A Room with a View: Foreshadowing 5 key examples

This imagery appears after a drawn-out conversation about the Emersons and their impropriety. Until this point, the third chapter has predominantly consisted of Mr. Beebe and one of the Miss Alans discussing the other guests with a tone of judgment. The incongruity between the conversation and the beautiful scenery offers perspective to the reader, making the conversation and the characters' concerns appear especially insignificant. 

Several aspects of the view suggest alleviation and illumination: the brightening of the air, the purification of the colors on the hills, the newfound clearness of the Arno. Lucy finds the Pension stifling—not to mention the conversations that go on within it.  As daylight falls and the gradual arrival of evening clears the air, the possibility of going out into the world lightens Lucy's spirit. The narrator's attention to the outside world signals that something—not merely conversation—is about to happen.

The view seems to influence Lucy to take action and to go out into the world. The reminder that she is in Italy gives her agency and rouses her desire for connection. Just after the description of the view, Lucy announces that she will go out. A few lines after this, she exclaims: "Perhaps I shall meet someone who reads me through and through!" This exclamation serves to foreshadow the big event that is to come of her outing and foreshadows her brewing relationship with George. For that matter, the next time the San Miniato church is mentioned in the novel, it forms part of the view on the first evening of their honeymoon at the very end of the book. George says, "Lucy, you come and look at the cypresses; and the church, whatever its name is, still shows." Lucy answers "San Miniato." The novel ends with the two lovers in a room with a view together.

Just after this beautiful description of the view, George kisses Lucy. Unbridled natural beauty thereby comes to be associated with their love. In addition, the slope of the hill down to George makes the kiss seem inevitable, as if their natural environment has been formed to lead Lucy to him. 

The imagery relies heavily on metaphor, as Forster compares the violets to running water. Running in rivulets, streams, and cataracts, the flowers irrigate the hillside and gather in blue foam. Calling it the "well-head" and the "primal source," Forster suggests that this hillside is the place where all the violets in the world come from. There is a sad undertone to this precision, as they would "never again" be "in such profusion." The Italian half of the novel occurs during spring, and occasionally Forster dwells on the similarity between spring and autumn. Although spring is typically associated with renewal and beginning, he reminds us that spring is also about endings. Once a flower has reached the peak of its bloom, one will have to wait until next year to experience the budding again. This seems to also speak to the kiss between George and Lucy—after the riveting buildup reaches the climax of the kiss, the two young lovers have to leave the terrace, Italy, and the "well-head" of their love.

As Forster builds towards this imagery, he gives the reader hints of the view that is to come. For example, as Lucy and the driver near the edge of the promontory, the view steals around them, "but the brown network of the bushes shattered it into countless pieces." Then, as the view was "forming at last," Lucy slowly begins to "discern the river, the golden plain, other hills." In the moment that "the ground [gives] way," Lucy "[falls] out of the wood" with a cry. Forster puts careful effort in building the reader's expectations for the stunning imagery and the fateful kiss. Carefully foreshadowing the end of the chapter, he gives the reader fragments of the view before it appears in full glory. It is notable that Lucy doesn't seem to be seeking the view; rather, she falls into it. This is analogous to her incomprehension of her own feelings for George: the reader is quite sure of what is coming, but Lucy appears to have no clue.

Cecil's reason for bringing the Emersons to Summer Street in the first place is to punish Sir Harry Otway for his snobbery. The idea of one snob punishing another snob by playing with the lives of people who are below them in class, status, and wealth drips with situational irony. Additionally, the idea of Cecil educating Lucy on snobbery and democracy is ironic because Lucy is hardly a snob in comparison to Cecil.

Cecil thinks Lucy is opposed to the Emersons moving into the neighborhood because of her prejudices, when her opposition is in fact a result of her feelings for George. Claiming that he believes in intermarriage, Cecil brings the Emersons into Lucy's circle to educate her. Not only does he unintentionally bring Lucy and George together, Cecil is blissfully unaware of how close to home his supposedly desired intermarriage will occur. This is an instance of dramatic irony, as the reader knows that love and passion have long been brewing between Lucy and George. It is also an instance of foreshadowing, as Cecil's mention of intermarriage seems to hint at the union between George and Lucy.

The words spoken by the clothes invokes an earlier part of the chapter, when Freddy and Mr. Beebe discover an inscription on Mr. Emerson's wardrobe that says, "Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes." This inscription is a citation of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau, a transcendentalist, believed in leading a simple life that is in touch with nature. Mr. Emerson (whose name is likely a reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson, another transcendentalist) shares Thoreau's conviction that humans should put nature above society. Right before the men set out for the Sacred Lake, Mr. Emerson says that we will again enter the Garden of Eden once we "no longer despise our bodies."

At the Sacred Lake (which itself seems to be an allusion to Thoureau's Walden Pond), Freddy, George, and Mr. Beebe reveal that it is quite possible to not despise one's body—at least as long as one is free from society's scrutiny. The words spoken by the clothes simultaneously form part of a joke, on the part of the narrator, and foreshadow the abrupt end to their carefree romping. When society appears in the shape of Lucy, Cecil, and Mrs. Honeychurch, the three men are forced to put their clothes back on. 

However, George does not bother to completely get dressed before facing society. The narrator writes that George regards himself as dressed, but specifies that he is "barefoot, bare-chested, radiant and personable against the shadowy woods" when he calls out to Lucy. This is the first time they see each other since their kiss in Fiesole. In this moment, George, who is already associated with nature and uninhibited passion, stands up to the bundle of clothes and shows that enterprise can begin without clothes—that his flesh will not, in the end, turn to a discreet bundle of clothes.

The "Lying to" titles pique the reader's curiosity—what will the lie be, will it be obvious, and what will come of it? Before the events of the chapter have even begun, the narrator alerts the reader to the fact that something Lucy says over the course of the chapter will be a lie. In a way, the chapter titles unite the narrator and reader in their disbelieving attitude towards the coming conversations. This creates dramatic irony, as the reader goes into each of the three chapters knowing more than the characters—knowing more than even Lucy, who above all appears to be lying to herself.

In a story, where there's a lie (especially one that the reader is alerted to in advance) there will very likely be a reveal of some kind. Accordingly, the titles of these chapters also serve to foreshadow the fallout of Lucy's lies. She has been lying to herself throughout the novel, all while attempting to be "absolutely truthful" with her friends and family members. The titles of the chapters contribute to the building suspense, as the reader feels increasingly sure that a confrontation and climax is on the horizon.

The content of Lucy's lies is finally put in black and white by the narrator in the seventeenth chapter, after she has lied to both George and Cecil:

Lucy entered this army when she pretended to George that she did not love him, and pretended to Cecil that she loved no one. The night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thirty years before.

Cite this Quote

The army that the narrator claims Lucy is entering is metaphorical. After explaining why she's broken off the engagement to Cecil, the narrator writes that Lucy feels determined to never marry and that she gives up on trying to understand herself, joining the "the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain." Comparing Lucy to Charlotte, her unmarried cousin, the narrator claims that with these lies, Lucy seals her fate as someone who will never be honest with herself.

This foreshadowing is misleading. The narrator claims that Lucy's lies—in part to others but most of all her dishonesty with herself—put her on the path to be just like Charlotte. However, Lucy does ultimately allow herself to follow her heart and brain by marrying George. Paired with all the foreshadowing and dramatic irony that is brought about by the titles of these chapters, this foreshadowing creates one final instance of suspense for the reader. The novel seems to be going in the direction of Lucy being honest with herself and George, but the narrator doesn't want the reader to be quite certain yet. Hence the claim that Lucy enters the army of people who choose to turn their back on self-awareness and love out of fear.