| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: from a dangerous world, here they grew up in a wide, friendly
world, and knew it for theirs, from the first.
Their child-literature was a wonderful thing. I could have
spent years following the delicate subtleties, the smooth simplicities
with which they had bent that great art to the service of the child mind.
We have two life cycles: the man's and the woman's. To the man
there is growth, struggle, conquest, the establishment of his family,
and as much further success in gain or ambition as he can achieve.
To the woman, growth, the securing of a husband, the subordinate
activities of family life, and afterward such "social" or charitable
interests as her position allows.
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: to give it up stood to him, just then, perhaps by very reason of
its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his
increasing abnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was
gradually reducing existence to the naked business of keeping
himself alive. It was the futility of his multiplied shifts and
privations that made them seem unworthy of a high attitude; the
sense that, however rapidly he eliminated the superfluous, his
cleared horizon was likely to offer no nearer view of the one
prospect toward which he strained. To give up things in order to
marry the woman one loves is easier than to give them up without
being brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion.
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