The second chapter of A Room With a View begins with vivid imagery of Lucy's room and its view on her first morning in Italy. It is a colorful and charming description, reflecting Lucy's pleasure to be in Italy. Before this, the novel opens with Ms. Bartlett complaining about her and Lucy's lack of rooms with views. Throughout the rest of the first chapter, she and the other characters fret over the propriety of accepting Mr. Emerson and George's rooms. The reader sees very little of Italy and very much of the time period's various values in the novel's opening chapter; though it is central that they are in Italy, there is minimal imagery to back the setting up.
After the dialogue-heavy exposition, though, the opening of the second chapter provides a relieving shift, as it jumps straight into a detailed and happy description of the room:
It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons.
The room's primary view is not the ceiling, however. As Lucy opens the windows, the reader is tempted to forgive the characters for their excessive fuss in the first chapter.
It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
The passage is pleasant for its visual and auditory imagery. Additionally, there is something musical to the beginning of the second chapter, as Forster offers the reader a rhythmic and alliterative introduction to Florence. Through the passage's imagery and musicality, Forster ensures that Italy and its scenery have positive connotations for the reader, and that the reader will feel hopeful about the effect this place and these views will have on the heroine.
It is important that Lucy opens her windows herself and looks out at the view on her own; no one is there to tell her what she's seeing or how to understand it. This is her first glimpse of Florence in the morning light, as well as her first glimpse of independence.
It is also significant that such a vivid description of their surroundings doesn't appear until the start of the second chapter. The first chapter was dominated by the characters' concerns about propriety and social customs. While the underlying idea is that they are in Italy and want an Italian view, the first chapter could just as easily have taken place at home in England—in Lucy's words, "It might be London." It is only when Lucy goes to her room and looks out at the view, "thinking of the kind old man who had enabled her to see the lights dancing in the Arno, and the cypresses of San Miniato, and the foothills of the Apennines, black against the rising moon," that the narrator dwells on the setting. This vivid start to the second chapter serves as icing on the cake: indeed, it could not be London.
In the third chapter, Lucy's view of Florence from the Pension once again assumes a central role in her character development and the novel's plot. Forster offers the reader vivid imagery of the Arno, this time in the evening:
Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its muddy solidity and began to twinkle. There were a few streaks of bluish-green among the clouds, a few patches of watery light upon the earth, and then the dripping facade of San Miniato shone brilliantly in the declining sun.
This imagery appears after a drawn-out conversation about the Emersons and their impropriety. Until this point, the third chapter has predominantly consisted of Mr. Beebe and one of the Miss Alans discussing the other guests with a tone of judgment. The incongruity between the conversation and the beautiful scenery offers perspective to the reader, making the conversation and the characters' concerns appear especially insignificant.
Several aspects of the view suggest alleviation and illumination: the brightening of the air, the purification of the colors on the hills, the newfound clearness of the Arno. Lucy finds the Pension stifling—not to mention the conversations that go on within it. As daylight falls and the gradual arrival of evening clears the air, the possibility of going out into the world lightens Lucy's spirit. The narrator's attention to the outside world signals that something—not merely conversation—is about to happen.
The view seems to influence Lucy to take action and to go out into the world. The reminder that she is in Italy gives her agency and rouses her desire for connection. Just after the description of the view, Lucy announces that she will go out. A few lines after this, she exclaims: "Perhaps I shall meet someone who reads me through and through!" This exclamation serves to foreshadow the big event that is to come of her outing and foreshadows her brewing relationship with George. For that matter, the next time the San Miniato church is mentioned in the novel, it forms part of the view on the first evening of their honeymoon at the very end of the book. George says, "Lucy, you come and look at the cypresses; and the church, whatever its name is, still shows." Lucy answers "San Miniato." The novel ends with the two lovers in a room with a view together.
At the end of the sixth chapter, Lucy walks through a wooded area with the Italian driver in search of Mr. Eager and Mr. Beebe, whom she has described as good men in Italian. The driver has misunderstood her, however, and is taking her to George. The moment in which Lucy stumbles onto the terrace results in an explosion of imagery, as the view opens up in front of her eyes:
From her feet the ground sloped sharply into the view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.
Just after this beautiful description of the view, George kisses Lucy. Unbridled natural beauty thereby comes to be associated with their love. In addition, the slope of the hill down to George makes the kiss seem inevitable, as if their natural environment has been formed to lead Lucy to him.
The imagery relies heavily on metaphor, as Forster compares the violets to running water. Running in rivulets, streams, and cataracts, the flowers irrigate the hillside and gather in blue foam. Calling it the "well-head" and the "primal source," Forster suggests that this hillside is the place where all the violets in the world come from. There is a sad undertone to this precision, as they would "never again" be "in such profusion." The Italian half of the novel occurs during spring, and occasionally Forster dwells on the similarity between spring and autumn. Although spring is typically associated with renewal and beginning, he reminds us that spring is also about endings. Once a flower has reached the peak of its bloom, one will have to wait until next year to experience the budding again. This seems to also speak to the kiss between George and Lucy—after the riveting buildup reaches the climax of the kiss, the two young lovers have to leave the terrace, Italy, and the "well-head" of their love.
As Forster builds towards this imagery, he gives the reader hints of the view that is to come. For example, as Lucy and the driver near the edge of the promontory, the view steals around them, "but the brown network of the bushes shattered it into countless pieces." Then, as the view was "forming at last," Lucy slowly begins to "discern the river, the golden plain, other hills." In the moment that "the ground [gives] way," Lucy "[falls] out of the wood" with a cry. Forster puts careful effort in building the reader's expectations for the stunning imagery and the fateful kiss. Carefully foreshadowing the end of the chapter, he gives the reader fragments of the view before it appears in full glory. It is notable that Lucy doesn't seem to be seeking the view; rather, she falls into it. This is analogous to her incomprehension of her own feelings for George: the reader is quite sure of what is coming, but Lucy appears to have no clue.
In the twelfth chapter, Freddy, Mr. Beebe, and George Emerson go to the Sacred Lake for a swim. On their way there, Mr. Beebe makes a strenuous attempt to keep a conversation going with George. Their arrival at the Sacred Lake, which the narrator describes to the reader with rich imagery, offers the characters and reader relief from this stilted conversation.
They climbed down a slippery bank of pine-needles. There lay the pond, set in its little alp of green — only a pond, but large enough to contain the human body, and pure enough to reflect the sky. On account of the rains, the waters had flooded the surrounding grass, which showed like a beautiful emerald path, tempting the feet towards the central pool.
The description of the lake is pleasant and clarifying. Whereas Forster's descriptions of Florence rely on warm colors, and his description of the terrace where George first kisses Lucy is largely blue, the color of the Sacred Lake is undoubtedly green. This color gives a feeling of lushness and vigor. In addition, it is important that the sky is present in the imagery, as it gives a feeling of freedom. The characters may be deep in the forest, but they can nonetheless touch the sky.
Additionally, the visual and physical aspects of the scene tempt action. The slippery bank and emerald path seem to be shaped to draw the characters into the pond. At first, George remains committed to his characteristic indifference, and it is the physical environment that forces him into the water: "The bank broke away, and he fell into the pool before he had weighed the question properly." Not long after this, he is running around smiling and showing great enthusiasm. The narrator emphasizes that this is not the kind of scenery one simply stands and looks at, but rather the kind one plunges into and plays in. Forster's outdoor settings are associated with surrendering to one's feelings, desires, and needs. This is the first time in the novel that George is happy and carefree. Mr. Beebe, "who always acquiesced where possible," also becomes an innocent and playful boy.
Just before they set out for the lake, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Beebe had been discussing the Garden of Eden. In the words of Mr. Emerson, "We shall enter it when we no longer despise our bodies." He proclaims that when humans discover nature, the Garden of Eden will again be accessible. Just a few pages later, the three characters seem to have discovered nature and find themselves reveling in a temporary Garden of Eden. Mr. Beebe's indirect interior monologue underlines the degree to which this Garden of Eden grants them freedom from the restrictions of Victorian values: "How glorious it was! The world of motorcars and Rural Deans receded inimitably. Water, sky, evergreens, a wind—these things not even the seasons can touch, and surely they lie beyond the intrusion of man?" For the characters, a Garden of Eden is necessarily a place in which one can escape society.
Finally, the pond's name associates it with childhood and youth. It is clear that it has been named by children with big imaginations, who see great possibilities in their ordinary surroundings—it may be a pond, but it is also a Sacred Lake.
