Traveler or Tourist? "A Room with a View" Reflection

The film A Room with a View, adapted from the novel by E. M. Forster, was released in 1985. This movie follows the story of a young, British girl named Lucy Honeychurch and her uptight, much older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. While on their holiday trip to Italy, Lucy and Charlotte stay at a pensione, where they meet Reverend Beebe, the novelist Miss Eleanor Lavish, Mr. Emerson, and most importantly, his son George Emerson. These people portray the forward-thinking ideals of the time, as Lucy and Charlotte came from the repressive, proper, and conventional English culture. In fact, when Lucy and Charlotte complain about not having a room with a view in Florence, Mr. Emerson offers to change rooms with them; only to come off as strange and tactless. However, throughout their journey to Italy, Lucy and Charlotte have a chance of bonding with the other people from the pensione, specially when they visit the countryside.

It’s during the trip to the countryside where George embraces and passionately kisses Lucy as she approached him in a barley field; Charlotte witnesses the act, and immediately stops the intimacy. Upon returning to England, Lucy accepts a marriage proposal from the wealthy, yet snobbish Cecil Vyse. However, she soon finds out that George and his father move nearby, which disrupts her relationship with Cecil, resulting with Lucy breaking off her engagement. Lucy then makes plans on visiting Greece, and although she wanted peace of mind, Lucy later reunites with George. Towards the end of the film, we see them traveling back to Florence –as the genuine travelers they really are– and staying at the Italian pensione where they first met.

Different quotes and conversations throughout this film convey the qualities of being a tourist and a traveler. In the beginning of the movie, when Lucy and Charlotte are eating with the other English people from the pensione, Eleanor Lavish says one of the most important, yet understated quotes of the movie: “It is only by going off the track that you get to know the country”. This specific quote can easily relate to Jamaica Kincaid’s novel “A Small Place”, mostly because many tourists choose to visit the superficial, exotic and exterior sites when they travel, instead of “going off the track” and actually immersing into the cultures, traditions, history and issues of a country.

Another quote that caught my attention was definitely when Eleanor Lavish told Charlotte: “Smell! A true Florentine smell. Inhale, my dear. Deeper! Every city, let me tell you, has its own smell”. I believe in this moment –right when Eleanor and Charlotte got lost–, they were experiencing and living Florence in a physical and outer aspect; regarding our human senses. Instead of drenching themselves into the raw and realistic Italian culture, Eleanor and Charlotte affirm Jamaica Kincaid’s standpoint of how tourists are often alienated from real issues when they travel to a new country; they are both stereotypical tourists throughout the film. I believe Jamaica Kincaid would respond to the people staying at the pensione with a bitter and angry tone, mostly because their trip affirms her perspective of how tourists are selfish and rude towards the local people, which is perfectly presented when the priest yells at the Italian driver and his girlfriend for showing affection while they were riding the carriage in the countryside. Lastly, the film ends with an open quote, when the girl at the end says: “Don't you agree that, on one's first visit to Florence, one must have a room with a view?” which suggests how tourists are always focused on –not literally the sightings–, but that distant, careless and superficial attribute of the country they’re visiting.