cody coyle’s Reviews > The Awakening > Status Update

The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition which fitted her, and she could see nothing in it but an appalling and hopleless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration- a pity for that colorless contentment, in which no moment of anguish visited the soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s delirium.

She had all her life been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.

The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.

She had never sent for him before. She had never asked for him. She had never seemed to want him before. She did not appear conscious that she had done anything unusual in commanding his presence. He was apparently equally unconscious of anything extraordinary in the situation. But his face was suffused with a quiet glow when he met her.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her - the light which, showing the way, forbids it. At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams, to thoughfulness, to shadowy anguish. In short, she was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.