| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: new Maintenon to the gloomy piety of the last days of Louis XIV., and
enough worldliness to adopt the habits of gallantry of the first years
of that reign, should it ever be revived. At the present moment she is
strictly virtuous from policy, possibly from inclination. Married for
the last seven years to the Marquis de Listomere, one of those
deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct
will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving
their opinion of her until the moment when Monsieur de Listomere
becomes a peer of France, when she herself will be thirty-six years of
age,--a period of life when most women discover that they are the
dupes of social laws.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: men and women in hideous masks, or the Deimalea by
Sileni and Satyrs waltzing in a circle; or the Bibasis
carried out by both men and women--a quite gymnastic
exercise in which the performers took a special pride in striking
their own buttocks with their heels! or others wilder
still, which it would perhaps not be convenient to
describe.
[1] : hymns sung over the winepress
(Dictionary).
We must see how important a part Dancing played in
that great panorama of Ritual and Religion (spoken of in
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: never struck me before."
"I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my being her
father: I could see a change in her manner after that."
"She couldn't bear to think of not looking on Marner as her
father," said Nancy, not wishing to confirm her husband's painful
impression.
"She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. She
thinks me worse than I am. But she _must_ think it: she can never
know all. It's part of my punishment, Nancy, for my daughter to
dislike me. I should never have got into that trouble if I'd been
true to you--if I hadn't been a fool. I'd no right to expect
Silas Marner |
