| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions.
For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires.
They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and
fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this?
Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?
Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely?
Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour
of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings!
I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at,
and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection
of this injustice.
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: etairas. autai gar emphanos phoitosi pros tous didontas}, "Solon's
laws in general about women are his strangest, for he permitted
any one to kill an adulterer that found him in the act; but if any
one forced a free woman, a hundred drachmas was the fine; if he
enticed her, twenty;--except those that sell themselves openly,
that is, harlots, who go openly to those that hire them" (Clough,
i. p. 190).
[7] Or, "fall a victim to passion through some calamity," "commit a
breach of chastity." Cf. Aristot. "H. A." VII. i. 9.
[8] Or, "if true affection still retain its virgin purity." As to this
extraordinary passage, see Hartman, op. cit. p. 242 foll.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: Molly could only sit giggling in this trap he had so ingeniously
laid for her.
"I'll tell you what," pursued the cow-puncher, with slow and
growing intensity, "equality is a great big bluff. It's easy
called."
"I didn't mean--" began Molly.
"Wait, and let me say what I mean." He had made an imperious
gesture with his hand. "I know a man that mostly wins at cyards.
I know a man that mostly loses. He says it is his luck. All
right. Call it his luck. I know a man that works hard and he's
gettin' rich, and I know another that works hard and is gettin'
The Virginian |
