Finished: A Room With A View (Forster) Beautifully written classic that I truly enjoyed. The novels that I have read, written at the beginning of the 20th century, involving societal English characters rarely have happy endings, and rarely contain in their pages what you can see will most likely BE a happy ending, and this one did both. :-) In this book, young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, goes abroad to Florence, Italy with her elder, matronly cousin, Charlotte, as a chaperone. From the first night as they stay at the pension (hotel), they meet an array of other British subjects who they become acquainted with, and involved with to varying degrees. Both Charlotte and Lucy befriend Mrs. Lavish, a free-spirited older woman who is out to explore Florence and write her great novel. Lucy befriends Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Mr. Emerson is also elderly, and very much a say-it-as-it-is person. He believes that feelings should be expressed with honesty, especially love. His son, who is in Lucy's age group, is much quieter and more serious. Charlotte rather shuns the duo because she finds the father too forward and vulgar...not proper enough...even though he magnanimously gives over their two rooms to Charlotte and Lucy because they were promised a room with a view, and he and his son were given those rooms. In any event, a few meet ups here and there and soon George is in love with Lucy, and though she has no idea what these feelings are, she is in love with him as well. When he dares to kiss her, her sensibilities are affronted. She's scared and confused and insists that she and Charlotte leave for Rome immediately. Though she has reservations about not telling George, they leave without telling him goodbye. Flash forward to the trip being over and Lucy is back in her small English town with her mother and brother. (Her father is deceased.) She is in the garden accepting a proposal of marriage from a sophisticated, snobbish young man named Cecil who she met in Rome. It's the third time he's proposed, as she's turned him down twice. She finally accepts, convincing herself she's in love with him. But, as an outsider looking in, we can see that he's really nothing more than a snob who will want to mold her into what he wants her to be. He can't wait to get her out of her provincial little town. (As my husband so aptly put it when I was explaining the character to him....think about Cal in the movie Titanic, the upper crust man who Rose was going to marry.) Anyway, it takes Lucy awhile to see Cecil's true persona. It certainly doesn't help that Mr. Emerson happens to let a nearby cottage, and that George spends many a day visiting him! As Lucy and George have a few meet ups like before, but this time with Cecil in tow, she's determined not to let George get to her, but he does. He finally kisses her again one day when Cecil isn't there and blurts out that he loves her and that Cecil is not capable of knowing her intimately, i.e., her heart and soul, and letting her be herself. Lucy sees that George is right, and she breaks off her engagement with Cecil, but refuses to let George be the cause. She books another trip to Greece and is about to go when she runs into Mr. Emerson the night before and he tells her how despondent George was, but how he told him he should never have confessed his feelings to an engaged woman. Anyway, Mr. Emerson ends up seeing in Lucy's face that she loves George as well, even though Lucy herself was just coming to realize it. She tells him that she's no longer engaged to marry Cecil. He talks a pretty talk to her and tells her to muster up the courage to face the scorn of her family and friends and go for love...so she does!! The story ends with Lucy and George, now married, a year from the time they met, staying in the same room with the view in their pension in Florence. :-) The book is so well written and lovely. I truly enjoyed it! I think I will probably read another Forster book next. Here's a snippet of dialogue from when Lucy's mother confronts her about being absolutely secretive about her breaking her engagement to Cecil until after she sails for Greece, i.e., she doesn't want George to find out and follow her!

Her mother, who had also come to see the snobbery of Cecil and wasn't that upset that the engagement was broken off, says:

"You've got rid of Cecil---well and good, and I'm thankful he's gone, though I did feel angry for a minute. But why not announce it? Why this hushing up and tip-toeing?"

"It's only for a few days."

"But why at all?"

Lucy was silent. She was drifting away from her mother. It was quite easy to say, "Because George Emerson has been bothering me, and if he hears I've given up Cecil may begin again"---quite easy, and it had the incidental advantage of being true. But she could not say it. She disliked confidences, for they might lead to self-knowledge and to that king of terrors---Light. Ever since that last evening at Florence she had deemed it unwise to reveal her soul.