The Feminine Note in Fiction |
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Common terms and phrases
artist Atherton authoress beautiful become belongs brilliant called career character Charlotte Brontë charm clever comes course Craigie critic daughter discover Dorothy Dorothy Osborne doubt dramatic emotional fact Fanny Burney fashion fate father Federan feel feminine George Eliot Gertrude Atherton girl give happiness heart Helbeck of Bannisdale hero heroine human Humphry Ward husband imagine instance instincts interest Jack Raymond John Oliver Hobbes labour lady Lespinasse less letters literary live Lord Lot Gordon love-letters lover Lucas Malet Madame Hansson Madelon Magdaléna Marcella Margaret Fuller marriage married Mdlle mind Miss Wilkins modern moral nature never novel novelist Olive Latham once ordinary Parflete passion Patience Sparhawk perhaps personality Princess of Hanover reader reason Robert Orange romance Rosabel scene School for Saints seems sense Sir George Tressady soul Soul Hunters spirit story things thought touch tragedy Voynich wife woman women write young
Popular passages
Page x - I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life ; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.
Page 159 - Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Page viii - ... books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
Page 73 - How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
Page 266 - Her extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice — all repelled ; and I said to myself, we shall never get far.
Page 267 - The destiny of each human being is no doubt great and peculiar, however obscure its rudiments to our present sight, but there are also in every age a few in whose lot the meaning of that age is concentrated. I feel that I am one of those persons in my age and sex. I feel chosen among women.
Page 72 - To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-forming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down.
Page 83 - They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof.
Page 266 - It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and...
Page 235 - I had spoke freely my meaning it wrought so with him, as to fetch up all that lay upon his stomach : all the people that I had ever in my life refused were brought again upon the stage, like Richard the Third's ghosts, to reproach me withal, and all the kindness his discoveries could make I had for you was laid to my charge...