| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval
date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on
aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by
the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were
pollarded for bows. All this sylvan antiquity,
however, though visible from The Slopes, was outside
the immediate boundaries of the estate.
Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving,
and well kept; acres of glass-houses stretched down the
inclines to the copses at their feet. Everything
looked like money--like the last coin issued from the
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: woman living; Gordon can scarcely see me with a microscope,
and I believe he has the most powerful one in America. He is going
to get another here; that is one of the things he came abroad for;
perhaps it will do better. I do tell the truth, don't I, Mrs. Vivian?
I have that merit, if I have n't any other. You once told me
so at Baden; you said you could say one thing for me, at any rate--
that I did n't tell fibs. You were very nice to me at Baden,"
Blanche went on, with her little intent smile, laying her hand
in that of her hostess. "You see, I have never forgotten it.
So, to keep up my reputation, I must tell the truth about Gordon.
He simply said he would n't come--voila! He gave no reason
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: freedom for all women. It is, if I may be allowed without violating the
sanctity of a close personal friendship so to say, because she, with one or
two other men and women I have known, have embodied for me the highest
ideal of human nature, in which intellectual power and strength of will are
combined with an infinite tenderness and a wide human sympathy; a
combination which, whether in the person of the man or the woman, is
essential to the existence of the fully rounded and harmonised human
creature; and which an English woman of genius summed in one line when she
cried in her invocation of her great French sister:--
"Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man!"
One word more I should like to add, as I may not again speak or write on
|
