Post Five: Reflection about A Room with a View

A Room With a View- Trailer (Take a Look)

The film is about two ladies; Lucy (a young woman) and Charlotte Bartlett (Lucy’s chaperone and cousin) who go to vacation in Florence, Italy. Lucy finds her true love in George who is visited Italy too. The title A Room with a view summary the whole movie, because is for a room with a view that Lucy Honeychurch knows the true love in George. Mr. Emerson (George’s father) offers to switch rooms with Lucy and Charlotte, who desire a room with a view.  Forward in the movie Lucy and George love grow, because George passionately kisses Lucy and she approaches him. At the same time Charlotte discovers their kiss and prevents the relationship between George and Lucy using guilt to coerce Lucy to secrecy to save their reputations, but mostly for her own benefit and because she considers George to be an undesirable influence. As if it were a matter of fate Lucy and George meet again in England, when Lucy is already engaged with a man completely different from her (Mr. Cecil Vyse). Finally Lucy and George understand that they were born to share their lives and being together. They share the same passion for the life, because they really study the places when they visit them.

In the film I consider that Charlotte Bartlett and Mr. Cecli Vyse are tourists because their behavior is vey similar to the tourist’s behavior.  For example when Charlotte says: “This meat has surely been boiled, it’s lost all its flavor”. According to Jamaica Kincaid’s tourist description in her book A Small Place, Charlotte showed a tourist’s behavior when she criticism the Italian food [17]. Also Mr. Vyse says: “Italy and London are places where I feel I truly belong”, this represent a wrong idea about the identity because he really does not know anything of Italy and London. Mr. Vyse may know about the books but he does not know anything about people. For other hand, George Emerson, Mr. Emerson, Reverend Beebe, Ms. Teresa Alans, Ms. Catharine Alans, and Miss Eleanor Lavish are travelers. I consider that they are travelers, because they showed their own simplicity and they showed that they visit different places to truly know the place. For example the traveler idea is represented in Mr. Emerson when he says: “It’s ridiculous these niceties. I don’t care what I see outside. My vision is within! Here is where the birds sing. Here is where the sky is blue” and in Miss Eleanor Lavish when she mentions: “Between the Squalor of London and the Squalor of Prato there is a great gulf fixed” and “It is only by going off the track that you get to know the country. See the little towns: Gubbio, Settignano, Galuzzo, San Gimignano, Monteriggioni, they are a mixture of the almost primitive with the anciently classical that I find irresistible”. These represent the notion of a traveler, because Lavish expressed how you could truly know a place. Also Eleanor says:  “Monteriggioni is not only quaint, but there one meets the Italians unspoiled in all their simplicity and charm”. So, this represents that Eleanor is expressed that you not must only know the place; you also must know the people behavior of the place that you are going to visit. This is also connected with the idea of Jamaica Kincaid if being a tourist in her book A Small Place. Both Lavish and Kincaid express the importance of truly knows the place that you visit. Eleanor also says: “In the Italian landscape which inclines even the most stolid nature to romance”. This quote is very related to the idea of a traveler, because I think that in this scene Lucy transforms her tourist’s behavior to a traveler’s behavior. However, at the end of the film Lucy acquired the tourist behavior again when she want to visit Greece to scape from her reality and the love, but Mr. Emerson shows to Lucy that she doesn't need to escape from the love and from her feelings.

Charlotte Bartlett & Eleanor Lavish

       A quote that connects to Kincaid’s idea of being a tourist in A Small Place is when the man in the tumbril says: “We residents sometimes pity you poor tourist not a little”. I classified Lucy as a tourist at the beginning of the film because she mentions: “I am here as a tourist”, but at the end of the film her behavior change in a traveler behavior. Also, I think that she is confused during the film and she is stuck in her own ideas. At the begin Lucy think that she know Italy and Italians when she says to George: “I mean, Italians are so kind, so lovable, and yet at the same time so violent”, but she really know how is Italy when she learn to be herself. Finally, I think that Kincaid would respond to the British women who are visiting Italy (Lucy and Charlotte) as Kincaid express in her book A Small Place: “A tourist is an ugly human being”. Kincaid would say to the British women that they should find what really define them. Specifically, Kincaid would say to Charlotte who doesn’t like Italy and Italians that the Italians do not like the tourist like her too.