| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: she thought it resulted, that the passions only appeared strong
and disproportioned, because the judgment was weak and unexercised;
and that they gained strength by the decay of reason, as the shadows
lengthen during the sun's decline.
Maria impatiently wished to see her fellow-sufferer; but
Darnford was still more earnest to obtain an interview. Accustomed
to submit to every impulse of passion, and never taught, like women,
to restrain the most natural, and acquire, instead of the bewitching
frankness of nature, a factitious propriety of behaviour,
every desire became a torrent that bore down all opposition.
His travelling trunk, which contained the books lent to Maria,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: dressed in ragged yellow trousers, and a dirty shirt, and torn jacket. He
had a red handkerchief round his head, and a felt hat above that. His nose
was flat, his eyes like slits, and the wool on his head was gathered into
little round balls. He came to the milk-bush, and looked at the little
girl lying in the hot sun. Then he walked off, and caught one of the
fattest little Angora goats, and held its mouth fast, as he stuck it under
his arm. He looked back to see that she was still sleeping, and jumped down
into one of the sluits. He walked down the bed of the sluit a little way
and came to an overhanging bank, under which, sitting on the red sand, were
two men. One was a tiny, ragged, old bushman, four feet high; the other
was an English navvy, in a dark blue blouse. They cut the kid's throat
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: one of them but would have passed a blind man begging in the
street, not one that felt moved to pity by a tale of misfortune,
not one who did not see in death the solution of the all-
absorbing problem of misery which left them cold to the most
terrible anguish in others.
The happiest of these hapless beings was certainly Mme. Vauquer,
who reigned supreme over this hospital supported by voluntary
contributions. For her, the little garden, which silence, and
cold, and rain, and drought combined to make as dreary as an
Asian steppe, was a pleasant shaded nook; the gaunt yellow house,
the musty odors of a back shop had charms for her, and for her
Father Goriot |
