A Room With a View . . . or not

        It’s been years, nay decades, since I’ve read a novel from the English literary canon but when I researched “books set in Florence,” E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View topped the search results. I hesitated, however, thinking I had read something of Forster’s while in college—something I recalled as dismal, filled with doom and gloom. Later I realized it was Thomas Hardy I was remembering, specifically, Jude the Obscure, a relentlessly depressing story if ever there was one and the antithesis of a 19/20^th century comedy of manners. Who’d want to read something like that, even if it is set in Florence? (it isn’t)

        With Forster in the clear, I downloaded the audiobook version of A Room and was soon mentally strolling the streets of Florence with its heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, who turns out to have a refreshingly feminist bent. The story unfolds in a mostly predictable way, but I appreciated Forster’s deft character treatments. Especially of prudish Miss Bartlett who has a keener eye than she lets on and engineers events to Lucy’s benefit. For a novel written by a male author in the early 1900s, I was surprised to find such recognition and sensitivity to society’s constraints on women.

But what about the room with a view? It refers literally to the first scene in the book when Lucy and Charlotte arrive at the Pensione Bertolini in Florence and discover the rooms with views they had been promised are unavailable. Thereafter, it takes on the metaphorical meaning of being open to learning and self-discovery and new ideas. As one would hope for anyone traveling to Florence then or now.

I’m not the first to wonder about the fictional Pensione Bertolini; googling reveals the consensus that it is based on the current day Hotel degli Orafi, whose view rooms overlook the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio. Something like this:

Of course, all of this made me wonder if I’ll have a room with a view.  As it happens, I’ve got the address of the apartment I’ll be using so I eagerly google-streeted it. It’s on the third floor and there are windows of course but alas, with nothing remarkable in sight. 

However, I’m confident my metaphorical view of Florence and beyond will be amazing!

 

Somewhere up there are my windows   . . .  

 

 

 and here is their view.

 

 

Note: E.M. Forster’s novel was made into a movie in 1985 with a stellar cast (Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Judi Dench, Julian Sands, Daniel Day-Lewis . . . wow!)  The film won best picture at the Oscars.  It’s on my watch list for sure.