| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: away the bitterness out of your life, to take away the shadow that
lies on your name, that this marriage must take place. There is no
alternative: and after the marriage you and I can go away together.
But the marriage must take place first. It is a duty that you owe,
not merely to yourself, but to all other women - yes: to all the
other women in the world, lest he betray more.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I owe nothing to other women. There is not one of
them to help me. There is not one woman in the world to whom I
could go for pity, if I would take it, or for sympathy, if I could
win it. Women are hard on each other. That girl, last night, good
though she is, fled from the room as though I were a tainted thing.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my
position, made enough allowance for the complete moral
insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the
leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was
punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I
was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled,
a more furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I
suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with
which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I
declare, at least, before God, no man morally sane could have been
guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that I
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: "What! can it be STILL Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--
"Why not, madame?"
Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.
This speech caused a violent commotion in Madame de Listomere's bosom;
but Rastignac did not yet know how to analyze a woman's face by a
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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 Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: set the minute they get a start the wrong way. It is the
always-flying-out people who are the easiest to get on with in
the long run."
"Well," said Abby, "maybe that is so, but folks might get worn
all to a frazzle by the flying-out ones before the long run. I'd
rather take my chances with a woman like Eudora. She always seems
just so, just as calm and sweet. When the Ames's barn, that was
next to hers, burned down and the wind was her way, she just
walked in and out of her house, carrying the things she valued
most, and she looked like a picture--somehow she had got all
dressed fit to make calls--and there wasn't a muscle of her face
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