A Room with a View: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Lucy is bored with the conversation she just had with Miss Alan and Mr. Beebe. She desires “something big,” and wants to ride the tram, but decides not to because it would be “unladylike.” She remembers that Charlotte advised her that women’s “mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves.” The narrator says that this traditional idea of a “medieval lady” has lived on in Victorian society, but that women now have “strange desires” and want to see the world and take action just like men.

The narrator reflects that while Lucy is impatient with the restrictions put on her because of her gender, she doesn’t have “any system of revolt,” and simply occasionally transgresses restrictions. On this occasion, she avoids the tram and walks to a shop where she buys some photographs of famous Italian artworks. She walks into a Piazza, thinking, “nothing ever happens to me,” and then starts to head home.

Just then, two Italian men near Lucy get into a fight. One of them is stabbed and, turning toward her, bleeds profusely. Stunned, Lucy looks around and happens to see George Emerson not too far away, before fainting. When she comes to, she is in George’s arms. She thanks him for catching her when she fainted, but tells him that she can return to the Pension by herself.

Lucy suddenly thinks of her photographs, which she dropped when she fainted. George goes to pick them up and Lucy tries to walk off without him, but he stops her and insists on accompanying her back to the Pension. As George finds her photographs, Lucy looks around and sees “creatures with black hoods, such as appear in dreams.” Discussing the fight they witnessed, Lucy and George go to the river, where they refuse a cabman who signals to them from his boat.

Suddenly, George throws Lucy’s photographs into the river. Lucy is shocked, but George explains that they were covered in blood. George then tells Lucy that he feels “something tremendous has happened,” and that “it isn’t exactly that a man has died.” Lucy tells him that the ladies at the Pension are horrible gossipers, and asks him not to mention her behavior to anyone. George agrees, as Lucy gets lost in her thoughts about the “something” that “had happened to the living.” George tells Lucy, “I shall probably want to live,” and she doesn’t know what he means.