Lucy Honeychurch: A Journey to Self-Discovery

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Recommended: Explore the development of Lucy’s character in the opening half of A Room with a View

In E. M. Forster's A Room with a View, Lucy Honeychurch discovers both herself as an individual and her love for George Emerson. Through Lucy’s intelligence, charisma, and defiance against social norms and her elders, she is able to grow from a young child to a mature and confident adult. With each important person in her life reflecting a different aspect of respected society, Lucy is able to defy each of these people, therefore defying society. For example, Charlotte Bartlett represents the pull towards a life of spinsterhood rather than true love, Mr. Beebe represents the ideals of an Anglican woman, Mr. Emerson represents the ideals of the lower class, and her love interests, George and Cecil, represent her irrepressible feelings of both love and hate. Each of these characters, Charlotte, Mr. Beebe, Mr. Emerson, George, and Cecil, push Lucy to a different aspect of herself until she ultimately finds her own individuality, taking pieces of each ideal along the way. Charlotte Bartlett not only represents a life of spinsterhood for Lucy, but one of passive aggressive judgement. One example of her intense control over Lucy is her refusal of the Emersons’ rooms: “Miss Bartlett, in reply, opened her mouth as little as possible, and said ‘Thank you very much indeed; that is out of the question,’” (Forster 4). Charlotte goes on to …show more content…

By cutting herself and George off from the people who tried to manipulate them the most, she takes back control of her life and gives herself the voice she had searched for. Although the reader gets a taste of this voice through her music, it only develops when she feels she has no choice left but to use it. Lucy ultimately finds happiness and love through her healthy and equal relationship with

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