Status Updates From The Quickening

'Death is unavoidable. That is Nature's way.'

'Then Nature is cruel.'

'So it may seem, but species and genera have an ongoing, collective life. The entire cycle, properly viewed, has a certain timeless beauty, I find.'

Here amongst these quiet rooms and empty hallways, something had quickened and come life...

The story builds to its tragic climax. Now we have Lawrence Fairweather 'taking cruel delight in those rough words:
'I'll have no more nonsense from you.'
His patience has run out, and he cannot deal in a civilised manner with poor Julia.
But at last, Hazel has spoken. This writing is taut and startlingly sensitive.

Devonald on 'Jude the Obscure'. 'If I had a wife, I shouldn't allow that book in the house.'
Lol,but otherwise, a chapter of gathering foreboding.
The depiction of the narrator's fluctuating states of mind and actions are depicted so vividly one could be watching a film. The brilliant word pictures of nature continue; - 'The wind grew stronger and colder as I walked, and parted the reeds like a knife.'

'She carried her secrets with hre like a child; I imagined them curled up in the warm cradle of her body, awakening, quickeing.'
Strong, evocative, beautifully descriptive writing as Lawrence fights his longing to join Julia in what he sees as her hallucination that their daughter is with them.
One senses a terrible culmmination looming.

'I would not for anything risk the newborn intimacy between us'.
'"You'll see." she said, stroking my cheek with one long finger. "You'll see."'
Very touching again...But I wonder if Julia thinks of making another baby,so that her dead daughter can come back to her as the new baby?

Thank goodness that Lawrence and Julia have been thrown back into each others arms, and are communicating with each other again. That was a very touching part, though conflict and despair obviously lie ahead...The descriptions continue impressive. 'One day, I felt her for the first time. I felt her move inside me, turning, quickening; she became real, herself. It is like that now; she has come back.'

I like Mrs Jessop's attitude:
'Do you women always defend one another in this way?'
'Not always, but in a world governed by men I think we may as well.'
Poor Lawerence continues tormented by the unseen presence he cannot admit to:-
'She (Hazel} would tell me nothing and Julia, sleeping soundly in the next room, would not; I had never felt so alone in my life.'

Here's some synchronicty! I've just read the excellent seance scene, and I was writing about one for my next this morning.
Some dark comedy regarding the medium and her disciple - but an overwhelming sense of tragedy over the words of the lost daughter.
A typical wonderful natural description: 'The trees at the end of the lawn soared, eerie and misshapen out of the gloaming. I could smell rain in the air...'

This is remarkably sensitive writing. I am struck by the psychological element in this story - and it's clever depiction of the fluctuating states of mind of the unlucky Lawrence. As he admits, beneath his chilly exterior he is a passionate man, and suffers aocordingly: 'The sigh of the silken fabric as it slid over her skin aroused and maddened me.'
Julia's own torment has been releived by the strange noises...

I feel very sorry for the seemingly repressed, cold narrator now that I know of his loss. The sinister presences are ever nearer;- 'I sensed that whatever lurked there in the passageway wished me ill ...It's anger and hostility seemed to seep through the wood of the door and to radiate across the bedroom'.the build up of atmosphere reminds me of Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw'.

The sinister atmosphere closes in; 'It was not altogether a normal chill; it seemed to rise up from the stomach and ooze through the veins until it closed over the heart'. Aagh!
I sense that there is some unacknowledged attraction between the sociable Doctor and Julia, who finally makes the disclosure: 'The face that looks at me from the mirror is the face of an imposter, someone I don't know and am afraid of.'

That was meant to be 'compliment' before, not 'complement'!
There are so many excellent word pictures, it's hard to choose one but here's one: 'Something, the kindling of an expression I had never seen before - quivered in her face. I could only compare it to the passionate hunger and yearning of a lover...' She longs to confide her terrors to him, but knows it is of no use...

This continues to be an excellent and evocative read. The rational botanist is feeling more and more strained in the sinister house, and by the obvious but concealed fears of his wife and daughter.

'A brutal, bitter wind tore down from Russia or Scandanivia,and lashed the walls until they seemed to shake'. This has something of the atmosphere of 'The Woman in Black' and I mean that as a high complement. Very evocative writing and efforless characterisation.