Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Describe the postscript "A View Without a Room."

In 1958, Forster added a postscript to the novel called "A View Without a Room" that caught up with the fates of the various characters within the novel and brought into question the romantic closure of the novel. We learn, for example, that both Windy Corner and the hotel room at the Pension Bertolini that represent the two divergent "views" that Lucy must choose between have both been destroyed. Moreover, we also discover that George's and Lucy's marriage is not entirely happy and that when George went to fight in the Second World War he "did not remain chaste," perhaps undermining the romantic closure and seeming happy resolution of the novel. It is one of the more intriguing examples of a novelist returning to a text written many years before to guide the reader away from a possible misreading of the book.

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