| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: a technical tip, of a piece of literary experience, a counterpoise
to her grief. Strange to say, none the less, I couldn't help
believing after I had seen her a few times that I caught a glimpse
of some such oddity. I hasten to add that there had been other
things I couldn't help believing, or at least imagining; and as I
never felt I was really clear about these, so, as to the point I
here touch on, I give her memory the benefit of the doubt.
Stricken and solitary, highly accomplished and now, in her deep
mourning, her maturer grace and her uncomplaining sorrow,
incontestably handsome, she presented herself as leading a life of
singular dignity and beauty. I had at first found a way to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: I don't see how they can be. Every home is a little recess, a
niche, out of the world of business and competition, in which
women and the future shelter."
"A little pit!" said Ann Veronica; "a little prison!"
"It's just as often a little refuge. Anyhow, that is how things
are."
"And the man stands as the master at the mouth of the den."
"As sentinel. You forget all the mass of training and tradition
and instinct that go to make him a tolerable master. Nature is a
mother; her sympathies have always been feminist, and she has
tempered the man to the shorn woman."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship,
with the hoarse, hump-backed waves trying to get in, and a black wind
blowing the masts down and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands!
He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite good-bye
to the captain, and go off at once to the gold-fields. Before
a week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold,
the largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it
down to the coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen.
The bushrangers were to attack them three times, and be defeated
with immense slaughter. Or, no. He was not to go to the gold-fields
at all. They were horrid places, where men got intoxicated,
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
