|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: slipped out last among the band of liberated work-women. She did
not care to be mingled in their noisy dispersal: once in the
street, she always felt an irresistible return to her old
standpoint, an instinctive shrinking from all that was unpolished
and promiscuous. In the days--how distant they now
seemed!--when she had visited the Girls' Club with Gerty Farish,
she had felt an enlightened interest in the working-classes; but
that was because she looked down on them from above, from the
happy altitude of her grace and her beneficence. Now that she was
on a level with them, the point of view was less interesting.
She felt a touch on her arm, and met the penitent eye of Miss
|
