Forster’s third published novel appeared in 1908, although the author had begun work on it several years before. As with his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, the story makes memorable use of Italy as a region in which repressed English tourists can begin to express themselves in more emotional and less restrained terms; it is this more passionate, instinctive grasp on the world and oneself for which the ‘view’ of the title is a metaphor.
The novel focuses on one such instance of emotional expression and its consequences – a passionate kiss between Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson, which threatens to undermine the stifling formality of the English party’s excursion into the hills around Florence. After Lucy and her party return to England, the spectre of her indiscretion, as well as the ‘Italian’ passion it has begun to unleash in her, threaten to reappear when the Emersons rent a cottage near her family home.
A Room with a View was Forster’s least favourite of his novels, for which he regretted providing what he saw as an unrealistically happy ending. Generations of readers have disagreed strongly, however, taking to heart the novel’s final emphatic avowal that individuality, and truth to oneself ‘does count’ in the struggle for freedom and pursuit of true love.