Forster's most optimistic and romantic novel is set in motion by a chance encounter in Italy that offers a young Englishwoman a means to escape the stultifying restrictions of her life.
When Lucy Honeychurch meets George Emerson in a hotel in Florence, she is intrigued but wary. Lucy's chaperone, her strict and overbearing cousin Charlotte, disapproves of Emerson because he is free-thinking in his opinions, unconventional in manners, and beneath them in social status. In the freeing atmosphere of Italy the two young people are increasingly drawn to each other, but once back in England Lucy is constrained by the claustrophobic snobbery of her guardians, who encourage her to take up with a well-connected but pretentious boor. Lucy must decide whether to take control of her own fate and risk love with a man whose free spirit reminds her of 'a room with a view'.
