| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: refreshment-room, when she is not needed to vote or speak; it is the
thought of the woman as Greek professor, with three or four hundred a year,
who gives half a dozen lectures a week, and has leisure to enjoy the
society of her husband and children, and to devote to her own study and
life of thought; it is she who wrings his heart. It is not the woman, who,
on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, scrubs the floors of the public
buildings, or private dwellings, that fills him with anguish for womanhood:
that somewhat quadrupedal posture is for him truly feminine, and does not
interfere with his ideal of the mother and child-bearer; and that, in some
other man's house, or perhaps his own, while he and the wife he keeps for
his pleasures are visiting concert or entertainment, some weary woman paces
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: you away. What I suggest is that, as you have no house of your own,
you do not marry from your school friend's, but from mine. It would be
more proper, I think, since I am, as you say, the person nearest related
to you in this part of the world.
I don't see why you sign your letter in such a new and terribly formal way?
Surely you care a bit about me still!--Ever your affectionate, JUDE.
What had jarred on him even more than the signature was a little
sting he had been silent on--the phrase "married relation"--
What an idiot it made him seem as her lover! If Sue had written
that in satire, he could hardly forgive her; if in suffering--
ah, that was another thing!
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: one. And I did not notice it till I got home."
Olga Ivanovna was alarmed. He smiled, and told her that it did
not matter, and that he often cut his hands when he was
dissecting.
"I get absorbed, little mother, and grow careless."
Olga Ivanovna dreaded symptoms of blood-poisoning, and prayed
about it every night, but all went well. And again life flowed on
peaceful and happy, free from grief and anxiety. The present was
happy, and to follow it spring was at hand, already smiling in
the distance, and promising a thousand delights. There would be
no end to their happiness. In April, May and June a summer villa
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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 The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: lies across the Nancon. This suburb, flung as it were to the bottom of
a precipice, and its church, the spire of which does not rise to the
height of the rocks which threaten to crush it, are picturesquely
watered by several affluents of the Nancon, shaded by trees and
brightened by gardens. The whole region of Fougeres, its suburbs, its
churches, and the hills of Saint-Sulpice are surrounded by the heights
of Rille, which form part of a general range of mountains enclosing
the broad valley of Couesnon.
Such are the chief features of this landscape, the principal
characteristic of which is a rugged wildness softened by smiling
accidents, by a happy blending of the finest works of men's hands with
The Chouans |
