The Importance of Being Married

Obviously, marriage is extremely important in a society like Lucy’s, because not only is there no real outlet for women to work on their own (even Mrs. Honeychurch looks down on women writers), women were thought of as needing male protection for their naivety and frailty (but in a fairly condescending sort of way- they still couldn’t vote, and it was probably not accepted to travel alone). It is interesting to note two specific chapter headings; when Lucy becomes engaged to Cecil, that chapter heading is called, “Mediaeval,” while the chapter that shows Lucy married to George Emerson and in the Bertolini Pension once again is called “The End of the Middle Ages.” Although I didn’t necessarily pick up on these until I had read the whole book and seen the whole picture, these show the speaker’s view of the suitors, specifically, the oppressive nature of the snobbishly intellectual Cecil Vyse and the liberating nature of the passionate and untainted-by-convention George Emerson.