Lucy’s eventual rejection of the oppressive, possessive Cecil, who regards her more as a piece of art in his collection than as a real-life, breathing, living human, parallels this wider societal development. Today, it seems absurd that she requires a chaperon to travel abroad and that she acquiesces to some of the restrictive demands of the people around her, but this was the reality for women in the Victorian era, and it is only with the change of monarch and a shift in mentality (as well as the wars just around the corner…) that the first baby steps towards equality were taken. Lucy’s awakening is part of a wider reflection on the role women should play at the start of the twentieth century. However, books rarely survive past their centenary without having something a little more substantial to offer than a happy ending, and ‘A Room with a View’ is a lot more complex than it may appear.
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