| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: receiving the explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt
to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody had
informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his
entry, and of all that might have been inferred from her
precipitancy.
Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to
follow her either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he
deplored it; moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events
that he had been a great means of creating checked his instinct to
interfere. He prayed and trusted that she had got into no danger
on her way (as he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: floated through Trina's mind. It was quite beyond her
to realize them clearly; she could not know what they meant.
Until that rainy day by the shore of the bay Trina had lived
her life with as little self-consciousness as a tree. She
was frank, straightforward, a healthy, natural human being,
without sex as yet. She was almost like a boy. At once
there had been a mysterious disturbance. The woman within
her suddenly awoke.
Did she love McTeague? Difficult question. Did she choose
him for better or for worse, deliberately, of her own free
will, or was Trina herself allowed even a choice in the
McTeague |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: "He first met Claudine on this wise," continued Nathan. "It was one of
the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to itself; days when youth,
reduced by the overweening presumption of Age to a condition of
potential energy and dejection, emerges therefrom (like Blondet under
the Restoration), either to get into mischief or to set about some
colossal piece of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its
conception. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and down the
pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the Rue de Richelieu, when in
the distance he descried a woman too elegantly dressed, covered, as he
phrased it, with a great deal of portable property, too expensive and
too carelessly worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the
|
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 Persuasion by Jane Austen: He had condescended to mortgage as far as he had the power,
but he would never condescend to sell. No; he would never disgrace
his name so far. The Kellynch estate should be transmitted whole
and entire, as he had received it.
Their two confidential friends, Mr Shepherd, who lived in
the neighbouring market town, and Lady Russell, were called to advise them;
and both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be
struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments
and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of
any indulgence of taste or pride.
Chapter 2
Persuasion |
