting the reader get lost in the worlds of Italy and England. It was adapted into a critically acclaimed film in 1985, starring Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy. Overall, Forester's classic novel was a short, easy read but an enlightening social commentary on England at the turn of the twentieth century. Rating: ★★★★