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A term that literary criticism borrows from music describes the technical repetition of key phrases or ideas in association with persons or places. The device can also assume larger proportions when, for example, an action is repeated with different portents. Forster employs leitmotif throughout his novels. Swimming and violets are George's simple signifiers. The device becomes more intricate with Lucy. She employs music as her leitmotif. Lucy's playing affords an opportunity for other people to glimpse her real personality. The pieces she chooses to play have far reaching effects. Beethoven means something different from Schuman. Lucy's inability to play Wagner signals the novel's larger comedic struggle. The piece she cannot play comes from Wagner's operatic adaptation of the Holy Grail legend. Forster's novel is full of references to the tale and these references are leitmotifs. Place becomes a leitmotif governing the novel's structure.Italy, at both the beginning and end, is a place of passion, youth, and possibility. The dark phase of the novel when Lucy is most endangered of joining the "army of darkness" takes place in England; far in the north,Englandis the seat of cold Victorianism. The leitmotif of physical intimacy reveals the position of opposing character. Lucy's kisses with her mother are mechanical. Hand brushings with Mr. Emerson are genuine butCharlotte's embrace is a betrayal. Kissing, of course, becomes the most potent act. George's kiss sets her ablaze. Cecil's kiss makes her feel awful and awkward. Forster makes no secret about this technique. He ascribes the structural theory of the novel to George Meredith at the moment when Cecil thinks he is scoring a victory for the Comic Muse. Meredith put forth his comic theory in an 1877 lecture, "On Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit." He said, in part, "now comedy is the fountain of good sense; not the less perfectly sound on account of the sparkle: and comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their wit. As they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of good sense. The higher the comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it." He then goes on to discuss classic works of comedy and the role that women play. Dorine in Moliere's Tartuffe is one example. That Lucy plays the most prominent part indicates that the novel is of the highest order; it wants nothing less than to save mankind. In "Le Rire," Henri Bergson, a contemporary of Forster, pointed out that comedy arises wherever the living are encrusted with the mechanical. Bergson argued that where humans become bogged down in ritualized habits, rules, or patterns that deaden vitality, comedy arises to offer a corrective. By viewing themselves in a comedic light, people feel better and sometimes seek to live better. The comic structure originates in springtime ritual. The deadening pattern of winter is disrupted by a change in temperature which results in the rejuvenation of living things. This phenomenon is transcribed into society, which is laboring under a very dull and unchanging pattern of existence. The disrupting element, often referred to as the Comic Muse or Comic Force, can take the form of a stranger, a fool, or a revelation of knowledge. In A Room with a View, the typical rite of initiation of a young woman into "medieval lady" is disrupted by the interference of Mr. Emerson. The hive of society attempts to counter his disruption using Charlotte, Beebe, and others. They only make the problem larger and soon the mechanisms that had hitherto gone unquestioned become exposed and look "brown" against the violent beauty of the Italian landscape. The disruption to the norm is important to begin the process but does not guarantee a comedic ending. The characters in the midst of the muddle must experience some form of raw nature and intellectual epiphany. Lucy experiences the forces of nature when she witnesses the murder, is drenched in a storm, confronts George at theSacred Lake, and compares kisses. Mr. Emerson gives her philosophic questions that lead to her tear-filled awakening in Beebe's rectory. Comedy, in its basic structure, also demands a sacrifice before allowing rebirth, redemption, or spring. Lucy, the Christ figure of this novel, sacrifices her family, friends, and her sought-after place in society. In doing so, she achieves the happy life of eternal spring. George is also saved and they become a new Adam and Eve who can remake society. More than just laughter, comedy shows its audience how to break with mechanical restraints and live naturally once again. As Mr. Emerson says, "let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world sorrow." Forster employs symbolism to bolster his comic structure. Nearly allegorical names serve to cement the position of certain characters. Beebe, like his insect namesake and the sign over the pub door where he conspires withCharlotte, gathers pollen—young people—into the hive where they become proper communal members, like Mrs. Honeychurch. The Vyses are at the top of the hive. Like their name, they are gripped and squeezed by their own rules. Mrs. Vyse is described, in fact, as a machine who is all but dead. Cecil is well on his way to his mother's stature for already he cannot play— he is too tight. The Vyse society has many names; they are the "the army of darkness" and they appear "brown"—the color ofCharlotte after the first kiss. Clothing, as the accoutrements of society, is symbolic. When George and Lucy meet at theSacred Lake, they meet amidst strewn clothes, the shambles of civilization. In the last scene, a lone sock stands for the rules of Vyse that should have been left inEngland. Lucy is tempted to mend it. Instead, George helps her to put it down and join him at the window to take in the view.
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