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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Tourists as Animals:
At multiple times in the Italian part of the novel, the narrator and characters compare foreigners in Italy to animals. The first of these is a simile that comes directly from the narrator: "So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence, short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten’s grace." This simile is comedic because Miss Lavish believes she has an authoritative knowledge of the city and a commanding presence, but the narrator reveals her to be as helpless and clumsy as a kitten. Her kitten-like behavior would make her endearing if she weren't so arrogant. She claims to know the true Italy, but she gets herself and Lucy lost on the way to the Santa Croce. This outing contributes the eventual shattering of Lucy's view of Miss Lavish as clever and interesting.
As they walk to the Santa Croce, Miss Lavish herself uses an animal simile to express her disdain for "the Britisher abroad." Looking at the Emersons, she says that they "walk through my Italy like a pair of cows" and admits that she "would like to set an examination paper at Dover, and turn back every tourist who couldn’t pass it." Although cows are gentle and kind creatures, Miss Lavish uses the cow comparison as a disparaging insult, suggesting that the Emersons and British people like them are dim-witted. She wants to keep people like them out of Italy by setting up a test at Dover, the port from which British people accessed the continent, insinuating that they wouldn't have the knowledge needed to pass.
Mr. Eager, the British chaplain in Florence, similarly sees himself as superior to other foreigners in Italy. A member of the British residential colony in Florence, Mr. Eager has attained "that intimate knowledge, or rather perception, of Florence" that is inaccessible to tourists. For this reason, Lucy and Charlotte covet his friendship. Miss Lavish sees other foreigners in terms of cows; Mr. Eager sees them in terms of migratory sheep, for whom he is the shepherd. The livestock metaphor doesn't come from his mouth directly in the form of dialogue, but the narrator offers his views through indirect interior monologue:
Between the two sections of his flock he was often the only link, and it was his avowed custom to select those of his migratory sheep who seemed worthy, and give them a few hours in the pastures of the permanent.
Ironically, some of these animal metaphors and similes come from people who are also foreigners in Italy. Blind to their own touristic impulses and inability to access the authenticity they claim to know so much about, they believe that their engagement with Italy is superior to that of other British people.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—View Sloping Into Kiss:
At the end of the sixth chapter, Lucy walks through a wooded area with the Italian driver in search of Mr. Eager and Mr. Beebe, whom she has described as good men in Italian. The driver has misunderstood her, however, and is taking her to George. The moment in which Lucy stumbles onto the terrace results in an explosion of imagery, as the view opens up in front of her eyes:
From her feet the ground sloped sharply into the view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.
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.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Mr. Eager's Italian:
Mr. Eager serves as the guide when the characters go on an outing to Fiesole in the sixth chapter. He paternalistically sees himself as in possession of the real Italy, which he generously shares with the helpless British tourists. The reader has already sensed that this isn't quite right, but the view of Mr. Eager as a suave expert on Italy is properly shattered by a metaphor in which the narrator presents fluent Italian as a running "stream"—in contrast, the narrator uses a simile to compare Mr. Eager's Italian to an "acid whistling fountain":
Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony. In Mr Eager’s mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.
Whereas Italians speak like a stream that contains boulders and cataracts, Mr. Eager speaks Italian like an acid whistling fountain. A whistling fountain is a fountain that is designed to make noise when its water bubbles. These fountains do not usually feature acid; it seems that Forster added this to the simile to heighten the grating sound he wants the reader to associate with Mr. Eager's Italian. Had he compared it to a normal fountain, he would be suggesting that Mr. Eager speaks Italian in a smooth way. Forster holds onto the fountain but contorts it from something that indicates beauty and tranquility to a cacophony that increases in pitch, speed, and shrillness. While the metaphor of the stream calls to mind a harmonious sound and enchanting image, the metaphor of the fountain evokes a sound that would make one want to cover their ears.
The timing of these comparisons is significant, as Mr. Eager and Mr. Emerson are in the midst of a disagreement on whether to separate their driver and his lover. Mr. Emerson feels that it is an enviable thing "to be driven by lovers" and considers it sacrilege to part them. Mr. Eager, on the other hand, is concerned with propriety and feels like the driver sees them as ignorant tourists. He claims to know and appreciate the real Italy, but he is determined to impose his British values on one of the few Italians to actually grace the novel's pages. When he communicates his indignation, he speaks Italian as shrilly and unpleasantly as the sounds made by a whistling fountain that contains acid instead of water. Forster uses the simile to poke fun at the stuffy clergyman and undermine his self-proclaimed authority.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Phaethon the Cab Driver:
In the novel's sixth chapter, a large group from the Pension go on an outing to Fiesole with Mr. Eager. They are divided between two carriages, one of which the narrator claims is driven by Phaethon:
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister — Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
In Greek mythology, Phaethon was the son of Helios, the god of the sun. The boy convinces his father to let him drive the chariot of the sun, but loses control of the horses, which sets the world ablaze and results in his own death. The allusion to Phaethon thereby evokes the catastrophic potential of youthful hubris. By declaring that the Italian cab driver is Phaethon, the narrator both makes fun of him for his juvenile boldness and makes fun of Mr. Eager for his stuffy fear of the driver's youth.
The passage contains another mythical allusion, as the narrator writes that Phaethon picks up Persephone on the way. In Greek myth, Persephone becomes the goddess of the underworld after being abducted by Hades from her mother Demeter. She shields her eyes because she has presumably just come back to the earth's surface. Although Phaethon and Persephone never encounter one another in the world of Greek myth, it is fitting to pair Phaethon with Persephone in this chapter, as she is associated with spring.
Needless to say, Phaethon is not literally driving the cab, and he does not literally pick up Persephone on the way. The role of this extended metaphor is to emphasize the mythical mood of the excursion and to suggest that the British tourists primarily see the Italians they encounter as characters in the stories they tell about their own lives.
Phaethon plays an important role in the rest of the sixth chapter, as it is he who leads Lucy to George when the two kiss; the narrator suggests that this mythical character recognizes the love brewing between the two and brings them together. He also returns in the twentieth chapter, when George and Lucy spend their honeymoon back in Florence. As George looks out at the view, he spots a man who reminds him of their cab driver from a year ago:
The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve months ago. A passion of gratitude — all feelings grow to passions in the South — came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things who had taken so much trouble about a young fool.
This passage again underlines the British tourist's romanticism of Italy and association of its people with mythology. The cab driver "might" be the same, but it ultimately doesn't really matter if he is. George and Lucy prove to be two of the novel's most critically minded characters, yet they still encounter the world as tourists who are more intent on myth than on truly seeing the people around them.
Related Themes:
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—A Woman of Leonardo:
In the eighth chapter, Lucy has returned from Italy and accepted Cecil's proposal. When the narrator grants the reader access to this new character's thoughts for the first time, Cecil muses on Lucy and uses a simile to compare her to a painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story’. She did develop most wonderfully day by day.
The reader's first impression of Cecil is not overwhelmingly positive. On Cecil's behalf, the narrator divulges that he initially saw Lucy "as a common-place girl who happened to be musical." When he met her in Rome, she had at first "seemed a typical tourist — shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel." Cecil is evidently an unsympathetic and judgmental person. What's more, he sees his own fiancée as a painting and feels that people love her not for what she is but for what she signifies. Ultimately, he is eager for Lucy to "develop."
The metaphor of Lucy as a painting (as Cecil's painting) returns repeatedly throughout the second half of the novel. In the ninth chapter, Lucy expresses her fierce dislike of Mr. Eager, to the surprise of Mrs. Honeychurch and Cecil. The narrator writes that the latter finds her outburst incongruous, and he again sees her as a painting by da Vinci:
It was as if one should see the Leonardo on the ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a woman’s power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain approval. He forbore to repress the sources of youth.
As she rants about Mr. Eager, Lucy does something she rarely does: she expresses her own uninhibited feelings. It is not wholly surprising that Lucy's mother attempts to quell her daughter's spiteful words about another person, especially a clergyman. Cecil's internal response, however, is shocking in its calculation and condescension. Part of him wants to tell her off for expressing her feelings strongly, as he feels that women should conceal their emotions rather than express them. Another part of him, however, is attracted to her intense emotions. This passage reveals the degree to which Cecil's understanding of Lucy is always informed by his devotion to propriety and the opinions of good society.
In relation to this, Cecil detests the people in Lucy's life and does not see any of them as good society. He again invokes the Leonardo metaphor when in the company of Lucy's family members and friends, thinking about how in "January he would rescue his Leonardo from this stupefying twaddle." The Leonardo metaphor comes up one final time in the seventeenth chapter, when Lucy breaks off her engagement with Cecil:
He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.
In the end, Lucy has to stand up to Cecil to make him see her as a real woman. His newfound respect is accompanied by actual love; this is the first time he says her loves her.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Lucy as Kite:
In the eighth chapter, which begins with Lucy's return from Italy to England, the reader encounters her fiancé Cecil Vyse. Unaware of the engagement, Mr. Beebe shows up at Windy Corner and chats with Cecil about Lucy. Over the course of this conversation, Mr. Beebe metaphorically compares Lucy in Italy to a kite:
There was simply the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them. I can show you a beautiful picture in my Italian diary: Miss Honeychurch as a kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string breaks.
This metaphor symbolizes Lucy's lack of independence in Italy. Under the control of Charlotte, Mr. Beebe suggests that she was kept from reaching her full potential. In his view, it is odd that Lucy plays the piano "so wonderfully" but lives "so quietly." The first time he met her, he found that she wasn't wonderful and he says that "she wasn’t wonderful in Florence either." The narrator writes that Mr. Beebe had, at the time, "given surreptitious tugs to the string himself." Although Mr. Beebe's heart seems to be in the right place, and while he ultimately wants Lucy to feel emboldened to think and act for herself, he doesn't seem to recognize the irony of an older man tugging at a young woman's string in order to grant her agency.
Cecil asks whether the string ever broke, and Mr. Beebe answers in the negative. To this, Cecil says, "It has broken now." Right away, he regrets having extended Mr. Beebe's kite metaphor to announce his engagement:
Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous, contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst. He cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a star and that Lucy was soaring up to reach him?
Cecil fortunately recognizes the awkwardness of his statement, but like Mr. Beebe, he fails to fully grasp the issue at the core of his comparing Lucy to a kite—especially when what they both claim to want is for her to become her own person. He regrets his statement because it seems like a tactless way to announce an engagement, not because he realizes its faultiness. After all, her marriage to Cecil ultimately is more like a kite string being handed to a new person than anything else.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—A Woman of Leonardo:
In the eighth chapter, Lucy has returned from Italy and accepted Cecil's proposal. When the narrator grants the reader access to this new character's thoughts for the first time, Cecil muses on Lucy and uses a simile to compare her to a painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story’. She did develop most wonderfully day by day.
The reader's first impression of Cecil is not overwhelmingly positive. On Cecil's behalf, the narrator divulges that he initially saw Lucy "as a common-place girl who happened to be musical." When he met her in Rome, she had at first "seemed a typical tourist — shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel." Cecil is evidently an unsympathetic and judgmental person. What's more, he sees his own fiancée as a painting and feels that people love her not for what she is but for what she signifies. Ultimately, he is eager for Lucy to "develop."
The metaphor of Lucy as a painting (as Cecil's painting) returns repeatedly throughout the second half of the novel. In the ninth chapter, Lucy expresses her fierce dislike of Mr. Eager, to the surprise of Mrs. Honeychurch and Cecil. The narrator writes that the latter finds her outburst incongruous, and he again sees her as a painting by da Vinci:
It was as if one should see the Leonardo on the ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a woman’s power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain approval. He forbore to repress the sources of youth.
As she rants about Mr. Eager, Lucy does something she rarely does: she expresses her own uninhibited feelings. It is not wholly surprising that Lucy's mother attempts to quell her daughter's spiteful words about another person, especially a clergyman. Cecil's internal response, however, is shocking in its calculation and condescension. Part of him wants to tell her off for expressing her feelings strongly, as he feels that women should conceal their emotions rather than express them. Another part of him, however, is attracted to her intense emotions. This passage reveals the degree to which Cecil's understanding of Lucy is always informed by his devotion to propriety and the opinions of good society.
In relation to this, Cecil detests the people in Lucy's life and does not see any of them as good society. He again invokes the Leonardo metaphor when in the company of Lucy's family members and friends, thinking about how in "January he would rescue his Leonardo from this stupefying twaddle." The Leonardo metaphor comes up one final time in the seventeenth chapter, when Lucy breaks off her engagement with Cecil:
He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.
In the end, Lucy has to stand up to Cecil to make him see her as a real woman. His newfound respect is accompanied by actual love; this is the first time he says her loves her.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Lucy's Consent:
At the end of the ninth chapter, Cecil and Lucy find themselves alone in the woods, and Cecil asks whether Lucy would allow him to kiss her. She says yes in a way that Cecil is unhappy with, as he finds it austere and unromantic. The narrator uses a metaphor to describe her response, and this produces dramatic irony, as the reader knows just how intense and romantic her kiss with George was.
Her reply was inadequate. She gave such a businesslike lift to her veil. As he approached her he found time to wish that he could recoil. As he touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattened between them.
When Cecil asks to kiss Lucy, she says the following: "Of course you may, Cecil. You might before. I can’t run at you, you know." On behalf of Cecil, the narrator compares this reply to a "businesslike lift to her veil." The veil in question would presumably be a bridal veil, as the two are getting married in a few months. Normally, the moment at which a bride lifts her veil to kiss the groom is romantic, passionate, and touching. The moment shared between the two fiancés cannot be described using any of those words. Although referring to a lifting of the veil as "businesslike" would normally seem nearly oxymoronic, such a description feels apt in this moment.
Cecil is upset by their first kiss and considers it "a failure." Using indirect interior monologue, Forster offers the reader Cecil's musings on passion and love:
Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way. Why could he not do as any labourer or navy — nay, as any young man behind the counter would have done?
This passage is full of dramatic irony, as the reader knows that Lucy has already had a kiss that follows all of these stipulations: her kiss with George seemed inevitable and irresistible, it did not take civility or refinement into consideration, it was not preceded by any asking of leave. Cecil reproaches himself for not being able to do "as any young man behind the counter would have done," totally unaware that the novel's "any young man" has kissed his fiancée in exactly the way Cecil wishes he had been able to.
Related Themes:
Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Lucy's Ghosts:
In the thirteenth chapter, after having run into George Emerson at the Sacred Lake in the afternoon, Lucy sits down to dinner with her family. Her mother's questions force her to confront her past in a way that makes her uneasy, and she finds it difficult not to tell lies. Slipping into Lucy's thoughts, the narrator metaphorically refers to Lucy's memories as ghosts:
[...] the ghosts began to gather in the darkness. There were too many ghosts about. The original ghost — that touch of lips on her cheek — had surely been laid long ago; it could be nothing to her that a man had kissed her on a mountain once. But it had begotten a spectral family — Mr Harris, Miss Bartlett’s letter, Mr Beebe’s memories of violets — and one or other of these was bound to haunt her before Cecil’s very eyes.
Lucy feels haunted by reminders of her past, which indicates that she feels a degree of shame over her past. The narrator refers to George's kiss as "the original ghost," which perhaps alludes to the biblical original sin and the idea that the innocence of all human beings has been tainted. Lucy feels that her innocence has been tainted by her secrets and lies, which extend to her lie about the Emersons (given that she told her family that their last name was Harris), her unwillingness to divulge the contents of Charlotte's letter, and the possibility of Mr. Beebe knowing what happened between herself and George in Italy. Now that there is more than one ghost—now that it is becoming a "spectral family"—Lucy feels like her past is catching up to her.
The dinner conversation continues, and her mother brings up her trip to Italy. This makes Lucy uneasy again:
The ghosts were returning; they filled Italy, they were even usurping the places she had known as a child. The Sacred Lake would never be the same again, and, on Sunday week, something would even happen to Windy Corner. How would she fight against ghosts? For a moment the visible world faded away, and memories and emotions alone seemed real.
In this passage, the narrator suggests that Lucy sees George as a ghost of her past. It is he who has made the Sacred Lake forever changed and it is he who will be coming to Windy Corner the following Sunday. She does not even allow herself to think his name, but instead pictures him as a ghost usurping "the places she had known as a child." Unwilling to confront her feelings for George, Lucy has attempted to hide him away as a ghost in her memories. When he appears in her life, she is forced to own up to the lies she has told about him and his father to others—that their name is Harris—and the lie she has told about him to herself—that she does not care for him.
Related Themes:
Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—A Woman of Leonardo:
In the eighth chapter, Lucy has returned from Italy and accepted Cecil's proposal. When the narrator grants the reader access to this new character's thoughts for the first time, Cecil muses on Lucy and uses a simile to compare her to a painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story’. She did develop most wonderfully day by day.
The reader's first impression of Cecil is not overwhelmingly positive. On Cecil's behalf, the narrator divulges that he initially saw Lucy "as a common-place girl who happened to be musical." When he met her in Rome, she had at first "seemed a typical tourist — shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel." Cecil is evidently an unsympathetic and judgmental person. What's more, he sees his own fiancée as a painting and feels that people love her not for what she is but for what she signifies. Ultimately, he is eager for Lucy to "develop."
The metaphor of Lucy as a painting (as Cecil's painting) returns repeatedly throughout the second half of the novel. In the ninth chapter, Lucy expresses her fierce dislike of Mr. Eager, to the surprise of Mrs. Honeychurch and Cecil. The narrator writes that the latter finds her outburst incongruous, and he again sees her as a painting by da Vinci:
It was as if one should see the Leonardo on the ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a woman’s power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain approval. He forbore to repress the sources of youth.
As she rants about Mr. Eager, Lucy does something she rarely does: she expresses her own uninhibited feelings. It is not wholly surprising that Lucy's mother attempts to quell her daughter's spiteful words about another person, especially a clergyman. Cecil's internal response, however, is shocking in its calculation and condescension. Part of him wants to tell her off for expressing her feelings strongly, as he feels that women should conceal their emotions rather than express them. Another part of him, however, is attracted to her intense emotions. This passage reveals the degree to which Cecil's understanding of Lucy is always informed by his devotion to propriety and the opinions of good society.
In relation to this, Cecil detests the people in Lucy's life and does not see any of them as good society. He again invokes the Leonardo metaphor when in the company of Lucy's family members and friends, thinking about how in "January he would rescue his Leonardo from this stupefying twaddle." The Leonardo metaphor comes up one final time in the seventeenth chapter, when Lucy breaks off her engagement with Cecil:
He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.
In the end, Lucy has to stand up to Cecil to make him see her as a real woman. His newfound respect is accompanied by actual love; this is the first time he says her loves her.
Related Themes:
Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—Words like Waves:
In the nineteenth chapter, Lucy has a conversation with Mr. Emerson. During this conversation, the old man eventually discovers that his son's love for Lucy is requited, and he makes it clear that he has figured this out. By way of a simile, the narrator compares Lucy's reaction to being hit by waves in the ocean.
Then he burst out excitedly: ‘That’s it; that’s what I mean. You love George!’ And after his long preamble the three words burst against Lucy like waves from the open sea.
Lucy remains, throughout the novel, firmly committed to being "absolutely truthful." It becomes clear to both her and the reader, however, that telling the truth is not always straightforward. Sometimes, Lucy finds the boundary between truth and lies frustratingly blurry. Most of all, it proves difficult for her to tell others the truth when she is unwilling to be honest with herself. At this point in the novel, she has refused to admit to her love to George for several months. When Mr. Emerson realizes that she loves him, and says it out loud, the truth finally hits Lucy like crashing waves.
The forceful effect that Mr. Emerson's words have on Lucy speak to the effort she has put into suppressing her love for George. As she responds to Mr. Emerson, the metaphorical water from the waves remains in the scene:
‘How dare you!’ gasped Lucy, with the roaring of waters in her ears. ‘Oh, how like a man! — I mean, to suppose that a woman is always thinking about a man.’ ‘But you are.’
The roaring of the water continues as Lucy grapples with the truth catching up to her. Her gut reaction is to call Mr. Emerson sexist for claiming that she's always thinking about a man. This is somewhat ironic, given that Mr. Emerson seems to be the least sexist man who exerts influence on Lucy throughout the novel but the only one she calls out. He stands firm, simply telling her that in this situation she is clearly thinking about a man and that she shouldn't forgo the rare possibility of true love. The loudness and intensity contained in the wave simile, as well as in Lucy's response, contrasts sharply with Mr. Emerson's calm conviction. The wave simile underlines the discomfort of being honest with oneself, as well as the irrationality of true love.
Related Themes:
Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Phaethon the Cab Driver:
In the novel's sixth chapter, a large group from the Pension go on an outing to Fiesole with Mr. Eager. They are divided between two carriages, one of which the narrator claims is driven by Phaethon:
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister — Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
In Greek mythology, Phaethon was the son of Helios, the god of the sun. The boy convinces his father to let him drive the chariot of the sun, but loses control of the horses, which sets the world ablaze and results in his own death. The allusion to Phaethon thereby evokes the catastrophic potential of youthful hubris. By declaring that the Italian cab driver is Phaethon, the narrator both makes fun of him for his juvenile boldness and makes fun of Mr. Eager for his stuffy fear of the driver's youth.
The passage contains another mythical allusion, as the narrator writes that Phaethon picks up Persephone on the way. In Greek myth, Persephone becomes the goddess of the underworld after being abducted by Hades from her mother Demeter. She shields her eyes because she has presumably just come back to the earth's surface. Although Phaethon and Persephone never encounter one another in the world of Greek myth, it is fitting to pair Phaethon with Persephone in this chapter, as she is associated with spring.
Needless to say, Phaethon is not literally driving the cab, and he does not literally pick up Persephone on the way. The role of this extended metaphor is to emphasize the mythical mood of the excursion and to suggest that the British tourists primarily see the Italians they encounter as characters in the stories they tell about their own lives.
Phaethon plays an important role in the rest of the sixth chapter, as it is he who leads Lucy to George when the two kiss; the narrator suggests that this mythical character recognizes the love brewing between the two and brings them together. He also returns in the twentieth chapter, when George and Lucy spend their honeymoon back in Florence. As George looks out at the view, he spots a man who reminds him of their cab driver from a year ago:
The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve months ago. A passion of gratitude — all feelings grow to passions in the South — came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things who had taken so much trouble about a young fool.
This passage again underlines the British tourist's romanticism of Italy and association of its people with mythology. The cab driver "might" be the same, but it ultimately doesn't really matter if he is. George and Lucy prove to be two of the novel's most critically minded characters, yet they still encounter the world as tourists who are more intent on myth than on truly seeing the people around them.
Related Themes:
