I believe the main themes of this novel are love, emancipation, travel and human development and religion.
Love. Lucy is a young and naive girl. He does not realise that George, at one point in Rome, starts to love her. It is, however, an unspoken love. On her trip to Rome with her cousin Charlotte, Lucy feels pretty alone and left behind and soon she encounters Mr. Emerson and his son George. At the end of their stay in Rome, George makes a brave decision to kiss Lucy. Lucy, being a well-raised lady, is pretty shocked by this and holds it against him throughout the rest of the book. In the second part of the book they meet again and Lucy denies his love for George, also because she is engaged to Cecil. Not until the very end, does George tell her how he feels. Lucy breaks up with Cecil, but still denies her love. Not until a very good conversation with George’s father does she realise how she feels.
Emancipation. The book is still written in a time where women are oppressed by men and society. Lucy can be seen as a rebel of her time period. She loves her freedom, says at one point she could never be married, and
Travel and human development. The high society loved to make trips abroad. Mostly this was just because of a mild interest in other cultures. More often it was to show their wealth of course. On a lot of occasions when they were abroad they talked about the beauty of the UK and that everything was soooo much better there. Lucy, however, seeing herself as a free woman of the world, loves to travel. That passion says a lot about her personality. She is not afraid of the unknown, wants to take risks and it shows that there are no boundaries to her spirit. At least that is how I see it.
Religion. Religion is in some ways represented. The clergymen, that take a fairly big part in the book, do not necessarily talk about their religion, but more of their knowledge of art and literature. I heard Lucy thinking, I’m not sure where, that she finds it strange that the clergymen are not at all occupied with their religion. The more important clergyman is Mr. Beebe. He also acts as some sort of protector and gives Lucy advice when needed.
Core:
The books begins with Lucy’s and Charlotte’s travel to Rome. There is a discussion about the rooms. Charlotte, being a high society lady, only wants the very best and demands a room with a view. A nice gentleman called Mr. Emerson and his son George offer them their room. Charlotte, however, despises them, because they are lower class. She tries to keep the two gentlemen as far as possible from Lucy, who is, of course, interested in them, because of the way they act and speak and their knowledge of art and literature.
She does not get to meet them personally until she’s out on a walk with Ms. Lavish, when Ms. Lavish suddenly runs off, leaving Lucy, without her Baedeker, all alone in Rome. She walks into a church, finding Mr. Emerson there. They talk all day, freely like Lucy never experienced before and she is utterly fascinated by it.
One day Lucy is involved in some violence between two Italian men. One of them men gets killed during this fight. Lucy is not used to the Italian fierceness and faints. Thank god George is there to save her. When they stand on the bridge of a famous Italian river, George realises he is in love with Lucy. He tells he that at the end of the book.
On her last in Florence, between the violets, George kisses Lucy. Suddenly Charlotte notices the two. Because this is quite the scandal Charlotte promises Lucy never to tell anyone about it. Lucy, too, is quite shocked by the event, because it was not a normal and lady-like thing to do back then.
Then part two of the book begins. Lucy is back again. In Rome, Lucy and Charlotte met a man named Cecil Vyse, an old acquaintance of the two cousins. Cecil is a tall, snobbish man that devoted his life to literature. He sees Lucy as a work of art and proposes to her twice, but she refuses. When they are in the garden of Lucy’s house Windy Corner, he proposes again and she accepts it. Not because she loves him, though.
Everything seemed fine until they receive a message that the Emersons are moving to the neighbourhood. Slowly Lucy and George start to spend more time together again. It is clear that George is still deeply in love with Lucy, but he is afraid of showing it.
One day, when everyone is playing tennis except Cecil, he reads a passage of a book he’s currently reading out loud. It describes the event that happened between George and Lucy in Florence. Cecil, thankfully, doesn’t know what he’s reading. However, the book is by an author named Ms. Lavish. It turned out that Charlotte told her the whole story, which made Lucy furious of course. George suddenly felt brave enough to kiss her again. Lucy was totally shocked by this and tells the boy to go away. George and Lucy have one quick talk about their love and the love Lucy feels for Cecil. George tells Lucy that Cecil is the kind of man that is unable to ever intimate with a woman and that he never should be intimate, because in Cecil’s mind a woman is merely a robot and should never have a mind of her own. After George leaves Lucy starts to think and the final straw was when he refused to play tennis when everyone was so excited to play. She felt he was being utterly selfish. She broke off the engagement.
One day Lucy meets Mr. Emerson in Mr. Beebe’s house, just before going to church. It seemed that George told his father all about his love for Lucy. Old Mr. Emerson felt that Lucy was being ignorant and that she would be stupid to turn away a man that loved her so much.
In the last chapter we can read that Lucy and George are happily together in their room with a view in Florence. Lucy and George are being playful as ever and they are now fluent in Italian. It seems that they’ve been there for quite some while.
The story is set in the early 20th century. This is a time where women were not equal to men. They were supposed to behave, act and dress in a certain way.
Young Lucy, however, is the personification of freedom for women in that time period. She transcends all the accounting standards
It also shows the growing interest of the higher class in things such as art and literature. In their spare time they love to play games and have tea parties. I think the book is a very good reflection of that time.
Comment – reading experience - with quotations
I very very much enjoyed this book. I adore books like Jane Austin, Elisabeth Gaskell and also Charles Dickens. The way it is written and the language that is used simply gets to me. I found Lucy to be a very enjoyable character and I thought her free spirit was very inspiring. I think young women, also nowadays, can relate to the various features of Lucy. She doesn’t take it for granted that women are not allowed the same things as men. She wants to be equally free. I liked the character of George very much. Not only because he didn’t act like a snob, but also because he wasn’t afraid to show his emotions. I love a man that can love a woman unconditionally. I did enjoy reading about Cecil because every time the author described his thoughts, these thoughts were the most beautiful passages in the book. They really made me feel connected emotionally and also made me tear up once or twice. Cecil’s view on things was absolutely astounding, in my opinion.
There is one passage in the book that describes how Cecil feels about Lucy. It really made me emotional and longing for the eternal love which you know will never exist. I read this page over and over again, even read it to several people out loud, because it touched me so much.
It is quite a long passage, so I have to cut it into two pieces.
‘He had known Lucy for several years, but only as a commonplace girl who happened to be musical...........The things that really mattered were unshaken’ (End of p.82 to p.83)
This for me is the most wonderful passage of the book. It has no deeper meaning, but just the way Cecil sees Lucy; as she reflects the beauty in the scenery surrounding them.
Another beautiful quote is said between Lucy and Mr. Emerson, when they talked about the love for her and George. This is what he said:
‘Life, wrote a friend of mine, is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along’. (p. 188)
I never heard a thing as Life itself, being so beautifully described before. I read it over and over again, and again I got emotional.
And a bit further on Mr. Emerson says to Lucy:
‘When I think what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love- marry him; it is one of the moments for which the world was made’. (p. 189)
First he describes life as a public performance on the violin; growing as you go along and second he tells her that life means nothing without love; life and love rooted together. I seldom heard such beautiful things.
A next quote is from Charlotte. As I said before Charlotte particularly disliked the Emersons because they were lower class people. She believed them to be bestial. At one point Lucy tries to talk to George, but Charlotte tries to talk her out of it by saying:
‘But we fear him for you, dear. You are so young and inexperienced, you have lived among such nice people, that you cannot realise what men can be-how they can take brutal pleasure in insulting a woman whom her sex does not protect and rally around.’ (p.69)
It were of course only the lower class men that were brutal. Lucy lived such a sheltered life, that when becoming a young woman she had no experience with men whatsoever and Charlotte would see that, that it stayed that way.
I love the way people reacted to situations back then. When men were still gentlemen and took time in a thing that seems impossible nowadays: courtship. You may call me a prude, or old-fashioned, but I love the way they spoke to each other, the accounting standards and their look on life and the world
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