'A Room With A View'

I consider this to be a great time of discovery for me. Not the same as before but not much different. Last time I took the grand leap to come to France it was out of a desire to see, to learn, and to explore. What I did not anticipate was the great canyon of change I was going to face. Little by little, day by day, through every experience I learned valuable lessons that have stayed with me through every moment since. But there has been a time when I forgot many of the most important lessons of all; the ones I found within myself.
This trip to France has been much different. I came with different intentions, a very opposite frame of mind, and a broken heart. And for all those who can account to what this is like, it means viewing the world through different eyes. Although I want to try and make some effort, this trip is not about seeing the country, exploring new places. It's about being in a safe place with much time to think and reflect. Without the distractions I find at home.
So what better a way to become inward and pensive than to read! To take book and fall into the world the writter describes is an experience all in it's own. And maybe you'll think, what a shame! She is in the beautiful country side of southern France and she is reading! But what better a way to see one inward than to be surrounded by beauty, inside and out? To feel and smell, see and hear ALL that is real and then to let your imagination take over your thoughts.
In this frame of mind, I decided to go to the library in Mazéres to take a few books. Of course, I can hardly read French so I had to find what few books in english they had. Because they only have a small selection, it is made of mostly classic books, a few sci-fi novel, and many books of travel. So I decided to try my hand at a book called 'A Room With A View' by E.M. Forster.
I've heard of this book many times but I had no idea what it was about. It didn't take me long to fall in love with the witty quibble of the author and his obvious distaste for anything of the society at the time. Very much like my own personality, he shows a distinct rebellion against the world in which he lived in. He glorified people with deeper thoughts and whom were considered outcasts of society and painted people with proper mannerisms and social graces to be shallow and unfit. But most of all, I found it humerous how he described his heroine Lucy Honeychurch.
This is one of the greatest coming of age stories I have ever read. Lucy is a young girl, of great moral character who is trying to find her way in the world she was told was right, but often felt was wrong. She is kind in disposition and quick to love everyone. While taking a tour of Italy she ends up in Florance with her cousin and many fellow travelers in a pensione. She does not know it at the time but she falls in love with a man whom many people in her social circle would deem unfit. So to escape the pecular George Emerson and his wild views of equality and deeper mind she leaves Florence to Rome. Time passes, she returns home, and she becomes engaged to a Mr. Cecil Vyse. A proper, refined man with high social stance. As time passes she begins to lose her beauty and innocence she found within the world and becomes more and more like her cynical and snobbish fiance. The many who praised and upheld Cecil begin to dislike and distrust his obtrusive, rude ways. But Lucy, who is under the spell of what she felt was love, defends him to the end. Soon George Emmerson and his father move to the neighborhood and start in motion many great events which lead to the end of Lucy and Cecils engagment and the beginning of many greater things. Of course I do not want to reveal all that happens, other wise there would be no point in reading it!
I think this book has struck me in ways I haven't felt in much time. I feel to close to Lucy and her "muddled" confusion in life. I envy her in her clarity in the end. I have loved and felt the confusion of being with someone not at all in character with myself. And there lays much of the confusion. Cecil spent most of his time with Lucy trying to mold her and make her into the woman he deemed appropriate. Instead of appreciating the people in the world for the beauty they held as a person, he was dissatisfied and unwilling to accept people as they were. And in the end Lucy saw him as "the sort who can't know anyone intimately".
And after she drops the bomb and ends it all with him, instead of being angry and resentful he begins to see her as she truly was. "But now to Cecil, now that he was about to lose her, she seemed each moment more desirable. He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged....she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art." And he loved her more. With real and true appreciation.
I begin to think had she not loved George Emmerson, but still had seen the truth about Cecil, would this revelation in him saved them? Would it have been enough to open his eyes to the changes he needed to make to appreciate the woman he loved? To try and enjoy life in a way that was parallel with her, not opposite? And would he still love her once he saw that she was not perfect? When he saw her for what she was? Had Lucy loved Cecil, but just been tired of being picked at, molded, and made to dislike all that she loved, could she look past his begining flaws and hope for better in the future?
Love is a mysterious thing and in the end it's something I can never claim to understand. But as I'm spending this time in great thought and hoping for clarity on what the next turn in my life is, I felt this book was brought to be in perfect time. Most of you can understand how I can relate to this story, but differ in the same. So now it's time for my 'muddled' life to become more clear. It may take time, more thought, and much discipline.
But in the end, I'm not longer alone in my fight within myself.
No, it seems an English, male writter born in 1897 understands my problems more clearly than I can seem them. Touché Mr. Forster.