Advice for K

A Room with a View, whilst not Forster's best, is one of few romantic novels that I like and return to from time to time. Last year a young acquaintance of mine was over for dinner and his general air of depression and thoughtfulness over matters of the heart (with which he had experienced a few hiccups) led me to write down some advice for him. I found it while deleting mails today and here it is in its entirety.

E.M. Foster's A Room with a View is about a depressed idealist called George Emerson who is searching for the meaning of life. In Florence he meets a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch and poses her a Q on the eternal why of life by way of arranging the peas on his plate in the shape of a Q mark. At some point, no doubt aided by the elements of Italy - the sun, the passions, violets irrigating the hillside - he has a moment of epiphany and realises that something tremendous has happened which is really high faultin' parlance for "I fell in love with Lucy". With this he is no longer depressed for the meaning of existence is revealed to him. It takes awhile for Ms. Honeychurch to transcend her own social background and timidities and recognise that Mr. Emerson provides her not the cloistered, mundane room of boys of her class but one with a splendid view. She does eventually do so this being a novel requiring a happy ending.

Certain morals can be drawn from this story:

K needs to arrange left over food in the form of a Q mark;

Recognise his own Ms. Honeychurch - even though the elements of Sydney seem more hospitable to the epiphanies of drunken revelries; and

Offer her a room with a view i.e. the possibility of life as opposed to the tick marks of the standard trajectory of life.

As a post script, I must add that many women I know do not find the book romantic because a) George kisses Lucy without her "permission" and b) George has no money and no standard trajectory. This too K must keep in mind :-)

I am not sure if the advice was taken though I did receive a somewhat enthusiastic response to my email. And this reminds me that a re-reading of the novel is due. As is a dekho at the film - one of few times Merchant-Ivory got things right.