The main character of the novel "A Room with a View " is Lucy Honeychurch, a young English woman who follows the social convensions of the Victorian middle class which she belongs to. .
She is visiting Florence with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte when she meets George Emerson, a young, agnostic and nonconformist man, who is able to see the reality hided behind the aparences, who has no fear to feel and to show his feelings. .
They have a short love story in Italy which culminates with a forbidden kiss. Back in England, Lucy tries to keep on living her life as usual, but she is not the same person. .
When George and his father move to Tunbridge Wells, the quarter where Lucy and her family lives, she finds that her relationships with her family, with the unconventional Emerson and with her supercilious fiancé Cecilio pull her between the social proprieties of her upbringing and the spontaneous promptings of her heart. At the end she is convinced by George's father to follow the way of heart. Just married, Lucy and George come back to Italy. .
The main theme of the novel is the comparison between the peculiarity of Italian people and of English people, between two different ways of living. In Forster's opinion Italians are more joyful and spontaneous, so Lucy's awakening becames from the country's influence. .
Forster sees something deeply wrong in the puritan and merchant society of his time and he underlines that view in his novel: we could find a clear contraposition between Honeychurch's and Emerson's world or, better, view of the world. For example, he characterizes Honeychurch's house placing it at Windy Corner (the name underlines the "northern spirit-), when Emerson's house is in Sunny Street (connected with the "Mediterranean spirit-).
As writer, Foster is known and appreciated because of the accurate study of the characters in his novels; they are always vital and round, full of contraddictions and dubts.