Medieval Works' Influence on A Room With A View: Lucy Honeychurch vs. Dante's Lucy, Exercises of Art

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THE MORALITY THEME IN A ROOM WITH A VIEW:

A STUDY OF E. M. FORSTER'S NOVEL

AND THE FILM ADAPTATION BY JAMES IVORY

by

Monique Benghiat

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of the

College of Humanities

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

August 1988

For my father: without whose love, encouragement and support this personal achievement would not have been possible.

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ABSTRACT

Monique Benghiat The Morality Theme in A Room With A View: A Study of E. M. Forster's Nov e l and the Film Adaptation by James Ivory Florida Atlantic University Master of Arts 1988

In A Room With A View Forster's allusions to the "mediaeval," the pattern of chapter headings which describes the action, the particular use of names and the way the narrative follows the evolving nature of Lucy Honeychurch's soul reveal a structural similarity to a morality play. In addition, the vivid contrasting elements of Light and Darkness and of Art and Nature establish the morality's opposing framework of Good versus Evil. The overtly visual style of Forster's narrative as well as the essentially dramatic structure of the novel provides director James Ivory a means to successfully adapt Forster's thematic structure to film. Ivory does so by translating the use of literary symbols and motifs into their visual counterparts rather than by merely concentrating on the achievement of narrative fidelity to the novel.

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INTRODUCTION

The relationship between the novel and the film has been a long and rewarding one. Not only has the novel served to provide the cinema with a great source of literary material, but the medium of film itself has, in turn, proven its ability to reflect, if not enhance, the essential concerns of even the best works of literature, many of which lie beneath the immediate narrative. James Ivory's film of E. M. Forster's novel, A Room With A View, is only one of hundreds of films that have been adapted from novels, and as such risks being classified as simply that, an adaptation and not a visual interpretation--the inevitable result being a comparison with the novel based merely on the film's fidelity to the narrative. Since the mid 1950s, countless books and articles have examined the relationship between the novel and the film, specifically films adapted from established novels, in order to determine an effective method to discuss the process of adaptation and to wrench it from the existing arena of comparative study (that is, of novel into film), what William Luhr calls "plot obsessiveness." As late as 1980, Luhr found it necessary to reiterate that the "plot component of narrative texts must be seen not as the definitive component, but as one among many," because other

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2 components, he insists (in novels: descriptive, imagistic, symbolic, rhythmic; and in film: photographic, montage, proxemic, musical), may, in fact, have "far greater aesthetic significance than the plot"

(36). In his view, judging a film adapted from a novel

purely on the basis of its fidelity to the plot, as is often done, is naive and does a disservice to both art forms. George Bluestone had earlier noted, in 1957, that it is often easy to criticize a film made from a classic novel on the basis of its ability to reproduce, exactly, characters and situations as the reader might have been led to expect them. Where this standard falls short, Bluestone says, is in the failure to recognize "that changes are inevitable the moment one abandons the linguistic for the visual medium." He asks instead that the film maker be recognized not as "a translator for an established author, but a new author in his own right" (62). Stuart Y. McDougal gives a poignant example to prove the futility of restricting comparison to the letter of the novel. "Some adaptations," he says, "remain closer in work or spirit to their sources than others, although any ideal of complete fidelity should be dismissed. How could there be a 'definitive' film of Shakespeare's Macbeth, when critics have been arguing about the play for nearly four centuries?" (6- 7).

4 it would seem, would be to shift the emphasis from viewing the novel and the film as basically telling a story to that of discovering how that story is told, first by the novelist and then by the film maker, and by then evaluating the methods by which themes are interpreted and developed from page to screen. Often, it is the particular use of the camera and the effects of lighting, staging and editing which most effectively perform this interpretive function of themes from word to image. Michael Klein evaluates the camera and the effects it records as "the primary means by which a director may reproduce, shape and thus express and evaluate the significance of a narrative" (3). Recognizing the effect of condensing a novel into a screenplay and leaving it "bereft of some of its linguistic resources," Klein sees these cinematic effects as "resurrecting" meanings that may have been lost in the process of screenwriting (S-6). It is important, then, to realize that specific cinematic interpretation does not refer simply to the visualization of descriptive passages in a novel but involves, instead, a conscious and detailed effort to present ideas and concepts not fully revealed in the dialogue. Through the particular presentation of camera work, of lighting, sound, staging and editing, the relationships of character to character and actor to viewer are firmly established. These techniques are

5 also a means by which to recognize a character's perception of his surroundings, or of his situation, and similarly the director's perception or "point-of-view" of his characters, which may differ. Thus, through a steady accumulation of filmic pattern and motif, the main thematic idea of the director is revealed. In studying the adaptation from novel to film, then, two main principles should be of concern: the director's perception and development of a main thematic structure of the novel and his cinematic interpretation of the ideas expressed therein. The critic must first identify the central concern of the novel--whether it is a social, political, philosophical or psychological concern--to determine whether analogous attitudes exist between author and director and to provide a basis for studying the interpretive and not merely the adaptive function of film.

7 play, wherein Lucy Honeychurch emerges as a Mankind or Everyman figure whose soul is the object of the stru g gling forces of Virtue and Vice, Good and E vil. Frequent references to the medieval period--in chapter he a dings, by description of character and references to medieval works of art, as well as the recurring "loss of vision" motif common to moralities--indicate this likelihood. In addition, Forster's novel, centering as it does on the life of one character, follows the basic pattern of a morality in focusing on the fate of its protagonist: i.e., temptation, sin, a fall from grace, misery, repentance, forgiveness and eventual salvation. As in the morality plays, the characters in A Room With A View--and the forces they represent--can be seen to be acting on a stage whose setting is the battleground for Lucy Honeychurch's soul. The struggle which ensues, one which consistently requires that she make a choice, is, fundamentally, a struggle between Truth (represented by certain Virtue figures) and Falsehood (represented by various Vice figures). Falsehood, in this case, refers to what Frederick Crews calls "watered-down English Puritanism" (83), which values sexual repression, aestheticism and a generally "proper" moral (^) code of ethics. Truth (^) is the "pagan" force that counters such influence, with its (^) love of the body, of nature, of earthly life itself. Although there are few direct references^ to

8 medieval moralities in Forster's novel, we know from P. N. Furbank's biographf that Forster was familiar with medieval literature and history. Citing a partial list of Forster's reading, Furbank includes The Times of Dante as well as works by Dante himself. Dante is, in fact, mentioned by name in A Room With A View, as well as a reference to the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, two opposing political factions in Italy during Dante's life~ Italy, as the setting of the first half of A Room With A View, and Florence in particular, strengthens the idea of an association with Dante. When Forster was writing A Room With A View, there was also a revival of medieval drama in England beginning with the 1901 William Poel production of Everyman (Potter prologue). The Edwardian stage then saw "a profusion" of religious plays which were, in essence, "travesties of the Everyman motif" (Potter 235). Robert Potter, researching the longevity of the morality, concluded that its popularity as a dramatic structure was due to its being "adaptable to new circumstances and social conditions [because it had] at its basis, to begin with, an archetypal human perception: the fall-out of innocence into experience" ( 9) • No less instructive is the fact that the political and social climate in which A Room With A View was conceived embodied a reaction against the conservatism

10 like a monk or a mystic, but by embracing it" (166). It is with these beliefs, then (variously identified by the critics as Humanist, Classical or sometimes "mystical") that Forster attacks the Christian moral code, specifically the expressions of such moralizing identified with the Middle Ages, which he must have recognized as still existing in his time. And so, with a twist of irony, Forster constructs the play of contrasting forces in A Room With A View, as Lucas says, as "a basic opposition of pagan and Christian as holy and devilish" (292); and this opposition is where the morality begins to emerge. It is not only within the structure of the novel that one may find the basis for a morality, but in the characters themselves. In considering medieval works in relation to A Room With A View, it is quite possible to see Lucy Honeychurch as an extension of Dante's Lucy in The Divine Comedy, who represents the Holy Spirit and Love (Ferrante 140). Dante's Lucy is also the Patron Saint of Eyesight (Ferrante 141), corresponding to the vivid imagery of blindness and clarity of vision in Forster's novel. Names are, in fact, as significant in the novel as they are in traditional moralities. Bonnie Finkelstein notes that Lucy's name "implies light as opposed to darkness and muddle" (75). Cecil, a character who appears as a central force that counters the "virtues"

1 1 of Love and Truth, is aptly called Mr. Vyse. Forster makes the name "Emerson" an issue on the importance of names by describing the confusion and "muddle" it caused those trying io remember it, and whether those were the same Emersons Lucy knew, and, worse still, if they were "the right sort" of Emersons (130-132). Characters in a medieval morality were often named by philosophical abstraction (Bevington 794), and it may be that by choosing to use the name "Emerson" in his novel, Forster again subtly toys with the morality structure--naming the philosopher instead of the philosophy. The fictional Emerson actually holds many views expounded by the American transcendentalist, including the need to live close to nature and the importance of finding spiritual meaning outside of organized religion. Mrs. Honeychurch actually refers to this association by stating: "I was merely going to remark, Freddy, that I trusted they were no relations of Emerson the philosopher, a most trying man" (131). The names of chapters in A Room With A View also indicate a similarity to the title pages in medieval drama where the title page would name the central action (Kolve 69). Thus, we have "In Santa Croce with No Baedeker," "Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing," "Lying to George," "Lying to Cecil," to name but a few. There are also those titles which refer directly to the historical period surrounding the initial appearance of

the morality: "Medieval" and "The End of the Middle Ages". The novel, and the novelist, thus quite explicitly establish a thematic pattern to the narrative. The morality structure appears as the dominant mode of expression in this narrative, something that is clearly revealed as the novel is examined chronologically and in greater detail.

1 3 NOTES (^1) All quotations from A Room With A View are taken from the Vintage edition: New York, 1986. (^2) SeeP. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster: A Life (Vol. 1). 3 For the reference to Dante, see page 184; the Guelfs and Ghibellines are mentioned twice, on pages 12 and 13. 4 The medieval spelling for Vice was actually often Vyse.