A Room with a View

“It was as if he had made her see the whole of everything.”

Approach and outcomes• Consider the psychology of humour • Consider techniques of humour in prose fiction• In the light of these, examine Forster’s methods and

purposes in A Room With A View Learning outcomes

By the end of the session you should be able to explain the nature and purpose of the comedy in the novel

Incongruity TheoryThe most popular theory is incongruity – we laugh at things

that surprise us because they seem out of place.

Superiority Theory

The idea that we feel superior to people who are made to look foolish by misunderstanding a situation

Freudian TheoryFreudian Theory

Freud believed we all have thoughts that society does not allow us to express openly.

Humour is a way for people to release pent-up thoughts about death, sex, marriage, authority figures, certain bodily functions – anything, that it is problematic to talk about freely.

A Professor with a View . . .

“Typically, humour involves four stages, the setup, the paradox, the dénouement, and the release.”

William O. BeemanDepartment of AnthropologyBrown University

1. The set up: presentation of the original content material and the first interpretive frame.

Expert detective Holmes and his sidekick Watson are camping

2. The paradox: the creation of the additional interpretive frame, or frames, creating suspense. Watson responds to the expert’s challenge with a very logical deduction

William O. Beeman

3. The dénouement: the first and second frames are shown to coexist, increasing tension.Normal relationship and our expectations of it have been reversed – how will Holmes react?

4. The release: the enjoyment registered by the audience in the process of realisation and the release of tension. Watson missed the obvious – Holmes is still far better at deductions: order is restored

What’s so funny about A Room with a View?

• We are surprised by subtle comments inserted unexpectedly by the narrator (incongruity)

• We begin to notice discrepancies between what characters think of themselves and how we might see them (superiority)

• We are made acutely aware of what behaviour polite English society expects - restraints(Freudian)

How does Forster create humour?1. The set up

The set up relies on us understanding the context of the book:

• The English class system – conservative, snobbish and prudish

• The contradictions in the English attitudes towards Italy and Italians

• Contemporary attitudes to tourism

Mrs Grundy

Mrs Grundy refers to a character, a farmer's wife, in the 1798 play Speed the Plough by Thomas Morton.

The OED definition: "a personification of the tyranny of social opinion in matters of conventional propriety".

The Grand Tour

A grand tour could last from several months to several years. It was commonly undertaken in the company of a knowledgeable tutor.

The primary value of the Grand Tour was exposure to the cultural legacy and the aristocratic and fashionable society of Europe.

It provided the only opportunity to view specific works of art, and possibly the only chance to hear certain music.

“Ruling-class control in the 18th century was located primarily in a cultural hegemony, and only secondarily in an expression of economic or physical (military) power."

EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class 1991

The English in Italy

What attracted significant numbers of British tourists to a country with a religion which British public opinion often treated with hostility?– Classical education– The Renaissance (pre-protestant reformation)– Relatively untouched by the Industrial Revolution– Landscapes – the picturesque

Thus they could enjoy the setting while feeling superior to the population

Tourists and travellers

Among the earliest entries provided by the OED is Samuel Pegge's statement in1800 that 'A Traveller is now-a-days called a Tour-ist.’

According to the OED, 'tourist' had acquired a darker side by the middle of the nineteenth century; it suggests a personality, a life-style, perhaps a class identification, and scenarios in which the ‘tourist' performs acts – sight-seeing, sticking to a schedule, following a guide book, buying souvenirs – which authentic travellers regard as ignorant and lower class.

Baedeker and Murray The guidebook came to

stigmatize its user in contrast to all that was authentic and spontaneous: “The ordinary tourist has no judgment, admires what the infallible Murray orders him to admire ... and never diverges one hair's breadth from the beaten track of his predecessors. . ."

1869 Leslie Stephen Cornhill Magazine

Ruskin: Mornings in Florence

Without looking about you at all, you may find, in your Murray, the useful information that it is a church which " consists of a very wide nave and lateral aisles, separated by seven fine pointed arches." And as you will be under ordinary conditions of tourist hurry glad to learn so much, without looking, it is little likely to occur to you that this nave and two rich aisles required also, for your complete present comfort, walls at both ends, and a roof on the top.

I have always respected guide books – particularly the early Baedekers and Murrays. E. M. Forster

Forster appreciated, Ruskin's irony is itself subject to further irony:

“. . . far from being in renewed and intimate contact with real things, Forster finds the Ruskin-carrying tourist at yet another remove from the supposed objects of tourist attention.”

The Beaten Track European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918. James Buzard

“The anti-tourist deludes only himself. We are all tourists now.” Paul Fussell (1924-2012)

His investigation into tourism led Forster to to see culture as inextricable from the complex history of everyday lives lived in any place, as nearly unintelligible to the casual, or even to the studied, observer.

Life is a mystery – authentic life experiences flow from events and relationships, not from observation and criticism of culture, however erudite.

“She could not have believed that stones, a Loggia, a fountain, a palace tower, would have such significance.”

Objects of satire

While every character provides some occasions for Forster’s gentle irony, those who are set up for particular satirical mockery are those who are most sure of their attitudes, most prejudiced, most hypocritical, most snobbish, least perceptive, and leading the least authentic lives

False lives and tourists

• Charlotte – life is a pretence• Lavish – fictionalises life with herself as the

heroine• Eager – a parson without any Christian feelings• Vyse – life, and Lucy, as a work of art• The Miss Allens – living life as tourists with no

understanding, recreating their own familiar environment wherever they are

2. The paradox

Forster creates additional interpretive frames by setting up a whole range of differing attitudes – Lucy– The Emersons– Miss Lavish– Rev Beebe

The key thematic binaries (Interpretive frames)

TRUTH, HONESTY, DIRECTNESS, CLARITY OF VISION (HAVING A VIEW)

INDIRECTNESS, HYPOCRISY, DISHONESTY LIES, ARTIFICIALITY, MUDDLE (NO VIEW)

LOVE, ROMANCE, DESIRE ‘CHIVALRY’, REPRESSION OF DESIRE

ITALY ENGLAND

CLASSICIAL ART AND CULTURE: PAINTING, MUSIC,

LITERATURE, ARCHITECTURE

MEDIEVALENTERTAINMENT, CULTURAL TOURISM, ELITISM

NATURE POLITE SOCIETY

FREEDOM, EQUALITY, INDIVIDUALITY, DEMOCRACY

CLASS SYSTEM, AUTHORITY, SNOBBERY

SPIRITUALITY (which embraces the body)

CLERICALISM/RELIGIOSITY

FREEDOM ,BOHEMIANISM, PASSION RESTRAINT: SOCIAL CONVENTION, ETIQUETTE, PROPRIETY, DELICACY, GENTILITY

3. The dénouement

Unlike the narrative structure of a joke, the novel is not linear – once we have understood the set up and the paradox, there are ongoing and, in several chapters, frequent instances of denouements

4. The release (i.e. any point where we might laugh)

Situations where opposing attitudes clash in• actions • or conversation • or in a character’s thoughts • or through the narrative voice

CharacterisationNote that main characters move to one side or the other compared to our first impressions; As they move, our sympathies towards them

change

Freedom Desire Truth

Restraint Repression Falseness

Emerson Beebe Eager

George Freddy Vyse

Lucy Charlotte

Mrs Honeychurch

Miss Lavish

“Humour, of all forms of communicative acts, is one of the most heavily dependent on equal cooperative participation of actor and audience.”

William O. BeemanDepartment of AnthropologyBrown University

Attending to the voices• Narrator’s voice – ironic, understated or

implied (‘He could not know that this was the most intimate conversation they had ever had’)

• Tone is unpretentious, mostly conversational, good humoured, tolerant

• Occasional rhetorical flourishes elevate the significance of events and relate them to the theme of authentic living

Attending to the voices

• Character’s own voice in dialogue• Free indirect speech – a character’s thoughts

or comments but not rendered verbatim – the narrator interposes with diction that reveals flaws in the character’s perceptions that the character does not realise

Part One Part Two

1. The Bertolini 2. In Santa Croce with No Baedeker 3. Music, Violets, and the Letter "S" 4. Fourth Chapter 5. Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing 6. The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them. 7. They Return

8. Medieval 9. Lucy As a Work of Art 10. Cecil as a Humourist 11. In Mrs. Vyse's Well-Appointed Flat 12. Twelfth Chapter 13. How Miss Bartlett's Boiler Was So Tiresome 14. How Lucy Faced the External Situation Bravely 15. The Disaster Within 16. Lying to George 17. Lying to Cecil 18. Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddy, and The Servants 19. Lying to Mr. Emerson 20. The End of the Middle Ages

Techniques

• Hyperbolic description of trivial incidents and feelings (‘vanquished by the mackintosh square’; just about everything Charlotte says – and Emerson, but he’s sincerely trying to express fundamental truths)

• Small but significant revisions (‘So Lucy felt, or strove to feel’/ ‘she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted;’)

Techniques

• Bathos (‘At the supreme moment he was conscious of nothing but absurdities’)

• Mixing registers• Unconscious irony• Juxtaposition of character and setting -

incongruity