Drugs, alcohol, smoking
MildSubstance concerns need clear parent framing.
Book · 1908
A Room with a View
15+Suitable with guidance54% values match
A young Englishwoman must choose between the man her family approves of and the man who tells her the truth.
Guidance at a glance
Language
LowLanguage stays mild with limited rude humour.
Nudity, sex, romance
ModerateRomance or sexual themes need parent guidance.
Products and purchases
LowNo major product placement or consumerism concern.
Violence and fear
MildViolence, peril, or fear may unsettle younger viewers.
Overall Suitability
54%Needs careful parent guidance.
Story Overview
Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman of comfortable family, is travelling in Florence with her older cousin Charlotte as chaperone. At their pension they are given rooms without a view, and two other guests, an outspoken old man named Mr Emerson and his silent son George, offer to swap. The offer is well meant and badly mannered, and Charlotte spends several pages deciding whether accepting it would compromise them.
Florence keeps interrupting the decorum. Lucy witnesses a man stabbed to death in the Piazza Signoria and faints into George's arms. On a carriage outing into the hills she is misdirected into a terrace of violets, where George kisses her without asking. Charlotte discovers them, and the two women leave for Rome the next morning with the incident sealed shut between them.
Home in Surrey, Lucy becomes engaged to Cecil Vyse, a cultivated man who admires her the way he admires a painting. Then the Emersons take a villa in the same village. Freddy invites George to bathe in a woodland pond, and the party of ladies walks in on them. The rumour that Mr Emerson once murdered his wife, spread in Florence by the chaplain Mr Eager, follows the family to England.
Lucy breaks the engagement and then denies to everyone, herself included, that George has anything to do with it. What changes her mind is not George but his father, who tells her plainly what she is doing to herself and what the rumour about his wife actually was.
Content Breakdown
Very little happens that a parent would flag on sight. One man is stabbed and dies early on, briefly and without dwelling. There is no profanity, no drunkenness and no explicit content.
Two things do need naming. Chapter twelve is a nude bathing scene: three men swim in a woodland pond and a party of women walks in on them. It is comic and entirely non-sexual, but it is nudity and the heroine sees it. And George kisses Lucy twice without asking, which the novel treats as a revelation rather than an intrusion.
The material that most needs a parent, though, is the argument the book is making rather than anything it shows. See the reflection below.
Chapter and content evidence
- Wine appears at meals; nobody is shown drunk.
- Smoking is constant background and one character's cigarettes are gently disapproved of.
Specific passage/chapter support (3)
Chapter IIIMiss Lavish is said to have been tempted into cigarettes after an illness, and it is treated as a small secret.Chapter XVIIIA temperance song is quoted approvingly: taste not when the wine-cup glistens.Chapter IXA remark that when men get drunk there is an end of them, they sleep it off, unlike gossip.Chapter and content evidence
- Three score-relevant hits in the whole novel, none of them an oath.
Specific passage/chapter support (2)
Chapter IIMr Emerson says of his unhappy son that as far as he can see the boy lives in Hell.Chapter XIXHe describes his own despair as the darkness creeping in, and calls it hell.Chapter and content evidence
- Nothing is described anatomically and there is no sexual act in the book.
- The romance is the plot, and the obstacles to it are treated as the enemy.
Specific passage/chapter support (4)
Chapter XIIThree men bathe naked in a woodland pond; their clothes lie in three bundles on the grass, and a party of women walks in on them.Chapter VIGeorge kisses Lucy on a terrace of violets without warning and without asking.Chapter IXCecil asks permission before kissing her and the scene is written to make him absurd.Chapter XXThe married couple are affectionate in their Florence room; nothing is described beyond kisses.Chapter and content evidence
- No brands, products or purchasing pressure.
Specific passage/chapter support (1)
Chapter IIThe only recurring object of desire is a Baedeker guidebook, and the book mocks the tourists who need one.Chapter and content evidence
- A single violent death in twenty chapters.
- Most apparent violence in the text is a rumour of a killing rather than a killing.
Specific passage/chapter support (3)
Chapter IVA man is stabbed in the Piazza Signoria and dies; Lucy faints and George catches her.Chapter IVThe blood is mentioned plainly afterwards, including on photographs she had just bought.Chapter VIIA thunderstorm during a carriage outing frightens the party, who fear a young man has been killed. He has not.Islamic Values
Tawhid, shirk, and false godsThe novel's moral authority is an agnostic, its two clergymen are its antagonists, and its resolution is that religious scruple was the obstacle all along. Depicted and celebrated, and never argued, only arranged, which is the form that persuades without being noticed.High
- Chapter XIX: Mr Emerson's creed, that we have souls but he cannot say how they came nor whither they go, and that he hates the word because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round.
- Chapter II: he raised George without religion, to spare him the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God.
- Chapter XVIII: Mr Beebe's compact in the tavern is to help not only Lucy but religion also, and he privately hopes she will keep her resolution of virginity rather than marry.
- Chapters V, VI, IX, X, XV and XIX: the chaplain Mr Eager circulates the claim that Mr Emerson murdered his wife in the sight of God, which resolves as a refusal to have a child baptised.
Haya, modesty, and awrahOne scene of non-sexual male nudity, seen by the heroine. Played entirely for comedy and never described anatomically, but it is nudity and the book treats the embarrassment rather than the exposure as the problem. Depicted and normalised.Moderate
- Chapter XII: Freddy stripped himself, Mr Beebe's garments made a third little pile on the sward, and three little bundles lay discreetly on the sward while the three men swam.
- Chapter XII: Lucy, her mother and Cecil walk in on them, and Mr Beebe crawls from the pond on whose surface garments of an intimate nature did float.
- Chapter XIII: the impropriety is acknowledged in passing, that they had no business bathing in the Sacred Lake because it is much too public.
Free mixing and relationship boundariesUnchaperoned contact is the engine of the plot, and the chaperone who objects is the novel's comic villain. Both kisses are unsolicited. Depicted and celebrated.Moderate
- Chapter VI: George steps forward and kisses Lucy on the terrace of violets, without warning and without asking.
- Part Two: he kisses her a second time, again unasked, in the narrow path.
- Chapter IX: Cecil by contrast asks permission and is made to look ridiculous for it, which is the book's judgement on asking.
Speech, mockery, gossip, and slanderThe one domain where the novel and the Islamic standard agree outright. A clergyman repeats an accusation he cannot substantiate, respectable society passes it along, and it poisons a family's reputation across two countries. Depicted and condemned.Moderate
- Chapter V: Mr Eager tells Lucy that man has murdered his wife in the sight of God, then qualifies it when pressed.
- Chapter X: Mr Beebe repeats the rumour as drawing-room gossip, and the narrator notes he would never normally have done so.
- Chapter XIX: the truth arrives at last, that the child was not baptised and the mother died of typhoid, and the rumour is revealed as cruelty dressed as piety.
Parents, family authority, and kinshipLucy lies to her mother repeatedly and at length, breaks an engagement without explaining it, and leaves for Italy having concealed her reasons. The deceit is presented as the necessary cost of becoming honest with herself, which is a real tension the book never resolves.Moderate
- Chapter XIX: her mother observes that her daughter will not answer her, and Lucy has deemed it unwise to reveal her soul since Florence.
- Chapter XX: the marriage takes place against the family's wishes and is described as an elopement, with the estrangement still unhealed at the close.
Islamic Values Reflection
This is a gentle novel with a firm thesis, and the thesis is the reason for the guidance.
Every religious character in it is a problem. The chaplain Mr Eager spreads a rumour that Mr Emerson murdered his wife, which he cannot prove and which turns out to mean that Emerson refused to have his son baptised and the boy's mother died of typhoid afterwards. The clergyman Mr Beebe is kinder but works quietly to keep Lucy from marrying at all, because he prefers her unattached, and his private compact is to help not only Lucy but religion also. Meanwhile the moral authority of the book is Mr Emerson, an agnostic who raised his son without religion to spare him the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God.
At the climax he gives Lucy his creed: that we have souls, but he cannot say how they came nor whither they go, and that the word itself has been ruined by the cant superstition wrapped around it. Lucy is freed by accepting this. The novel never argues the case; it simply arranges the world so that honesty and irreligion sit on one side and cruelty and piety on the other.
That is worth reading and worth answering. The book is right that a rumour repeated by a clergyman is a wicked thing, and right that manners can be used to bully. It is wrong that these are what religion produces, and a reader should be able to say so. The most useful conversation this novel offers a Muslim family is not about the kiss or the bathing pond. It is: does the book contain a single religious character it treats with respect, and what follows from the answer.
Worship Allah and avoid false objects of worship
approvedMr Emerson's creed in chapter XIX is that we have souls but no one can say how they came nor whither they go, and that superstition has ruined the word. It is offered as liberation and the novel arranges everything to prove him right. The ayah answers the premise rather than the man: the question of what is worshipped was never left to each person to settle by instinct.
Tawhid, shirk, and false gods
وَلَقَدْ بَعَثْنَا فِي كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَّسُولًا أَنِ اعْبُدُوا اللَّهَ وَاجْتَنِبُوا الطَّاغُوتَ
Allah sent messengers to every nation commanding people to worship Allah and avoid false objects of worship.
Quran 16:36 Quran.com
Lower the gaze and guard chastity
approvedChapter XII has three men bathing naked in a pond and a party of women coming upon them. The novel's judgement is that the embarrassment was silly and the bodies were innocent. This ayah does not call the bodies shameful either; it places the duty on the eye and on what is covered, which is the distinction the scene never makes.
Haya, modesty, and gaze
قُل لِّلْمُؤْمِنِينَ يَغُضُّوا مِنْ أَبْصَارِهِمْ وَيَحْفَظُوا فُرُوجَهُمْ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ أَزْكَىٰ لَهُمْ
Allah commands believing men to lower their gaze and guard their chastity; that is purer for them.
Quran 24:30 Quran.com
Haya is a branch of faith
approvedThe book's argument is that modesty of this kind is only repression wearing manners, and Charlotte the chaperone exists to make that case comic. Worth setting against a text that treats haya not as timidity but as part of belief itself, so a reader can tell the difference between the two things the novel merges.
Haya, modesty, and gaze
وَالْحَيَاءُ شُعْبَةٌ مِنَ الإِيمَانِ
Haya is a branch of faith.
Sahih al-Bukhari 9 Sunnah.com
A man is not alone with a woman except that Satan is the third of them
approvedLucy is misdirected onto a terrace where George is standing alone, and he kisses her before she can speak. The novel presents the accident as fate delivering her what she wanted. This hadith is about the arrangement rather than the intention, which is precisely what the scene relies on nobody having thought about.
Free mixing and relationship boundaries
لاَ يَخْلُوَنَّ رَجُلٌ بِامْرَأَةٍ إِلاَّ كَانَ ثَالِثَهُمَا الشَّيْطَانُ
A man is not alone with a woman except that Satan is the third of them.
Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2165 Sunnah.com
Backbiting is like eating the flesh of your dead brother
approvedMr Eager tells Florence that Mr Emerson murdered his wife in the sight of God. It is repeated at dinner tables in two countries and follows the family to England. Chapter XIX reveals what it actually meant: a child was not baptised and the mother died of typhoid. The image in this ayah is deliberately revolting because that is the proportion of the act.
Speech, mockery, gossip, and language
وَلَا يَغْتَب بَّعْضُكُم بَعْضًا ۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمْ أَن يَأْكُلَ لَحْمَ أَخِيهِ مَيْتًا
Allah forbids backbiting and compares it to eating the flesh of one's dead brother.
Quran 49:12 Quran.com
Backbiting is mentioning your brother in a way he dislikes
approvedMr Beebe repeats the rumour in a drawing room and the narrator notes that in his normal state he would never have done so. That is the ordinary way this spreads, not by malice but by a kind man filling a silence. The definition here is deliberately wide enough to catch him too.
Speech, mockery, gossip, and language
ذِكْرُكَ أَخَاكَ بِمَا يَكْرَهُ
Backbiting is mentioning your brother in a way he dislikes.
Sahih Muslim 2589 Sunnah.com
The mother named three times
approvedLucy's deceptions land almost entirely on her mother, who notices and says so. The novel needs the reader to accept this as the price of honesty with herself, and mostly the reader does. Set beside a text that ranks the mother's claim three times over, the cost the book waves through becomes visible again.
Parents, family authority, and kinship
أُمُّكَ قَالَ ثُمَّ مَنْ قَالَ أُمُّكَ قَالَ ثُمَّ مَنْ قَالَ أُمُّكَ قَالَ ثُمَّ مَنْ قَالَ أَبُوكَ
When asked who most deserves good companionship, the Prophet named the mother three times, then the father.
Sahih al-Bukhari 5971 Sunnah.com
Positives
Honesty over proprietySnobbery corrodesGossip destroys a nameCourage to admit feelingKindness outranks manners
Family Discussion
- Why does Lucy find it easier to lie to herself than to others?
- What does Mr Eager gain by repeating a rumour he cannot prove?
- Is George right to kiss Lucy without asking her first?
- Does the book treat any religious character with respect?
- What does Lucy owe her mother once she has made her choice?