| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: was the same--sick revulsion and horror, such as would be felt
at some climactic blasphemy.
They had no faintest approach to such a thing in their minds,
knowing nothing of the custom of marital indulgence among us.
To them the one high purpose of motherhood had been for so
long the governing law of life, and the contribution of the father,
though known to them, so distinctly another method to the same end,
that they could not, with all their effort, get the point of
view of the male creature whose desires quite ignore parentage
and seek only for what we euphoniously term "the joys of love."
When I tried to tell Ellador that women too felt so, with us,
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: farewell. She lived by work, saving up a treasure for her son.
And, in after years, a day, an hour repaid her amply for the long
and weary sacrifices of her indigence.
At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the
Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an unknown
genius, still rang with sincere praises. Artists themselves
acknowledged Schinner as a master, and dealers covered his
canvases with gold pieces. At five-and-twenty Hippolyte Schinner,
to whom his mother had transmitted her woman's soul, understood
more clearly than ever his position in the world. Anxious to
restore to his mother the pleasures of which society had so long
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--"
And--"Are we then so serious?"
La Figlia Che Piange
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair--
Lean on a garden urn--
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair--
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise--
Prufrock/Other Observations |
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 An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: which she called " good breeding," Trefusis had so far destroyed
her conceit in that, that she was beginning to doubt whether it
was not her cardinal defect.
She could not bring herself to utter a word as she embraced her
schoolfellow; and Agatha was tongue-tied too. But there was much
remorseful tenderness in the feelings that choked them. Their
silence would have been awkward but for the loquacity of Jane,
who talked enough for all three. Sir Charles was without, in the
trap, waiting to drive Gertrude to the station. Erskine
intercepted her in the hall as she passed out, told her that he
should be desolate when she was gone, and begged her to remember
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