A Room with a View

Cecil’s noble farewell and departure

Cecil offers a graceful, almost noble farewell. He thanks Lucy sincerely for what she has done, viewing it as a gift that has shown him his true self. He shakes her hand and lights her candle before they move to the hall. His final words are a blessing: “God bless you, Lucy.” As he ascends the stairs, he pauses on the landing and gives her a look of memorable beauty. For all his culture, Cecil proves to be an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love becomes him like the leaving of it.

Lucy resolves never to marry

In the tumult following Cecil’s departure, Lucy stands firm in her resolve that she could never marry. She recognizes that Cecil believes in her, and she must someday believe in herself. She feels she must become one of the women she praised so eloquently—those who care for liberty rather than men. The thought of George and his role in this release troubles her, but she pushes it away, deciding it does not do to think or even to feel.

Lucy joins the self-deceived who sin against passion and truth

The chapter concludes with Lucy surrendering her attempt to understand herself and joining “the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words.” Forster suggests that those who yield to the enemy within—their own self-deception—have “sinned against passion and truth.” These pleasant and pious people will face vengeance from Eros and Pallas Athene, the allied deities of love and wisdom. Lucy entered this army when she pretended to George that she did not love him and pretended to Cecil that she loved no one. The night receives her as it once received Miss Bartlett thirty years before.