The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”
“And a Cockney, besides!” said Lucy, who had been further saddened by the Signora’s unexpected accent. “It might be London.” She looked at the two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine that ran between the English people; at the portraits of the late Queen and the late Poet Laureate that hung behind the English people, heavily framed; at the notice of the English church (Rev. Cuthbert Eager, M. A. Oxon.), that was the only other decoration of the wall. “Charlotte, don’t you feel, too, that we might be in London? I can hardly believe that all kinds of other things are just outside. I suppose it is one’s being so tired.”
“This meat has surely been used for soup,” said Miss Bartlett, laying down her fork
Forster’s delightful novel opens with a very English discussion of the importance of a view. Perspective and vision are all here and we suspect that the novel will bring about alteration and even monumental change!
We are in Florence with young Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin the chaperone Miss Bartlett looking disappointedly towards the North which seems a metaphor for the whole novel! Will Lucy remain constrained by Northern perspectives and attitudes or will she embrace the spontaneity and passion of the Southern view ? The visit to Italy seems limited at this stage by the very Englishness of the situation. The expectations of exoticism are ironically unfulfilled at this stage and Lucy is saddened by the cockney origins of the Signora who has colonised this world; providing for travellers who perhaps expect a repetition of their safe Englishness wherever they travel. All the signs surrounding Lucy serve to reinforce the claustrophobia and smallness of this world. The vast array of such signs serve to reinforece Lucy’s viewpoint as she literally turns her head taking in the extensive lines of English sameness and commodities!
All of this world and its rules , is delivered through the representation of spontaneous conversation, and this engenders a vitality and naturalness that allows the characters to reveal themselves to us as if we too were in the midst of the Signora’s dining room, listening in and surveying our temporary neighbours. This also gives movement to the text and plays on our hearing of their differentiated voices, so that characterisation has an immediacy and naturalness, despite the rigidity and formality of such a setting .
Miss Bartlett’s critical faculties we suspect extend beyond her discerning reading of the soup- is she monstruous in her triviality or is she a comic figure strayed out of a Jane Austen text? Her taste is very much a concern! We shall have to wait and see! The precision of ‘laying down her fork’ allows so much to be seen and communicated to the reader without a hint of ‘telling’ in sight! The wicked use of bathos so early in the novel ironises Miss Bartlett and the society which has produced her and which perhaps has reduced her to this fear ridden creature who entertains so well!
****It may be worth considering the significance of the ‘foreign’ in this novel and how that which may intially appear foreign and other becomes transformed into the beloved. Think about the unconventionality of George and his father with their talismanic question marks and their effects on Lucy and her family.