| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: return at any moment, and what Elizabeth would think of him
for his deception it were best to bear apart from her.
When they had breakfasted his stepdaughter still lingered,
till the moment arrived at which Henchard was accustomed to
go to his daily work. Then she arose, and with assurance of
coming again soon went up the hill in the morning sunlight.
"At this moment her heart is as warm towards me as mine is
towards her, she would live with me here in this humble
cottage for the asking! Yet before the evening probably he
will have come, and then she will scorn me!"
This reflection, constantly repeated by Henchard to
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: courage. The interest of the novel centres about
revolutionary France: just as the plot is an abstract
judicial difficulty, the hero is an abstract historical
force. And this has been done, not, as it would have been
before, by the cold and cumbersome machinery of allegory, but
with bold, straightforward realism, dealing only with the
objective materials of art, and dealing with them so
masterfully that the palest abstractions of thought come
before us, and move our hopes and fears, as if they were the
young men and maidens of customary romance.
The episode of the mother and children in QUATRE VINGT TREIZE
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