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The ghosts were returning; they filled Italy, they were even usurping the places she had known as a child. The Sacred Lake would never be the same again, and, on Sunday week, something would even happen to Windy Corner. How would she fight against ghosts? For a moment the visible world faded away, and memories and emotions alone seemed real.
How Lucy Faced the External Situation Bravely
I love this book
she felt sure that she would prove a nuisance, and begged to be given an inferior spare room—something with no view, anything.
It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, “She loves young Emerson.” A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious.
Okay narrator making another appearance!
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.
SO RELEVANT TO A GIRLIE WHO JOURNALS
Lucy said, “He seems in better spirits. He laughs more.” “Yes,” replied the clergyman. “He is waking up.”
her defences fell,
Like the fences and divisions of class/status
lugubrious
“I shall never forgive myself,” said Miss Bartlett, who kept on rising from her seat, and had to be begged by the united company to remain. “I have upset everything. Bursting in on young people! But I insist on paying for my cab up. Grant that, at any rate.”
This is a super annoying energy to be around, to be fair
Cecil, who had been ostentatiously drinking his tea at the view,
the eternal attraction of Chance,
Chance and Fate. Interesting how often this is popping up now. Are these notions palatable to the philosophical Mr. Emerson?
The reader may have detected an unfortunate slip in it. Whether Miss Bartlett detected the slip one cannot say, for it is impossible to penetrate into the minds of elderly people.
Was "the slip" when Lucy called Mr. Emerson "Papa"?
the green monotony of summer,
Never heard summer described this way before. Most of us interpret summer greenery as youthfu, vibrant, alive… but Lucy and George literally witnessed a death this summer. And Lucy's relationship with Cecil sure does seem monotonous too
The garden of Windy Corners was deserted except for a red book, which lay sunning itself upon the gravel path.
Knowledge in the empty garden of Eden
The sun rose higher on its journey, guided, not by Phaethon, but by Apollo, competent, unswerving, divine. Its rays fell on the ladies whenever they advanced towards the bedroom windows; on Mr. Beebe down at Summer Street as he smiled over a letter from Miss Catharine Alan; on George Emerson cleaning his father’s boots; and lastly, to complete the catalogue of memorable things, on the red book mentioned previously. The ladies move, Mr. Beebe moves, George moves, and movement may engender shadow. But this book lies motionless, to be caressed all the morning by the sun and to raise its covers
...more
on her finger a ring set with rubies—an engagement ring.
Red engagement ring is a statement
“It’s only the library book that Cecil’s been reading.”
Uh oh. Does this book represent the knowledge of what happened between George and Lucy? Cecil pulled out the bool when Mrs Honeychurch came around. He's "reading" it for the sake of appearances. He's marrying Lucy for the sake of appearances. What happens if he looks more closely? What happens when the light is shed on those hidden pages? When Lucy's ghosts are visible?
Only this morning she had confused Francesco Francia with Piero della Francesca, and Cecil had said, “What! you aren’t forgetting your Italy already?”
Ew. Miss Lavish has a habit of calling it "my Italy." It's a red flag that Cecil thinks this way too
this too had lent anxiety to her eyes when she saluted the dear view and the dear garden in the foreground, and above them, scarcely conceivable elsewhere, the dear sun.
The view
victoria
The kindness that Mr. Beebe and Lucy had always known to exist in him came out suddenly, like sunlight touching a vast landscape—a touch of the morning sun? She remembered that in all his perversities he had never spoken against affection.
It was the old, old battle of the room with the view.
Perhaps anything that he did would have pleased Lucy, but his awkwardness went straight to her heart; men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls; even men might suffer from unexplained desires, and need help.
All the way home the horses’ hoofs sang a tune to her: “He has not told, he has not told.” Her brain expanded the melody:
She's just like me fr
She was even glad that Miss Bartlett had made her promise secrecy, that last dark evening at Florence, when they had knelt packing in his room.
And the pledge to secrecy began in HIS room, too! What a strangely intimate detail
the only relationship which Cecil conceived was feudal: that of protector and protected. He had no glimpse of the comradeship after which the girl’s soul yearned.
But the bell was ringing for lunch, and, as often happened, Cecil had paid no great attention to her remarks.
Some one had to be soothed—either Cecil or Miss Bartlett or a Being not visible to the mortal eye—a Being who whispered to her soul: “It will not last, this cheerfulness.
I relate to this. Feeling like I'm going to look back and really miss a moment of my life, as I'm living it
restive,
She remembered how he had sighed among the tombs at Santa Croce because things wouldn’t fit; how after the death of that obscure Italian he had leant over the parapet by the Arno and said to her: “I shall want to live, I tell you.” He wanted to live now, to win at tennis, to stand for all he was worth in the sun—the sun which had begun to decline and was shining in her eyes; and he did win.
She might be forgetting her Italy, but she was noticing more things in her England. One could play a new game with the view, and try to find in its innumerable folds some town or village that would do for Florence.
She had dwelt amongst melody and movement, and her nerves refused to answer to the clang of his. Leaving him to be annoyed, she gazed at the black head again. She did not want to stroke it, but she saw herself wanting to stroke it; the sensation was curious.
“How do you like this view of ours, Mr. Emerson?” “I never notice much difference in views.” “What do you mean?” “Because they’re all alike. Because all that matters in them is distance and air.”
“There’s an absurd account of a view in this book,” said Cecil. “Also that men fall into two classes—those who forget views and those who remember them, even in small rooms.”
Uh oh. Was this view expressed by the Emersons at the start of the book? If so, could Miss Lavish have included the kiss in the book? What if Miss Bartlett has been pressing Lucy to tell Cecil about the kiss because she accidentally let it slip to her newfound friend?
The book, as if it had not worked mischief enough, had been forgotten, and Cecil must go back for it; and George, who loved passionately, must blunder against her in the narrow path.
Yessssss LOVE PASSIONATELY or what's the point?
“No—” she gasped, and, for the second time, was kissed by him.
Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world’s enemy, and she must stifle it.
shibboleth
She “conquered her breakdown.” Tampering with the truth, she forgot that the truth had ever been.
maundering
“You cannot live with Vyse. He’s only for an acquaintance. He is for society and cultivated talk. He should know no one intimately, least of all a woman.”
Next, I meet you together, and find him protecting and teaching you and your mother to be shocked, when it was for YOU to settle whether you were shocked or no. Cecil all over again. He daren’t let a woman decide.
“I’m the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman—it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden. But I do love you surely in a better way than he does.”
Awww, the way he sincerely responds to her feedback with accountability. The type of dude who doesn't take personal offense when women criticize patriarchy
I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.”
He said: “It is our last chance. I shall do all that I can.”
Does this exist? Where?
“It is being young,” he said quietly, picking up his racquet from the floor and preparing to go. “It is being certain that Lucy cares for me really. It is that love and youth matter intellectually.”
Love and youth matter intellectually. And spiritually
once in the open air, she paused.
What is a view but distance and air?
“Tired!” she retorted, kindling at once. “That is exactly like you. You always think women don’t mean what they say.”
Yes, Lucy!
I can’t marry you, and you will thank me for saying so some day.”
now that he was about to lose her, she seemed each moment more desirable. He looked at her, instead of through her, for the first time since they were engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art.
Classic
