being lucy

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Recommended: Comparison of Victorian era and modern era literature

Being Lucy Honeychurch
In E.M Forster’s novel A Room With A View, Lucy Honeychurch serves as the central character and heroine who is bridled by her social upbringing in a time when shifts in society are prevalent. Lucy is tied to other characters in the book that Forster has written to represent the slowly diminishing Victorian Era and she is introduced to characters that represent the accelerating approach of the Edwardian era. She is an ordinary, proper English girl with an extraordinary view of beauty in the world around her and a multitude of untapped reserves of passion. Through the characters placed in her life, her unknowing passions and her central being, this novel shows the evolution of a young girl into a woman of purpose and choice.
In the name itself, A Room With A View, Forster is giving the reader an insight into the plight of Lucy Honeychurch. It stands as a symbol. The Room itself correlates to the confines of society in how small and walled off it makes people from one another all for the sake of societal hierarchy. Some rooms are big and expensive while some are small and dingy, but either way there is a wall in between them all. In Lucys case, she is given a room with the view of a courtyard, which is never changing and ordinary. What she really wants is the room with a view of the beautiful Arno River. This parallels to her life in that she’s been given mundane, safe and boring, but what she longs for is excitment and romance.
Forester inserted a handful of characters to surround Lucy during this time in her life to demonstrate the views and beliefs of people in this particular era to better understand her dilemmas. During a time when society was on the cusp of change, there are people who try to refuse ...

... middle of paper ...

...n she would be amazed at what she could do. The narrator describes Lucy's playing as a place where she is neither "rebel or a slave."(----) Her music is her escape and her first stepping stone into a world made up of her own choices lead by passion.
Essentially, Lucy Honeychurch is the classic good girl that wants to follow the rules that are laid before her. However, due to chance meetings and actions, she is thrown off course and in turn gets a real glimpse of true social freedom and beauty. Though she is thrown back and forth between the person she needs to be and the person she wants to be, her growth throughout the novel shows us the progression of an unsure girl into a level headed woman. Through the influence of the people in her life and her own reserves of passion, Lucy Honeychurch finally taps into her true self and is able to find true excitment and love

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