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E.M. Forster
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Phaethon drives the party up to Fiesole, all fire and no care, and asks leave to collect Persephone on the way. He calls her his sister. Mr Eager says this is how imposition starts. The ladies plead, and once it is understood to be a great favour she is allowed up beside him. He slips a rein over her head and drives with his arm around her waist. Mr Eager sits with his back to the horses and sees none of it.
A worse change has already happened. Mr Beebe, without asking, has doubled the party. At the kerb the careful seating falls apart. Miss Lavish climbs in with Lucy, so Lucy rides with her, with Mr Eager, and with old Mr Emerson, who is asleep after lunch. Charlotte, George, and Mr Beebe follow in the second carriage. Tea at a Renaissance villa is now impossible. Mr Eager will not introduce a lady novelist, or a journalist who murdered his wife in the sight of God, into anyone's house. Lucy had meant this day to be the end of George. He has shown, openly, that he wants their acquaintance to go on. She refused, not because she dislikes him, but because she does not know what happened between them by the river, and she suspects that he does.
On the hillside the party separates to find the view. Lucy, looking for the clergymen, is taken in hand by the driver. In his company the world feels direct. He picks her a bunch of blue violets, holds back the branches, and leads her through undergrowth that keeps getting thicker. She hears a voice behind them and cannot make him understand that they may have missed the good men. Then the ground gives way. She falls out of the wood onto a little terrace covered with violets from end to end, the flowers running down the hill in streams. At the brink stands the man she was not looking for, and he is alone. George turns, sees the joy in her face and the flowers against her dress, steps forward, and kisses her. Before she can speak, Charlotte calls her name three times. Miss Bartlett stands brown against the view.
A picnic meant for propriety can become the scene where feeling finally speaks. On the drive to Fiesole, George kisses Lucy among violets and the party fractures into panic.
Name the moment feeling overrode rules and ask what you would do if no one were narrating.
This chapter
The bushes close, he kisses her, and before she can speak a voice calls her name: the silence of life is broken by Miss Bartlett, who stands brown against the view. Care, for the cousin, arrives as interruption. She puts her own figure between the girl and the landscape the kiss had just made real.
Continue this thoughtSilence, Then the TrainCharlotte immediately begins planning their escape from Italy, determined to remove Lucy from George's influence before any more damage is done. But some awakenings can't be undone, no matter how quickly you run from them..
What this chapter proves — the patterns beneath the scene
In this chapter: The Room and the View · Trusting Your Instincts · The Language of Class.
The cards below name the patterns this chapter proves — carry them with you into the original text.
The Room and the View
The carriage party goes out to see a view. Lucy is left among violets. George is waiting. He kisses her. For a moment the hillside does the work the drawing-room will not allow. Then Charlotte appears, and the room reasserts itself before they have even started down.
Key Insight
Italy does not invent the view. It removes the furniture long enough for Lucy to see it. The rest of the book is whether she can keep it without the hillside.
“Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!”Full analysis
Chapter 06
Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them. It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr. Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister—Persephone, tall and slender…
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Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
Say yes to Cecil on the third try, then hear George say that a man like that is for pictures, not for a woman.
Book Greece with the Miss Alans the night she breaks with Cecil, then sit by the Rectory fire while Mr. Emerson names the muddle.
Deep diving the literary elements.
Guides, life skills, and the full library.More ways to read A Room with a View: guides, life skills, and the wider library.
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Trusting Your Instincts
Among the violets George kisses her and she does not stop him. For a moment she understands. Then Charlotte appears and the trained response floods back. The instinct was clear. The chaperone was faster at supplying a story.
Key Insight
Society is built to make the clear moment feel like a mistake. The kiss is not confusion. The rewrite afterward is.
The Language of Class
The Reverend Eager organises the Fiesole drive and polices the carriages. He seats people, directs talk, and puts off the driver Phaethon and the girl beside him because their happiness is the wrong kind to be visible. Love is permitted. Love without the code is indecent.
Key Insight
Class here is not only money. It is a system for deciding which feelings may be seen from the road.
