Beyond the Closed Circuit of Modern Tourism: “Wayfaring” and Ecological Connectedness in E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View

This article examines how E. M. Forster transcends the closed experiential circuit of modern tourism by envisioning intimate connections with people and place that emerge through the act of wayfaring. Lucy Honeychurch, initially confined within the homogeneity of English tourists and their limited experiences, temporarily breaks free by getting lost and wandering through the unfamiliar places of Florence. In Forster’s 1908 novel, the loss of guidance, information, and orientation ironically leads to unexpected discoveries and intimate relations, resonating Tim Ingold’s notion of “wayfaring”—an accidental and spontaneous form of movement that fosters interconnectedness. For instance, Lucy’s loss of her Baedeker guidebook—emblematic of the English tourists’ predetermined experience—gives rise to her newfound sense of autonomy as she navigates the world relatively independently. Her impulsive wandering into the Piazza Signoria also draws her into an intimate yet unsettling engagement with the local people and place, destabilizing yet expanding her perception of self and world. Forster’s exploration of wayfaring as an alternative mode of travel, and, by extension, of being, culminates in his reimagining of the Italian landscape as a “fluid space,” where rigid boundaries between entities dissolve. The trope of water used to represent the Fiesole hills transforms the landscape into a site of flux and intimacy, deepening Lucy’s connection with both the natural world and George Emerson.