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A Room with a View
A Room with a View
Date: 2026-04-30
"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine." (EM Forster).
Every morning, I sit with a coffee overlooking the sea. The ebb and flow carries me into our momentary existence as the seas roll on eternally. It is a moving wonder, my corner that overlooks the harbour. The movement of ships, the annual whale season, the sardine run, the festival of Chariots, the baptisms; the sacred in the day, a blessed feeling of rhythm and peace, changing colour palettes, the moon tide, the push and pull of the ocean.
The ocean both a mirror and a window.
Over the centuries people have tried to control the ocean. Remember the Persian King Xerxes who demanded of his soldiers that they whip Hellespont strait 300 times as retribution for a storm that made short shrift of his pontoon bridge. We hear stories of governments stealing the ocean into land. But the oceans always rise.
I have just finished reading EM Forster's "A Room with a View" first published in 1908. It tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch. Lucy escapes the class prejudices and minutely policed social etiquette of the Edwardian period as she travels to Italy. As the plot unfolds with her kissing George and then returning to Windy Corner, the tensions mount, for Lucy has a fiancé. He is bent on shaping her into what a woman 'should be'. Lucy is living at a time when women had to know their place as her cousin explains:
"Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself, she would first be censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point."
But Lucy rebels. Her and George escape once more to Italy.
As I write these words on Freedom Day, aren't we all striving to be a Honeychurch? Looking for a room with a view into the future, straining against the straitjacket of convention, hoping that the next tide will steal our hearts and liberate our minds.