A Room with a View: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The narrator describes “the society out of which Cecil proposed to rescue Lucy.” Lucy’s father had been “a prosperous local solicitor,” who built Windy Corner and then moved in. Nearby neighbors from London assumed that the Honeychurches were “the remnants of an indigenous aristocracy,” and by the time people found out that Lucy was not as noble as they thought she was, “they liked her, and it did not seem to matter.”

For Lucy at Windy Corner, life “was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and identical foes.” Only after her trip to Italy did she start to think that one could jump over and transgress “social barriers,” and that this could be a pleasant thing. Time in Italy had changed Cecil, as well, who now sees “local society” as narrow and insignificant. He seeks a better society, but fails to realize that Lucy really wants “not a wider dwelling-room, but equality beside the man she loved.”

One day, outside Windy Corner, Lucy is playing a made-up game with some tennis balls with Freddy and Mr. Beebe’s niece Minnie, while talking to Mr. Beebe. Mr. Beebe says that he has written to the Miss Alans, the spinsters Lucy thought could move into Sir Harry’s villa, and they are going to come. But then Freddy tells Lucy that he has heard someone else is moving into Sir Harry’s place. Freddy says that Cecil just recently told him that he has gotten someone by the name of Emerson to move in.

Lucy tries to ascertain if this is the same Emerson family from Florence, and Mrs. Honeychurch says that she hopes the new tenants are “the right sort of person.” She says that Lucy is probably annoyed by her snobbery, but insists that “there is a right and a wrong sort, and it’s affectation to pretend there isn’t.” Freddy says that the new tenants are friends of Cecil, and Lucy is annoyed that her own fiancé would ruin her plans to have the Miss Alans move in.

Lucy says that these Emersons are probably not the same ones as were in Florence, and Mr. Beebe agrees. He calls the Florentine Emersons “the oddest people! The queerest people!” He says that there was a rumor Mr. Emerson killed his wife. Mrs. Honeychurch comments that this makes two accused murderers in the Pension Bertolini, as there was also an accused murderer named Harris. Realizing that she never corrected her mistake about the name Harris to her mother, Lucy thinks to herself that she must take care not to tell any more lies.

Lucy goes inside to see Cecil, and chides him for ruining her plan about the Miss Alans. Cecil describes the Emersons he has met, and says that he ran into them in the National Gallery in London, and that they are not his friends, but strangers. He is excited for these commoners to move in, because he is fed up with Sir Harry’s snobbery. He tells Lucy that he thinks “the classes ought to mix,” and “there ought to be intermarriage.” He tells Lucy he believes “in Democracy,” and Lucy snaps that he doesn’t know the meaning of that word. Cecil chalks Lucy’s temper up to snobbishness at the lowly Emersons moving in, instead of the gentlewomen Alans.