For some cheer in these challenging times, a post from the Novel Readings archives about one of the most joyful novels I know.
“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm — yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
A Room with a View is a novel that doesn’t just make me laugh but also fills me with a glow of what I can only call delight. Comedy alone (as I found with Mapp and Lucia) isn’t necessarily uplifting: too acid an undertone can compromise the pleasure and make you (or me, at any rate) feel a little smaller for having partaken. A Room with a View, however, is so humane, so forgiving — even in its satire — of the muddles we all make of our lives, that it always makes me feel better, bigger, more hopeful.
Zadie Smith quotes Forster calling A Room with a View “bright and merry,” and it is, but it never ignores shadows, darkness, or trouble. I was thinking, reading it this time, that its brightness really relies on its constant reminders that the light is always embattled, that its characters’ small struggles — to be, to do, to love, what is right and beautiful — are part of a wider struggle, the same one Dorothea invokes in Middlemarch when explaining her guiding belief to Will:
That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil — widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
Though her struggles are longer and more painful than Lucy’s, Dorothea is more consistent in her pursuit of the light — less prone to deceive herself, or to lie to others. Wrong as she so often is, she at least sees more clearly through the stifling inadequacies of petty convention. Lucy, on the other hand, is constrained and inhibited by convention to the point that she is almost unable (and certainly unwilling) to recognize love and truth when they offer themselves. As a result, as Forster’s wonderful chapter titles itemize for us, she lies — to George, to Cecil, to Mr. Beebe, to Mrs. Honeychurch, to Freddy, to Mr. Emerson, but worst of all, to herself. Her lies put her among “the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. . . . The night received her,” Forster intones solemnly. “I have been into the dark,” George tells her urgently, “and I am going back into it, unless you will try to understand.” “It is again the darkness creeping in,” exclaims Mr. Emerson, despairing; “it is hell.”
It is,” as the narrator says, “the old, old battle of the room with the view,” and the joy of the novel is that even as we feel the horror of violence and death and the lesser but equally inexorable horror of everything Lucy must overcome, we see the view open up, we see the light and the violets and the sunshine, we heed the driver’s cry of “Courage and love!”
It’s easier, in a way, to scorn a joyful ending, to belittle as unserious a novel that champions happiness, than to admire novels that rend our hearts with “all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth.” But just as Will cautions Dorothea against the “fanaticism of sympathy,” we shouldn’t shut joy out of literature even when – maybe, especially when – we are all too aware that the world is full of troubles. Sometimes it’s important to stand facing the sunshine.
Originally published December 22, 2014. I hope to have the time and mental clarity to write some new posts before too long! In the meantime, all my best wishes to everyone as we make our way through all this.
Novel Readings 
And our best wishes to you too as well, Rohan. I haven’t thought about Room With a View for a long time. It was on my first-year undergraduate syllabus. It’s also one of the few novels that I think was turned into an excellent film. I don’t have a copy around at the moment either of the film or the book but I think I might drag out copies both if I can find them. Thank you for bringing it back to my mind.
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I agree about the film. It might be tied with The Remains of the Day for ‘best adaptation of a novel I love.’
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I have been doing adult reading seminars on Forster for several years, and in 2019 I did one combining “Room with a View” with “Where Angels Fear to Tread.” Of course, all of Forster’s novels deserve more attention, but “Room” is, as you suggest, perhaps Forster’s sunniest book (although “Maurice,” dedicated “to a happier year” has its magnificently rosy (for 1914) outcome. This book has so much–symbolism for days, homoeroticism in equal measure, and the bright glow of Italian sun, the baptismal drenching of Italian rain–did I mention homoeroticism–and the wonderfully subtle characterization of cousin Charlotte, a role that no one but Maggie Smith could have played with such precision. It’s a magical book, well worth this blogging reprise.
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I think maybe you did mention homoeroticism! 🙂
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What timing; I’ve been thinking of re-reading this and looking for joyful reading, but it’s been so long since I read this (almost 30 years, my gawd!) that I don’t remember it at all and so didn’t realize it could be described as merry. Thanks, Rohan. (And hi! Long time no “see.”)
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Colleen! It’s you! What a treat. 🙂 I saw you’d posted on your own blog and was happy to think that you were re-emerging. A bright spot in the gloom.
Yes, merry, but since they have to fight for the merriment and the joy, it feels really worth it by the end–meaningful in a way that not all comedy does. Forster’s chapter titles alone are a great source of amusement.
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Thanks, Rohan, It’s good to be back–which is a strange thing to say, given that it’s precisely COVID-19 that gave me the extra time required to blog…
Local Toronto bookstores all closed to the public last week; by Wednesday, I think they’ll all be closed-closed because the premier has made closing mandatory for non-essential businesses. I ordered some books over the phone late last week and picked them up today, probably the last day I’d be able to do it–and in that package is A Room With a View. I may not get to it immediately but I’m perhaps disproportionately relieved that I have this Forster in my possession now.
Stay safe down there!
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine. E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
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