An Analysis Of A Room With A View From The Perspective Of Female Bildungsroman

Edward Morgan Forster(1879-1970),as a prominent English novelist,essayist and literary critic,enjoys a great popularity.To a large degree,his works reveal the spiritual barrenness of the middle-class Englishmen in the Edwardian period.A Room with a View is a typical one of them and is considered to be a great social comedy.The rich characters combined with the sarcastic humor make this novel full of implications and receive widely compliments from home and abroad.A Room with a View is not only a love story,but also follows the heroine Lucy’s psychological growth.From the very first confusion to ambivalence and to the final awakening,Lucy becomes a woman with independent thoughts and is brave to pursue her true love.The current study of this novel is multifaceted.Among the most frequently analyzed topics are the novel’s feminist ideas,humanist ideas,narrative strategies and symbolism.However,the growth theme of this novel hasn’t received enough attention.Thus,it is necessary and feasible to study Lucy’s psychological growth from the perspective of female Bildungsroman.This thesis is divided into three parts,including an introduction,the main body and a conclusion.The first part is the introduction.This part makes a brief introduction to E.M.Forster,his main works,especially A Room with a View,and the literature review on this novel.The second part is the main body consisting of four chapters,which makes a close textual analysis of Lucy’s psychological growth from the perspective of female Bildungsroman.The first chapter makes an introduction to female Bildungsroman and its internal connection with this novel,which is the theoretical basis for this thesis.The second chapter explores Lucy’s confusion,which mainly embodies in two aspects.One is Lucy’s confusion from the traditional social convention.During Edwardian period,patriarchal thoughts and traditional moral standard deeply fettered people’s thoughts.Women were educated to be obedient to men,but Lucy is unwilling to be controlled by the morality of patriarchal society.The other aspect is Lucy’s confusion from the people around her,including her family members,her fiancé Cecil,and the vicars;to some extent,they all deprive Lucy of her own thoughts.The third chapter analyzes Lucy’s ambivalence.Her ambivalence mainly embodies in two aspects.One is Lucy’s ambivalence between different cultures,namely between the influence from British patriarchal society and the inspiration from Italian humanist culture.The other aspect is Lucy’s ambivalence to love.Though she bravely breaks off the engagement with Cecil,she still doesn’t have enough courage to accept George’s love.During this period,Lucy has already begun to doubt about the traditional British social convention,but she doesn’t have enough courage to revolt against it.Meanwhile,this period paves the way to her final awakening.The fourth chapter analyzes Lucy’s awakening.Through the journey,Lucy opens her mind,and nature extricates various restrains from the patriarchal society and makes Lucy refreshed.With the encouragement and inspiration from Mr.Emerson,a positive mentor,Lucy takes a correct attitude towards life and responds to her real desire.The true love from George makes Lucy form a correct view of love and see through Cecil’s hypocrisy.Besides,through playing the piano,she releases the negative emotions and realizes what she really wants.Eventually,Lucy bravely faces her true love and breaks off the engagement with Cecil.She gets rid of the fetters of social conventions and becomes a woman with independent thoughts.The last part is the conclusion,which points out some essential factors for Lucy’s psychological growth and emphasizes its significance to Lucy and all the modern young women.Growth,as an important experience of life stages,is an eternal literary theme.The process of Lucy’s psychological growth shows that women can have the equal rights and pursue their desires as men if only they have enough courage to face their inner heart.