A Room with a View is a romance and a social critique of Edwardian society. A young woman is chaperoned to Italy by her bitter aunt. There she meets an intriguing, but eccentric young man. Back in England she finds herself respectably engaged to a proper gentleman, but is thrown into a muddle when her young man from Italy moves to her English town. The novel celebrates the chaotic, unsure muddle of feelings over a kind of lifeless acceptance of the way things are.