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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Baedeker's Handbook:
In the first half of the novel, Lucy and the other characters seek and struggle to engage with the "true" Italy. As such, the popular guidebook Baedeker's Handbook to Northern Italy features prominently in the novel and comes to be a motif that represents the contradictions inherent in an outsider's quest for an authentic experience of a foreign place.
The reader first encounters the Baedeker in the first chapter, when Lucy picks up the book to memorize Florentine history, because she is "determined to enjoy herself on the morrow." While the narrator is making fun of Lucy in this sentence, it is still central in framing the role of the Baedeker in the novel. In the second chapter, titled "In Santa Croce with no Baedeker," Miss Lavish takes Lucy's Baedeker to "emancipate" her. This leaves Lucy feeling helpless:
Tears of indignation came to Lucy’s eyes — partly because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never be in Florence again
Mr. Eager also holds contempt for the Baedeker. The first time he appears in the novel, the narrator notes that he knows "the people who never walked about with Baedekers" to emphasize his desirability as a Florentine companion. He speaks on the topic in the sixth chapter:
If you will not think me rude, we residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little — handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker.
Miss Lavish and Mr. Eager look down on Baedeker. To them, it is the mark of a helpless and out-of-touch tourist—an identity that they both distance themselves from. In their view, once someone has a Baedeker, this person will not grasp a place's authentic charm. However, the reader can't help but wonder whether the Baedeker is useful to a certain degree; when in a new place surrounded by an unfamiliar language and culture, a guidebook seems quite useful. Mr. Emerson, who is less concerned about how people see him, appears to recognize this, when he validates Lucy's distress over losing her Baedeker.
Forster reveals an ambivalent attitude towards the Baedeker and the filter it imposes on a visitor's understanding of the place they are encountering. He seems to argue that the historical and cultural context one can get from the book is useful, but that it tends to obstruct genuine and personal engagement with a new place. An English traveller who relies on an English book to tell them what to look for in a foreign country is bound to miss a lot of what that country has to offer. Ultimately, Forster concedes that Miss Lavish and Mr. Eager have a point: it is when Lucy is forced to engage with Florence without the Baedeker that she begins to see the city with her own eyes. Losing the Baedeker pushes Lucy to let go of Victorian conventions and think for herself.
The reader is inclined to find Miss Lavish a hypocritical and arrogant character, but, in the instance of the Baedeker, she ironically ends up empowering Lucy to exert agency over her own life. While Miss Lavish usually engages with Italy in a pretentious manner, she's on the right track when she says that the Baedeker doesn't measure up to "patient observation" for those who seek the "true Italy."
Related Themes:
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Effect of Music:
In A Room with a View, the motif of music is closely connected to Lucy's character development. Forster suggests that exposure to Italian art and architecture opens her mind. Before her trip to Italy, however, piano already exists as an established part of her life, serving as one of her only emotional outlets and platforms for self-expression.
Until Italy pushes her to begin thinking for herself, Lucy is, according to the narrator and Mr. Beebe, repressed at all times besides while playing the piano. Lucy enters "a more solid world" when opening the piano—it makes her intuitive, expressive, free, and independent. Just as the narrator claims that Lucy would be worshipped and loved if she could translate her musical "visions into human words" and her "experiences into human actions," Mr. Beebe says that if Miss Honeychurch "ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting — both for us and for her." He expands on this idea in the eighth chapter, in a conversation with Cecil:
I’m only thinking of my pet theory about Miss Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be wonderful in both. The watertight compartments in her will break down, and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good, heroically bad — too heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad.
Mr. Beebe is onto something; he is not entirely aware of this, but the reader knows that, in Florence, music and life had already begun to mingle in Lucy. Playing piano leaves Lucy restless and wanting more; an afternoon of playing piano turns out to be a harbinger of major turning points in the plot and her character development. In the fourth chapter, Lucy goes out into the world in desire of "something big":
‘The world,’ she thought, ‘is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.’ It was not surprising that Mrs Honeychurch disapproved of music, declaring that it always left her daughter peevish, unpractical and touchy.
Playing the piano allows Lucy to practice expressing herself and taking charge of her own life. It is up to the reader to decide whether she, in the words of Mr. Beebe, takes to living as she plays before the novel is over. Either way, however, this motif is important for understanding the development that Lucy goes through from the beginning and end of the novel.
Related Themes:
Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Baedeker's Handbook:
In the first half of the novel, Lucy and the other characters seek and struggle to engage with the "true" Italy. As such, the popular guidebook Baedeker's Handbook to Northern Italy features prominently in the novel and comes to be a motif that represents the contradictions inherent in an outsider's quest for an authentic experience of a foreign place.
The reader first encounters the Baedeker in the first chapter, when Lucy picks up the book to memorize Florentine history, because she is "determined to enjoy herself on the morrow." While the narrator is making fun of Lucy in this sentence, it is still central in framing the role of the Baedeker in the novel. In the second chapter, titled "In Santa Croce with no Baedeker," Miss Lavish takes Lucy's Baedeker to "emancipate" her. This leaves Lucy feeling helpless:
Tears of indignation came to Lucy’s eyes — partly because Miss Lavish had jilted her, partly because she had taken her Baedeker. How could she find her way home? How could she find her way about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never be in Florence again
Mr. Eager also holds contempt for the Baedeker. The first time he appears in the novel, the narrator notes that he knows "the people who never walked about with Baedekers" to emphasize his desirability as a Florentine companion. He speaks on the topic in the sixth chapter:
If you will not think me rude, we residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little — handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker.
Miss Lavish and Mr. Eager look down on Baedeker. To them, it is the mark of a helpless and out-of-touch tourist—an identity that they both distance themselves from. In their view, once someone has a Baedeker, this person will not grasp a place's authentic charm. However, the reader can't help but wonder whether the Baedeker is useful to a certain degree; when in a new place surrounded by an unfamiliar language and culture, a guidebook seems quite useful. Mr. Emerson, who is less concerned about how people see him, appears to recognize this, when he validates Lucy's distress over losing her Baedeker.
Forster reveals an ambivalent attitude towards the Baedeker and the filter it imposes on a visitor's understanding of the place they are encountering. He seems to argue that the historical and cultural context one can get from the book is useful, but that it tends to obstruct genuine and personal engagement with a new place. An English traveller who relies on an English book to tell them what to look for in a foreign country is bound to miss a lot of what that country has to offer. Ultimately, Forster concedes that Miss Lavish and Mr. Eager have a point: it is when Lucy is forced to engage with Florence without the Baedeker that she begins to see the city with her own eyes. Losing the Baedeker pushes Lucy to let go of Victorian conventions and think for herself.
The reader is inclined to find Miss Lavish a hypocritical and arrogant character, but, in the instance of the Baedeker, she ironically ends up empowering Lucy to exert agency over her own life. While Miss Lavish usually engages with Italy in a pretentious manner, she's on the right track when she says that the Baedeker doesn't measure up to "patient observation" for those who seek the "true Italy."
Related Themes:
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Violets:
Violets appear frequently in A Room with a View. Whether prominent in the setting or invoked in the dialogue, the motif of violets comes to be associated with uninhibitedness and love.
The first time violets appear in the novel is in the third chapter, when Miss Alan and Mr. Beebe discuss "the business of the violets," in reference to an event that took place beyond the frame of the novel. It remains unclear to the reader what exactly happened, but it is evident that the Emersons did something with violets that shocked the prim Miss Alans. The "business of the violets" goes unexplained until the tenth chapter, when Mr. Beebe tells the story of a "great scene over some violets":
They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans [...]. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine’s great stories. “My dear sister loves flowers,” it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue — vases and jugs — and the story ends with “So ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful. It is all very difficult.” Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.
In this anecdote, violets come to represent excess—and the gentry's fear of it. The "business of the violets" comes down to the Emersons' attempt to be kind and the other characters' skepticism (one might even say deliberate misinterpretation) of their thoughtful gesture. Mr. Beebe tells the story to come to Lucy's aid, but he does not realize the full extent of Lucy's distress at the combined thought of George and violets. He believes she is upset because Cecil has thwarted her plan to install the Miss Alans in the house that Sir Harry Otway is renting out. This is part of it, but Lucy is mostly worried about confronting George after they kissed each other in the terrace of violets in the sixth chapter. When she explains what happened to Charlotte, the violets come to be a central reason for their kiss:
I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. I had silly thoughts. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like someone in a book.
Lucy appears to claim that neither she nor George are entirely to blame for what happened; rather, she suggests that the violets acted as a sort of hypnotizing aphrodisiac. She stands by this explanation much later in the novel, when she tells Charlotte that she "fell into all those violets, and he was silly and surprised" and that "it makes such a difference when you see a person with beautiful things behind him unexpectedly." These lines reinforce the motif as a symbol of indulgence and passion.
The moment in the terrace of violets is not the only time the flower has an aphrodisiacal effect. In the fifteenth chapter, the invoking of violets precipitates yet another kiss between George and Lucy. When Cecil reads aloud from Miss Lavish's novel, George and Lucy catch one another's gaze at the mention of the heroine sitting on a bank that is "carpeted by violets." Within a page, George has kissed Lucy yet again.
Related Themes:
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—The Effect of Music:
In A Room with a View, the motif of music is closely connected to Lucy's character development. Forster suggests that exposure to Italian art and architecture opens her mind. Before her trip to Italy, however, piano already exists as an established part of her life, serving as one of her only emotional outlets and platforms for self-expression.
Until Italy pushes her to begin thinking for herself, Lucy is, according to the narrator and Mr. Beebe, repressed at all times besides while playing the piano. Lucy enters "a more solid world" when opening the piano—it makes her intuitive, expressive, free, and independent. Just as the narrator claims that Lucy would be worshipped and loved if she could translate her musical "visions into human words" and her "experiences into human actions," Mr. Beebe says that if Miss Honeychurch "ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting — both for us and for her." He expands on this idea in the eighth chapter, in a conversation with Cecil:
I’m only thinking of my pet theory about Miss Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be wonderful in both. The watertight compartments in her will break down, and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good, heroically bad — too heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad.
Mr. Beebe is onto something; he is not entirely aware of this, but the reader knows that, in Florence, music and life had already begun to mingle in Lucy. Playing piano leaves Lucy restless and wanting more; an afternoon of playing piano turns out to be a harbinger of major turning points in the plot and her character development. In the fourth chapter, Lucy goes out into the world in desire of "something big":
‘The world,’ she thought, ‘is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.’ It was not surprising that Mrs Honeychurch disapproved of music, declaring that it always left her daughter peevish, unpractical and touchy.
Playing the piano allows Lucy to practice expressing herself and taking charge of her own life. It is up to the reader to decide whether she, in the words of Mr. Beebe, takes to living as she plays before the novel is over. Either way, however, this motif is important for understanding the development that Lucy goes through from the beginning and end of the novel.
Related Themes:
Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Violets:
Violets appear frequently in A Room with a View. Whether prominent in the setting or invoked in the dialogue, the motif of violets comes to be associated with uninhibitedness and love.
The first time violets appear in the novel is in the third chapter, when Miss Alan and Mr. Beebe discuss "the business of the violets," in reference to an event that took place beyond the frame of the novel. It remains unclear to the reader what exactly happened, but it is evident that the Emersons did something with violets that shocked the prim Miss Alans. The "business of the violets" goes unexplained until the tenth chapter, when Mr. Beebe tells the story of a "great scene over some violets":
They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans [...]. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine’s great stories. “My dear sister loves flowers,” it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue — vases and jugs — and the story ends with “So ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful. It is all very difficult.” Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.
In this anecdote, violets come to represent excess—and the gentry's fear of it. The "business of the violets" comes down to the Emersons' attempt to be kind and the other characters' skepticism (one might even say deliberate misinterpretation) of their thoughtful gesture. Mr. Beebe tells the story to come to Lucy's aid, but he does not realize the full extent of Lucy's distress at the combined thought of George and violets. He believes she is upset because Cecil has thwarted her plan to install the Miss Alans in the house that Sir Harry Otway is renting out. This is part of it, but Lucy is mostly worried about confronting George after they kissed each other in the terrace of violets in the sixth chapter. When she explains what happened to Charlotte, the violets come to be a central reason for their kiss:
I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. I had silly thoughts. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like someone in a book.
Lucy appears to claim that neither she nor George are entirely to blame for what happened; rather, she suggests that the violets acted as a sort of hypnotizing aphrodisiac. She stands by this explanation much later in the novel, when she tells Charlotte that she "fell into all those violets, and he was silly and surprised" and that "it makes such a difference when you see a person with beautiful things behind him unexpectedly." These lines reinforce the motif as a symbol of indulgence and passion.
The moment in the terrace of violets is not the only time the flower has an aphrodisiacal effect. In the fifteenth chapter, the invoking of violets precipitates yet another kiss between George and Lucy. When Cecil reads aloud from Miss Lavish's novel, George and Lucy catch one another's gaze at the mention of the heroine sitting on a bank that is "carpeted by violets." Within a page, George has kissed Lucy yet again.
Related Themes:
