| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: to examine; but they are mentioned here merely to explain how it was
that Adrien was not likely to find a rival in his brother. Robert's
affection for Laurence was that of a relation, the respect of a noble
for a girl of his own caste. In matters of sentiment the elder
d'Hauteserre belonged to the class of men who consider woman as an
appendage to man, limiting her sphere to the physical duties of
maternity; demanding perfection in that respect, but regarding her
mentally as of no account. To such men the admittance of woman as an
actual sharer in society, in the body politic, in the family, meant
the subversion of the social system. In these days we are so far
removed from this theory of primitive people that almost all women,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: V
SAPPHO
SAPPHO
I
MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound,
So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;
Only the white immortal stars shall know,
Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,
How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp.
I think you are not wholly careless now,
Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: herself. "How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he
is attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these
ideas might have been transformed into their corresponding
emotions by a show of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There
was, in truth, a love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it
wanted a lodging badly.
But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much
mistaken about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall
headlong on stumps of underwood with impunity. Had the old man
been able to watch Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have
observed that on rising and walking into the thicket he dropped
The Woodlanders |
