irrational certainty in their own opinions. Lucy is not certain of anything and starts in the way she seems destined to go on, that is - in a muddle.
             The novelists use a similar form of introduction to their protagonists. Forster "borrows" Austen's structural device of starting the novel by: "Exhibiting the heroine surrounded by the bars of her cage." By showing the reader the existing influences in the heroine's lives, we can understand how their characters develop through the course of the plot. By keeping them within in a very closed society, it is possible for us to identify who or what has led them to feel so confined and restricted. Once this is resolved they are able to make a "good marriage".
             In the opening of 'A Room with a View', Lucy is very much dominated by her spinster cousin, Charlotte Bartlett. Miss Bartlett seems have missed what Forster classes as the allocated period for self-discovery and is subsequently very narrow minded. She is dependent upon the oppressive natu
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