Susans Further Humiliation -MILF Susans Continuing Quest for Ever Greater Degradation and Abasement

Before she realized it his arms were round her, and his lips had met hers. Both were trembling; she had become quite cold—her cheeks, her hand, her body even. Tears were glistening in her long dark lashes. The sight of them maddened him. Because you do—don't you? The moonlit world seemed a fairyland. And moved beyond her power to control herself, she broke from his detaining hand and fled into the house. She darted up to her room, paused in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped over her wildly beating heart.

When she could move she threw open the shutters and went out on the balcony. She leaned against the window frame and gazed up at the stars, instinctively seeking the companionship of the infinite. Curiously enough, she thought little about Sam. She was awed and wonderstruck before the strange mysterious event within her, the opening up, the flowering of her soul.

These vast emotions, where did they come from? Why did she long to burst into laughter, to burst into tears? Why did she do neither, but simply stand motionless, with the stars blazing and reeling in the sky and her heart beating like mad and her blood surging and ebbing? Yes—it must be love. Oh, how wonderful love was—and how sad—and how happy beyond all laughter—and how sweet! She felt an enormous tenderness for everybody and for everything, for all the world—an overwhelming sense of beauty and goodness.

Her lips were moving. She was amazed to find she was repeating the one prayer she knew, the one Aunt Fanny had taught her in babyhood. Why should she find herself praying? She was a woman and she loved! So this was what it meant to be a woman; it meant to love! She was roused by the sound of Ruth saying good night to someone at the gate, invisible because of the intervening foliage. Why, it must be dreadfully late. The Dipper had moved away round to the south, and the heat of the day was all gone, and the air was full of the cool, scented breath of leaves and flowers and grass.

Ruth's lights shone out upon the balcony. Susan turned to slip into her own room. But Ruth heard, called out peevishly:. She longed to go in and embrace Ruth, and kiss her. She would have liked to ask Ruth to let her sleep with her, but she felt Ruth wouldn't understand. Ruth's voice somehow seemed to be knocking and tumbling her new dream-world. She was standing in her window now. Susan saw that her face looked tired and worn, almost homely. He and Lottie brought me home.

Susan flushed from head to foot. Susan flushed again—a delicious warmth from head to foot. So he, too, had been dreaming alone. Ruth began to sob, turned fiercely on Susan. The words meant nothing to Susan; but the tone stabbed into her heart. Ruth looked at her cousin, hung her head in shame.

I'm a bad girl—bad— bad! Until the last year Mrs. Warham had made her two girls live a life of the strictest simplicity and regularity, with the result that they were the most amazingly, soundly, healthy girls in Sutherland. And the regimen still held, except when they had company in the evening or went out—and Mrs. Warham saw to it that there was not too much of that sort of thing.

In all her life thus far Susan had never slept less than ten hours, rarely less than twelve. It lacked less than a minute of ten o'clock the morning after Sam's call when Susan's eyes opened upon her simple, pale-gray bedroom, neat and fresh. She looked sleepily at the little clock on the night stand.

And her bare feet were on the floor and she was stretching her lithe young body, weak from the relaxation of her profound sleep. It still meant nothing to her. She could not have explained why it came back or why she fell to puzzling over it as if it held some mysterious meaning. Perhaps the reason was that from early childhood there had been accumulating in some dusky chamber of her mind stray happenings and remarks, all baring upon the unsuspected secret of her birth and the unsuspected strangeness of her position in the world where everyone else was definitely placed and ticketed.

She was wondering about Ruth's queer hysterical outburst, evidently the result of a quarrel with Arthur Sinclair. This love that had come to her so suddenly and miraculously made her alert for signs of love elsewhere. She went to the bolted connecting door; she could not remember when it had ever been bolted before, and she felt forlorn and shut out.

This reminded her that she was hungry. She gathered her underclothes together, and with the bundle in her arms darted across the hall into the bathroom. The cold water acted as champagne promises to act but doesn't. She felt giddy with health and happiness. And the bright sun was flooding the bathroom, and the odors from the big bed of hyacinths in the side lawn scented the warm breeze from the open window. When she dashed back to her room she was singing, and her singing voice was as charming as her speaking voice promised. A few minutes and her hair had gone up in careless grace and she was clad in a fresh dress of tan linen, full in the blouse.

This, with her tan stockings and tan slippers and the radiant youth of her face, gave her a look of utter cleanness and freshness that was exceedingly good to see. There was no answer; doubtless Ruth had already descended. She rushed downstairs and into the dining-room. No one was at the little table set in one of the windows in readiness for the late breakfasters. Molly came, bringing cocoa, a cereal, hot biscuit and crab-apple preserves, all attractively arranged on a large tray.

We're going to have the grandest chicken that ever came out of an egg. Susan surveyed the tray with delighted eyes. She's got a headache. It was that salad for supper over to Sinclairs' last night. Salad ain't fit for a dog to eat, nohow—that's my opinion. And at night—it's sure to bust your face out or give you the headache or both. Susan ate with her usual enthusiasm, thinking the while of Sam and wondering how she could contrive to see him. She remembered her promise to her uncle. She had not eaten nearly so much as she wanted.

But up she sprang and in fifteen minutes was on her way to the store. She had seen neither Ruth nor her aunt. And she was not disappointed. There he stood, at the footpath gate into his father's place. He had arrayed himself in a blue and white flannel suit, white hat and shoes; a big expensive-looking cigarette adorned his lips. The Martins, the Delevans, the Castles and the Bowens, neighbors across the way, were watching him admiringly through the meshes of lace window curtains. She expected that he would come forward eagerly. Instead, he continued to lean indolently on the gate, as if unaware of her approach.

And when she was close at hand, his bow and smile were, so it seemed to her, almost coldly polite. Into her eyes came a confused, hurt expression. In Sutherland the young people were not so mindful of gossip, which it was impossible to escape, anyhow. Still—off there in the East, no doubt, they had more refined ways; without a doubt, whatever Sam did was the correct thing.

The effect of his words upon her was so obvious that he glanced nervously round. It was delightful to be able to evoke a love like this; but he did wish others weren't looking. She blushed deeply, happily. Her beauty made him tingle. They walked in silence several squares. I believe Artie Sinclair's coming. She looked at him in surprise.

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They think differently about those things in the East. Sam, whose secret dream was to marry some fashionable Eastern woman and cut a dash in Fifth Avenue life, had no intention of explaining what was what to one who would not understand, would not approve, and would be made auspicious of him. In the East we have dinner in the evening. But she was thinking of the joys in store for her at the close of the day. Far up the street he saw his sister's pony cart coming. He was red and stammering. As they shook hands emotion made them speechless. He stumbled awkwardly as he turned to leave, became still more hotly self-conscious when he saw the grin on the faces of the group of loungers at a packing case near the curb.

Susan did not see the loafers, did not see anything distinctly. Her feet sought the uneven brick sidewalk uncertainly, and the blood was pouring into her cheeks, was steaming in her brain, making a red mist before her eyes. She was glad he had left her.

The joy of being with him was so keen that it was pain. Now she could breathe freely and could dream—dream—dream. She made blunder after blunder in working over the accounts with her uncle, and he began to tease her. Her painful but happy blush delighted him. But it seems to me any time's good enough. Still—the first time's mighty fine eh? It did not leak out until supper that Sam was coming. Susan felt two pairs of feminine eyes pounce—hostile eyes, savagely curious. She paled with fright as queer, as unprecedented, as those hostile glances.

It seemed to her that she had done or was about to do something criminal. She could not speak. An awful silence, then her aunt—she no longer seemed her loving aunt—asked in an ominous voice: A dead silence—Warham silent because he was eating, but the two others not for that reason. Susan felt horribly guilty, and for no reason. Let the young folks have a good time. You didn't think you were too young at Susie's age. Susie's gaze was on the tablecloth. Ruth's eyes were down also. About her lips was a twitching that meant a struggle to hide a pleased smile. Warham in the same precise, restrained manner.

Warham met his eyes steadily. At last she had found what she felt was a just reason for keeping Sam away from Susan, so her tone was honest and strong. Warham lowered his gaze. He turned on Susan with his affection in his eyes. Susan's bosom was swelling, her lip trembling. She choked back the sobs, faltered out: There was an uncomfortable pause.

Warham felt miserable about it also. You know he doesn't come for any good. Warham stared in amazement. Her tone made him understand. He reddened, and with too blustering anger brought his fist down on the table. Ruth pushed back her chair and stood up. Her expression made her look much older than she was. I might have known! Haven't you noticed she isn't invited any more except when it can't be avoided? Warham's face was fiery with rage.

He looked helplessly, furiously about. But he said nothing. To fight public sentiment would be like trying to thrust back with one's fists an oncreeping fog. A long silence, while Warham was grasping the fullness of the meaning, the frightful meaning, in these revelations so astounding to him. At last he said:. I don't believe she does. She's the most innocent child that ever grew up. Warham became suddenly angry again. And he strode from the room, flung on his hat and went for a walk. Warham came from the dining-room a few minutes later, Ruth appeared in the side veranda doorway.

Some others are coming—the Wrights. You'd have to talk to Lottie. I don't blame you. The girl on the stairway stopped short, shrank against the wall. A moment, and she hastily reascended, entered her room, closed the door. Love had awakened the woman; and the woman was not so unsuspecting, so easily deceived as the child had been.

She understood what her cousin and her aunt were about; they were trying to take her lover from her! She understood her aunt's looks and tones, her cousin's temper and hysteria. She sat down upon the floor and cried with a breaking heart. The injustice of it! The meanness of it!

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The wickedness of a world where even her sweet cousin, even her loving aunt were wicked! She sat there on the floor a long time, abandoned to the misery of a first shattered illusion, a misery the more cruel because never before had either cousin or aunt said or done anything to cause her real pain. The sound of voices coming through the open window from below made her start up and go out on the balcony. She leaned over the rail. She could not see the veranda for the masses of creeper, but the voices were now quite plain in the stillness.

Ruth's voice gay and incessant. Presently a man's voice his —and laughing! Then his voice speaking—then the two voices mingled—both talking at once, so eager were they! Her lover—and Ruth was stealing him from her! Oh, the baseness, the treachery! And her aunt was helping!.

Sore of heart, utterly forlorn, she sat in the balcony hammock, aching with love and jealousy. Every now and then she ran in and looked at the clock. He was staying on and on, though he must have learned she was not coming down. She heard her uncle and aunt come up to bed. Now the piano in the parlor was going. First it was Ruth singing one of her pretty love songs in that clear small voice of hers. Then Sam played and sang—how his voice thrilled her! She could see Ruth at the piano, how beautiful she looked—and that song—it would be impossible for him not to be impressed.

She felt the jealousy of despair. She heard them at the edge of the veranda—so, at last he was going. She was able to hear their words now:. It was all the girl at the balcony rail could do to refrain from crying out a protest. But Sam was saying to Ruth:. Haven't had so much fun in a long time. May I come again?

See you in the morning.

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Give my love to Susie, and tell her I was sorry not to see her. She watched him stroll down to the gate under the arch of boughs dimly lit by the moon. She stretched her arms passionately toward him. Then she went in to go to bed. But at the sound of Ruth humming gayly in the next room, she realized that she could not sleep with her heart full of evil thoughts. She must have it out with her cousin.

She knocked on the still bolted door. The bolt shot back. And please unhook my dress—there's a dear. Susan opened the door, stood on the threshold, all her dark passion in her face. Ruth had turned her back, in readiness for the service the need of which had alone caused her to unbolt the door. At that swift, fierce ejaculation she started, wheeled round. At sight of that wild anger she paled. I'll not stand it! Why, he cares nothing about you.

The idea of your having your head turned by a little politeness! And I love him. I told him so. You shan't take him from me! Ruth's eyes were gleaming and her voice was shrill with hate. You've got Arthur Sinclair. You shan't take him away! The two girls, shaking with fury, were facing each other, were looking into each other's eyes. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. We 're trying to save you. She was beside herself with jealous anger. You're like your mother. You'd disgrace us—as she did. My mother is dead—and you're a wicked girl.

Her eyes were half shut now and sparkling devilishly. You haven't got any father. And no man of any position would marry you. Susan had shrunk against the door jamb. She understood only dimly, but things understood dimly are worse than things that are clear. Oh, Ruth, you don't mean that.

And if he talked engagement, it was only a pretense. The girl leaning in the doorway gazed into vacancy. Ruth began to fuss with the things on her bureau. Susan went into her room, sat on the edge of the bed. A few minutes, and Ruth, somewhat cooled down and not a little frightened, entered. She looked uneasily at the motionless figure. And you'll not say anything to mother or father? They feel terribly about it, and don't want it ever mentioned.

You won't let on that you know? I admit I was angry, but it was best for you to know—wasn't it? Ruth, still more uneasy, turned back into her own room because there was nothing else to do. She did not shut the door between. When she was in her nightgown she glanced in at her cousin. The girl was sitting on the edge of the bed in the same position.

Ruth went to bed and soon fell asleep. After an hour or so she awakened. Light was streaming through the open connecting door. She ran to it, looked in. Susan's clothes were in a heap beside the bed. Susan herself, with the pillows propping her, was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. It was impossible for Ruth to realize any part of the effect upon her cousin of a thing she herself had known for years and had taken always as a matter of course; she simply felt mildly sorry for unfortunate Susan.

Ruth switched off the light and went back to bed, better content. She felt that now Susan would stop her staring and would go to sleep. Sam's call had been very satisfactory. Ruth felt she had shown off to the best advantage, felt that he admired her, would come to see her next time. And now that she had so arranged it that Susan would avoid him, everything would turn out as she wished.

RUTH had forgotten to close her shutters, so toward seven o'clock the light which had been beating against her eyelids for three hours succeeded in lifting them. She stretched herself and yawned noisily. Susan appeared in the connecting doorway. I'll sleep an hour or two. Something in the tone made Ruth forget about sleep and rub her fingers over her eyes to clear them for a view of her cousin.

Susan seemed about as usual—perhaps a little serious, but then she had the habit of strange moods of seriousness. Susan came into the room, sat at the foot of the bed—there was room, as the bed was long and Ruth short. Don't bother about it, Susan. And why I have no father—why I'm not like you—and the other girls.

Don't bother about it. It can't be helped. And it doesn't really matter. And—you must tell me all about it. Was my mother bad? No, she was, they say, as nice and sweet as she could be—except——She wasn't married to your father. Susan sat in a brown study. Susan's violet-gray eyes rested a grave, inquiring glance upon her cousin's face. Doesn't it mean he promised to marry her and didn't?

What did my mother do? Again Susan sat in silence, trying to puzzle it out. Ruth lifted herself, put the pillows behind her back. Well, I'll try to explain—though I don't know much about it. And hesitatingly, choosing words she thought fitted to those innocent ears, hunting about for expressions she thought comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the sexes—an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up from other girls—the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them.

Susan listened with increasing amazement. But I've got kind of used to it. She let him betray her. And when a woman lets a man betray her without being married by the preacher or somebody, why, she's ruined forever. But don't you see it was my father who was the disgrace? He was the one that promised to marry and didn't. All I know is, God says a woman must be married before she—before she has any children. And your mother wasn't. A little kissing and that often leads a man to propose. But I'm sure my mother was a good woman. It wasn't her fault if she was lied to, when she loved and believed.

And anybody who blames her is low and bad. I'm glad I haven't got any father, if fathers have to be made to promise before everybody or else they'll not keep their word. The woman has to take all the blame. I'd not have anything to do with such people. Ruth hid her face. Ruth gave a low scream and shuddered.

Susan looked round defiantly, as if she expected a bolt from the blue to come hurtling through the open window. But the sky remained serene, and the quiet, scented breeze continued to play with the lace curtains, and the birds on the balcony did not suspend their chattering courtship. This lack of immediate effect from her declaration of war upon man and God was encouraging. The last of the crushed, cowed feeling Ruth had inspired the night before disappeared. With a soul haughtily plumed and looking defiance from the violet-gray eyes, Susan left her cousin and betook herself down to breakfast.

In common with most children, she had always dreamed of a mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her, far from making her feel like cringing before the world in gratitude for its tolerance of her bar sinister, seemed a fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic longings and beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that had attracted Sam to her; and this difference would make their love wholly unlike the commonplace Sutherland wooing and wedding. Yes, hers had been a mysterious fate, and would continue to be.

Nora, an old woman now, had often related in her presence how Doctor Stevens had brought her to life when she lay apparently, indeed really, dead upon the upstairs sitting-room table—Doctor Stevens and Nora's own prayers. An extraordinary birth, in defiance of the laws of God and man; an extraordinary resurrection, in defiance of the laws of nature—yes, hers would be a life superbly different from the common. And when she and Sam married, how gracious and forgiving she would be to all those bad-hearted people; how she would shame them for their evil thoughts against her mother and herself!

The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three meals a day in that room all those years—was, indeed, actually the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in weakness but had stood erect in strength. After breakfast she went down Main Street and at Crooked Creek Avenue took the turning for the cemetery.

She sought the Warham plot, on the western slope near the quiet brook. There was a clump of cedars at each corner of the plot; near the largest of them were three little graves—the three dead children of George and Fanny. In the shadow of the clump and nearest the brook was a fourth grave apart and, to the girl, now thrillingly mysterious:.

Susan's tears scalded her eyes. Only a little older than her cousin Ruth was now—Ruth who often seemed to her, and to everybody, younger than herself. But she was good! She started as Sam's voice, gay and light, sounded directly behind her. He might have added that he did not try to overtake her until they were where people would be least likely to see.

She was gazing at her mothers simple headstone. His glance followed hers, he read. She turned her serious gaze from the headstone to his face, which her young imagination transfigured. I didn't believe it—not after what we had said to each other. Sam, red and shifting uneasily, could not even keep his downcast eyes upon the same spot of ground. Why, how seriously the girl had taken him and his words—such a few words and not at all definite! No, he decided, it was the kiss. He had heard of girls so innocent that they thought a kiss meant the same as being married. He got himself together as well as he could and looked at her.

She was so sweet, so magnetic, so compelling that in spite of the frowns of prudence he seized her hand. At her touch he flung prudence to the winds. She gently but strongly repulsed him. I don't care so much for the others, but I'd not want Uncle George to feel I had disgraced him. He understood her innocence that frankly assumed marriage where a sophisticated girl would, in the guilt of designing thoughts, have shrunk in shame from however vaguely suggesting such a thing.

He realized to the full his peril. But somehow I can't help it—I can't! There is little convincing textual evidence for such an interpretation and Byatt displays little sympathy for Lacan's ideas. She certainly is not craven in her approach to difficult psychological or cultural theories see her readings of Foucault, 26 Derrida, and Wittgenstein in Passions of the Mind , so it is doubtful that she can be accused of avoiding Lacan.

It is, more likely, that his thinking is not pertinent for her world view. Byatt knows the work of various post-structuralist and feminist theorists well, but is often critical of it, especially when it overutilizes abstraction and intimidating jargon. I myself have no patience for vocabulary that erects barriers between the academic and general reader, and am drawn to thinkers who invite comprehension Iris Murdoch, Edward Said, Oliver Sacks, Roland Barthes, and William James are variously placed along the critical spectrum but are all excellent stylists. In allowing my methods to arise from the text, I have been able to discover some surprising and gratifying particulars.

For example, although I usually use biographical explanations sparingly, several aspects of Byatt's life demand attention and provide powerful explanations of, for example, the prominence of Stephanie Potter's death in Still Life. Byatt herself underwent a partial accidental electrocution by an ungrounded refrigerator in the s, which explains the viscerality of that scene. Additionally, one cannot underestimate the importance of the accidental death of her son Charles in Byatt's writing stopped almost entirely for a number of years; after she was finally able to confront that death in fiction by transforming it into Stephanie Potter's death in , her writing changed profoundly, in style, theme, and tone.

Charles Byatt's death is, in large part, responsible for his mother's lack of faith and her obsession with accident. She has said, "Chance operates in the world in this terrifying way and can change things overnight. In using a synthesis of analytical methods, but especially close reading, I also came to realize how important is Byatt's insistence on the experience of the individual, 27 something I have already touched on briefly.

A recognition of the place of individualism in her philosophy allows one to formulate theories of Byatt's political ideas, which are at first glance difficult to establish and contradictory. If I had not been open to a number of ways of reading, I doubt that I would have noticed her stance on individualism. Reading Byatt is a daunting task. As The New Yorker review of Possession said, somewhat caustically, in Possession is so enormous that it can't be maneuvered into the studio apartment of a review without a great deal of grunting and swearing - and of metaphor.

It's a Niagara of allusions. It's a rope of pearls grossly disparate in lustre and value. It's a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types. It's a high-tech handbook of professional thought tools adapted for the consumer. Thurman The sheer abundance of Byatt makes a nimble and varied theoretical outlook advisable: In , a journalist in the Guardian had the foresight to see this: For whereas Margaret Drabble writes and talks on double levels -offering soft options to the lazy and the dim - her sister has less patience.

Her style is rarefied. She assumes complete attention, enormous breadth of reading, and an acrobatic mind. MacCarthy 8 Another way of describing my methods would be to give them a contrapuntal designation. In his book Musical Elaborations. Edward Said has noted that certain composers and musicians overcome some of classical music's authoritative tendencies by using strategies of counterpoint - empowering several voices to sing at once - and variation - allowing melodic themes to be open-endedly elaborative and diverse.

I find Said's musicological idea happily adaptable to other disciplines. For example, consider the common procedure of contrasting Byatt's writing with that of her sister, Margaret Drabble, or her mentor, Iris Murdoch. I do find that Drabble's and Byatt's portrayals of childbirth are worth comparing with Byatt offering a sharply dissenting point of view to her sister's apparently effortless fictional deliveries , but otherwise the connections are dubious. Byatt's first two novels bear certain resemblances to Murdoch's fiction, in their use of character to represent idea and their often heavily fatalistic plot structures.

Since the s, however, Byatt has experimented with a much wider variety of forms than she previously used. Byatt has written profusely on the writers she admires, and these antecedents and loyalties are a tremendous help in explicating her work.

Although she claims Proust and Mann among her favourite writers, their influence is less visible than that of other favourites: She has admiring quarrels with E. These are the writers who have shaped her thinking, more than any theorists of literature or culture Bakhtin, Lukacs, Derrida , and so I have used the words of literary writers extensively, as part of the structure of my argument.

I have done the same with a few contemporary writers who can profitably be set side by side with her: Byatt has noticed some of these texts, but others are accidents of my own reading. I must also acknowledge the sometimes casual manner I have quoted from complex texts, for example when I have mentioned the work of Donne, Wordsworth, and Lawrence. My readings of specific and limited elements in their work should not be mistaken for full interpretations. I also think that, while this work on Byatt's sources, biography, and literary antecedents is necessary now - to situate Byatt accurately - in the coming years it will be more meaningful to employ historical and cultural analysis and more rigorous linguistic methods.

The themes and forms I perceive in Byatt's work are functional, not decorative. My work on love, for instance, does not present that experience in Byatt's fiction as prettifying gloss, window-dressing, or some hazy change-of-pace stratagem in an otherwise cerebral undertaking. Love is a fundamental human experience to which Byatt gives her full attention. Similarly, death in Byatt is not meant to "stand for" something else, or to be a mere plot element, but takes centre stage and is resolutely itself.

Nor is her investigation of Matisse intended just to brighten things up. A related point about my own method is that my work is rooted in experience and not abstraction: The triangle that Marcus Potter sees as a mental image is not a diagram, but is real and literal. It naturally has symbolic and psychological and sometimes religious significance, but it also is, actually, a triangle. I also discuss Byatt's characters as if, in a way, they were real, and I do not always emphasize divisions between the novels treating the characters as if they were, perhaps, members of one family: Following Michel Foucault's analysis of the Panopticon in Discipline and Punish - "Visibility is a trap" - some theorists are labouring at models of repressive visual technologies.

As interdisciplinary study and popular culture analysis gain status, scholars are turning their attention to such things as the comic strip form and to Victorian illustrated novels. And the influence of computers in conceptual thinking has led to a lively growth in studies of visual communication theories of the utilitarian sort: Tufte's Visual Explanations is indicative of this trend: This book describes design strategies - the proper arrangement of space and time of images, words, and numbers - for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause and effect.

These theorists usually emphasize how, not what. It is not the content of the information conveyed by way of the eye that is being theorized, but the form, as well as the ramifications pedagogical, neurological, political, economic of that transfer from brain to eye, from eye to brain. Foucault's discourse analysis as it touches on sight is pessimistic; it has no useful point of contact with Byatt's trust in visual reality. I have used instead the writings of aesthetic theorists and art critics like E.

Gombrich and Lawrence Gowing to guide me and, especially, the writings of artists themselves. Byatt's writing is due. A Romance is the only Byatt novel which many readers know, and I cannot emphasize enough that Possession is not typical, but only one phase of her work. As one of the first to do a full-length analysis of Byatt's fiction, I am aware that I may have emphasized too strongly her quest for truth and transcendent Meaning, as well as her faith in the power of language to represent reality.

Byatt is, after all, not an idealist, but an empiricist: In my conclusion, I will return to Byatt's failures of faith and hope and attempt some provisional summaries. The collapse of several of her investigations has not made her a cynic, although it has noticeably changed the scope of her ambitions. Childbirth Suddenly she [Orlando] started - and here we could only wish that, as on a former occasion, Purity, Chastity, and Modesty would push the door ajar and provide, at least, a breathing space in which we could think how to wrap up what now has to be told delicately, as a biographer should.

Is nothing then, going to happen this pale March morning to mitigate, to veil, to cover, to conceal, to shroud this undeniable event whatever it may be? Virginia Woolf Orlando I played the lead, and it was big stuff; supporting roles are less rewarding. Rosamond Lehmann, The Echoing Grove Scenes of childbirth in literature are rare, and told from the perspective of the woman giving birth they are even rarer.

Children are frequently represented in poetry and fiction, both as individuals and as metaphors, but birth itself is common only in metaphoric use, where it has even become banal. The Bible is replete with such references: Zion is often in labour, bringing forth her sons see, for example, Isaiah Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" associates birth with his own poetic inventiveness. Childbirth as metaphor, however, is not the subject of this discussion; there is a good deal of criticism on this topic to which the reader can be referred.

For feminist views, see Friedman, Stone, and Gubar. Tess Cosslett in "Childbirth from the Woman's Point of View" criticizes these latter studies as privileging "childbirth as metaphor for other kinds of female creativity" n. Poston says that it is "as if a kiss were constantly described from the viewpoint of someone watching rather than from the perspective of those kissing" One of the most famous descriptions of childbirth in fiction is found in Anna Karenin Levin looks on, horrified as "what had once been Kitty" utters in labour "terrible screams.

Tolstoy captures powerfully the long hours of childbirth and the helplessness of a 19th century father, who finds, after the fact, that "the significance of a woman's life. Despite this apparent reverence for female fortitude, however, the majority of the extended birth scene in Anna Karenin concerns the impact on the man: But after that hour another passed, a second, a third, and the full five hours he had fixed upon as the longest possible term of endurance, and still the situation was unchanged; and he went on enduring because there was nothing else to do but endure, every moment feeling that he had reached the utmost limits of endurance and that his heart would burst with compassion and pain.

Lawrence's The Rainbow But he was screwed very tight in the vice of suffering" It is not at all unusual for the observer in fiction to be just plain horrified, even when she is a woman. Kate Chopin, herself the mother of six children, ascribes this view to Edna, the protagonist of The Awakening , who witnesses the "scene of torture" at the birthbed of her friend Adele "with an inward agony, with a flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature" I wish to examine some of the common methods, usually metaphorical, used by literary writers to describe childbirth, and compare these to the descriptions of birth used by A.

Byatt, whose novel Still Life contains some of the most moving birth writing I have ever encountered. Critic Flora Alexander has written that this novel presents the "momentous experience of childbirth" with "insight and power" The reader will note that, in my analysis, I have deliberately scattered the positive and negative metaphors used by Byatt and other writers. In addition to metaphor, Antonia Byatt's birth stories make use of language that she calls, in Passions of the Mind, "plain and exact" Here the grounds for comparison, at least in literary terms, are relatively unpopulated, with the limited exception of the novels of Byatt's sister, Margaret Drabble.

The obvious means for comparison in this case might have been medical texts, anthropological studies, or natural childbirth manuals, but I leave that work to other scholars. Before I go further, I offer a note on my terminology. I have attempted to steer clear of the usual rhetoric of pain in this chapter, and also particularly wish to avoid passive or past-tense formulations about birth: See, for example, Kate Chopin's "hour of trial" and the fact that she never mentions pregnancy in a straightforward, specific way.

Even Carol Poston, a feminist critic, uses the Gothic-flavoured phrase "stricken with labour" Byatt would not agree with my avoidance of the word "pain"; in the major birth chapter of Still Life chapter 7 she uses the word at least 20 times. In Possession Christabel LaMotte states that "the greater part of suffering in this world is ours" and is obsessed, before giving birth, with the pains of the Little 35 Mermaid in Hans Andersen's story The knowledge is implicit that LaMotte is discussing childbirth pain.

However, in most instances I find in Byatt an earnest attempt to capture the subtlety and intricacy of the event; where most writers might stop at the word "pain," Byatt goes beyond it to analyse the fuller ramifications of the experience. Questionable but influential translations from the Hebrew of Genesis 3. The original Hebrew punishment applied to Eve for her disobedience, roughly transliterated as "becetsev," may mean either pain or toil, and the word for Adam's punishment is closely related to the root of Eve's word.

According to the most commonly used translations of this century, the American Standard Version , the Revised Standard Version , and the New Revised Standard Version , Eve is cursed with "pain in childbearing" while Adam is sentenced to "toil" on the land. Some recent translations, such as the Revised English Bible , return to the emphasis on the similarity in Adam's and Eve's situations, and now cast them both in terms of the more neutral "labour.

I prefer the term "labour. The idea of hard work has often lost out to exaggerated descriptions of agony used, by men and by women, to terrify and to valorize. I have also attempted to describe childbirth in terms of "event" and "experience," an act in which a woman, a baby, and others are present and creative. The degrees of pain and risk involved are widely variable.

There are many reasons for this absence in literary practice. As Virginia Woolf ironically points out in the passage from Orlando which introduces this chapter, birth scenes are not matters to be discussed in polite society. Furthermore it is, plainly, difficult for women to remember something as strenuous and complex as childbirth; this amnesia is frequently iterated in discussions of childbirth. One important dissenting voice, however, is Sheila Kitzinger, who says, "Years after the baby has been born [the mother] remembers acutely the details of her labour and her feelings as the child was delivered" Perhaps women do lean too heavily on birth amnesia; surely the ability to remember childbirth could be developed.

American poet and novelist Louise Erdrich speaks of her fear before childbirth and the feeling of being displaced from her own body, and is ambivalently grateful about "the merciful wash of endorphins that precludes any thought from occupying [my brain] too long" Blue Jay's Dance 9. There are few literary models to follow; childbirth anecdotes are usually oral, and attempts to collect them have been rare.

Additionally, the oral tradition has often been mistrusted for its exaggerated and negative qualities, and Cosslett notes that the "unstructured, ghoulish horror stories [which] challenge the simple, optimistic structures of our modern myths of birth" Women Writing Childbirth 4 are reviled by both the medical establishment and by natural childbirth proponents. The consequence is a paradigmatic gap, a blank space where representations of birth ought to be. Erdrich, writing in of the births of her own children, wondered: Why is no woman's labor as famous as the death of Socrates?

Over all of the millennia that women have endured and suffered and died during childbirth, we have no one story that comes down to us with attendant 37 reverence, or that exists in pictures - a cultural icon, like that of Socrates holding forth to his companions as he raises the cup of hemlock. Blue Jay's Dance 35 We might, initially, think to point to the most famous birth, that of Christ in the New Testament, to refute Erdrich's argument. But we remember that Mary's personal experience is not recounted in the gospels. The exception is the Magnificat which she utters, after conception, in Luke 1.

In Margaret Drabble's novel The Millstone, the new mother says "what I felt it is pointless to try to describe" Margaret Atwood, in her story "Giving Birth," puzzles over the meaning of the title phrase. And to whom is it given? Jeanie, Atwood's protagonist, examines and rejects other terms she has been given. The words don't match the experience. Atwood's narrator, unlike Drabble's, is critical of language and imagery contaminated by male conventions.

But Atwood and Erdrich are cautious about diverting creative energies away from the physical and spiritual contemplation of birth itself toward linguistic issues they see as less primary. Atwood's Jeanie writes of "language, muttering in its archaic tongues of something, yet one more thing that needs to be re-named" and then retorts: These are the only words I have, I'm stuck with them, stuck in them So we will go ahead as if there were no problem about language" Byatt, in Still Life, approaches the problem of childbirth and language in a similar way.

Clearly the available words are inadequate, but there are issues immediately, and even perhaps ultimately although this is less certain more demanding than linguistic 38 ones. Her protagonist, Stephanie Potter Orton, is absorbed with her responsibility for producing a healthy child; she blocks out the stories of other women and the advice of nurses, rejecting the prescribed relaxation exercises in childbirth books.

The novel is set in s England, and Stephanie is constantly frustrated in her attempt to find models for living which adequately take into account both her remarkable intellectual abilities and her position as wife and mother. Although loved and supported by her charitable husband Daniel, an Anglican curate, Stephanie has to face birth and later, death depending solely on her own considerable resources. Byatt and Stephanie are clearly, at times, conflated; see the interview with Jeffrey Canton, when Byatt says, "I don't know what I shall do without her" 6.

I assume in this discussion that Stephanie's childbirth events resemble Byatt's own experiences, and that Stephanie's reflections on language and birth are, at least in part, Byatt's. These authors have decided, under the pressure of the task at hand, that they must get on with the crucial work of having children, and they trust their bodies will perform adequately outside the scope of language.

The reader must ask, however, to what extent these writers claim that a woman can naturally and permanently cope without accurate language or historical models. Or is their apparent trust in the female body's unspeaking and essential knowledge only a preliminary step toward the development of a fuller, more exacting narrative of birth? I would argue that Byatt, like Atwood and Erdrich, does assert that the birth event has not been adequately examined from a woman's point of view, and further that, of necessity, this story must be told using the faulty but by no means contemptible tools at hand.

What does not seem to concern Byatt is the surveying and plotting of revolutionary 39 inroads into an eventual liberated, wholly feminized expression of the childbirth experience. For Byatt, the arrival of this event into our literature is too long overdue for the writer to be warmly exercised about the bias now evidenced in our language. One model for Byatt may be Virginia Woolf, who accepts, in A Room of One's Own that women write differently than men, but praises style that can "absorb the new into the old" 81 and pleads for a future androgynous consciousness.

In , in discussing the feminist linguistics of Monique Wittig, Byatt declared her own allegiance to "subtle distinctions within a continuing language, not doctrinaire violations" Passions of the Mind Cosslett speaks of Byatt and others as "women writers negotiating with and within dominant ideologies" "Childbirth from the Woman's Point of View" , emphasizing the compromises these writers feel they are either forced or willing to make. Byatt, however, stresses not the woeful inadequacy of male-dominated discourse but instead the multifold possibilities by which our existing language can be made to connect more closely with the birth experience; these opportunities, she implies, have not been fully utilized.

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Her contribution to this nascent literary field has been diverse. Stephanie Potter gives birth twice in Still Life, and each birth is a very different experience. The birth of her son Will, described in fuller detail than any birth in fiction I can bring to mind, is painful but mostly triumphant, while the subsequent birth of Mary is marked by frustration. In each case Stephanie depends, with mixed success, upon literature to help her through labour Wordsworth in her first pregnancy, Dickens in her second , a difficult conjunction of books and motherhood with which Stephanie will struggle through the rest of the life remaining to her.

In Possession, Christabel LaMotte refuses to acknowledge publicly her pregnancy, and secretly gives the baby to her sister to raise. LaMotte believes that her vocation as a poet is incompatible with motherhood and is unwilling to try to connect the two roles. In the parodic, semi-allegorical novella "Morpho Eugenia" , the women of Bredely Hall are either queen ants or worker ants, and again it is clear that, in the nineteenth century at any rate, a life of the mind and 40 motherhood are nearly impossible to combine, and additionally that women's reproductive capabilities are a precarious source of power.

In Byatt's first novel, The Shadow of the Sun , Anna who may or may not be a latent artist discovers her pregnancy with a feeling of passive foreboding, acting not unlike the acquiescent Jane in Drabble's The Waterfall Childbirth prompts and demands a much wider range of responses than are typically recorded, and Byatt's fiction provides an unusually full sampling of them.

But Byatt's fullest exploration of the subject, the story of Stephanie Potter, declares the author's central intention: In an interview Byatt underscores the individual, personal experience which informed the writing of Still Life: I read a very good article [probably Cosslett's] about descriptions of childbirth by women which assumes that my accounts of childbirth in the s and 60s are informed by feminist perspectives, whereas in fact they are simply accurate memories of, for instance, the rage I felt at not being allowed to walk up and down when I was in labour. It's nothing to do with feminist theory having told me that, I observed it.

Tredell 61 This elevation of individualism, memory, and imagination testifies to the ways in which Byatt allies herself with the Romantic poets, and it is no accident that Stephanie is so adamant about having her Wordsworth with her when giving birth to her first child, whom she appropriately names William. Throughout her works, Byatt repeats a line from Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode" that is, for her, a touchstone: I return to the importance of this tree in chapter 4, and to the chair in chapter 5. Wordsworth's language of birth and childhood may be exceptionally innocent, but his metaphors are refreshing and authoritative for Byatt's characters.

As we do so, keep in mind feminist scholarship which asserts that male ideas have contaminated childbirth narratives. Poston has said that the most startling perception to emerge from a study of [childbirth in literature] is that although the experience has been woman's, the language has been men's; and so great has the tyranny of language been that women begin experiencing birth from a male point of view.

Metaphor has always been especially useful here, as writers - old and new - wish to sum up childbirth as quickly as possible, in some generic way. Thus, individuals are reduced to "the woman" and "the baby" and the event abstracted from the personal. Anna writes a similar line of poetry in The Shadow of the Sun 9. The hinged mouth swings wide at birth, the dark peristalsis, the great swallowing begins.

The child's first lesson is the iron knocker, the hasp of hunger opening. Erdrich, although usually alert to gendered power relations operating within language, does not seem uncomfortable with at least some of the customary generalizations about "the child," "the body," and "the pain. Rosamund Stacey, the unwed mother in The Millstone, reports that after giving birth to her daughter, "I felt remarkably well, a usual reaction I believe on such occasions, and I could have got up and walked away" In a interview, Drabble confirmed that this was her own experience.

Margaret Drabble recalled how she had managed to write a book about Wordsworth5: I took my typewriter into hospital -1 sat in the ambulance clutching it saying, 'Don't take that away. And the minute I got into bed I got my typewriter and was able to get on. I had some lovely fish and chips and a nice evening's work. We are more familiar with the figurative language of conquest, sacrifice, and blood in Anne Stevenson's "Victory" I thought you were my victory though you cut me like a knife when I brought you out of my body into your life.

Prince of Thieves , in which women declare their fitness for battle precisely because they have given birth. And of course, there is the required analogy between women and animals, a tradition used by Zola and many others. This view is, at least, mingled with some compassion and admiration in the s doctor stories of William Carlos Williams: The flesh of my arm lay against the flesh of her knee gratefully.

Sylvia Plath, in the poem "Morning Song," also sees herself as "cow-heavy. This process may be difficult in Byatt , indifferent Plath , or casual Erdrich. Some critics, not inappropriately, see Byatt as a "traditional" writer. But Byatt can be also impatient with "radical" writers for not going far enough in search of innovation. For example, she has taken Monique Wittig's The Lesbian Body to task for "the limpness with which it adheres to traditional myths" Passions of the Mind In Still Life Byatt attempts to go beyond hackneyed and limited representations, and simultaneously wants to return to an examination of the possibility of making intellectual and physical knowledge adhere to words, with accuracy and originality.

Hers is a strangely old-fashioned radical task. There is, for example, the recurring notion of possession: I am drummed into use," writes Plath in her poem "Three Women. Something was living her life; she was not living" This is a particularly frightening notion for the female artist, and it is this sense of the inability to escape from the inexorable claims of motherhood which drives Edna Pontellier to her death in Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

In Plath's "Three Women" a baby's cries are "hooks that catch and grate like cats. Stephanie finds a rather grim satisfaction in describing her pregnant self as "sunk in biology" Still Life This phrase echoes one from Iris Murdoch's "Against Dryness," the essay which attempts to correct existentialist notions that we are "isolated free choosers"; instead, says Murdoch, we are "benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy" 20, emphasis mine.

Byatt, following Murdoch, insists it is crucial to accurately name; accuracy in this case means not giving in to the temptation to oversimplify pregnancy as either complete fulfillment or entrapment. Still Life, she says in a recent interview, is her book about "biology described from very close up" Wachtel ; if Stephanie feels possessed by the imperatives of her body, she also realizes this has positive and negative ramifications.

A common method of coping with birth pain, a kind of visual aid not unlike, but not precisely, a metaphor is to move into the pain, using darkened ideas of welcome or embrace. Byatt writes that Stephanie "found the desperate energy to end the pain by increasing it" Still Life 93 ; Erdrich says that "very often in labor one must fight the instinct to resist pain and instead embrace it, move toward it, work with what hurts the most" Blue Jay's Dance In The Millstone Drabble's character reports "sensations which though unbelievably violent were now no longer painful but indeed almost a 45 promise of pleasure" It is no great distance from here to masochism, and it is possible in Plath's work to read a perverse pride in being the "center of an atrocity"; she writes that "there is no miracle more cruel than this.

I last it out. I accomplish a work" "Three Women". A related matter is the way in which the protagonists of Byatt, Atwood and Plath alike describe the emotions of rage they feel in near-murderous terms. In Still Life Stephanie "was amazed at the rage she felt. She wished the women dead for holding her so uncomfortably in an unnatural position" A woman who will give away her newborn child in Plath's "Three Women" decides "I should have murdered this, that murders me. Several of these writers bring forth battering ram images of the final stages of labour.

In "Three Women" Plath writes: I fold my hands on a mountain. It is a "furious blunt block," and a "thing [which] launched itself again against its prison walls" 92 , echoing and inverting Wordsworth's "prison-house" from the "Immortality Ode. Stephanie is described as "pulled almost off her feet" by the waves 87 ; Erdrich similarly says, "I feel myself slip beneath the waves as they roar over" and eventually "the undertow grabs me" Blue Jay's Dance And finally, there is birth as art.

Atwood and Plath each describe the creation of a child as the crafting of a well-made watch. Babies are frequently compared to statues, paintings, poems, especially in Plath. Byatt tends not to set up this semi-antagonistic comparison between children and works of art, but she does make frequent use of water and tidal imagery, often considered to be stereotypically female.

Atwood's narrator compares herself to a birdcage opening inside out; Erdrich sees herself as a boat and as an armoured figure, her baby as a rocket. I could continue to enumerate birth metaphors, but this list will serve as an introduction. As previously noted, I refuse to divide this list into "light" and "dark" groups. The dualism set up between the Old Testament emphasis on the punishing pain of childbirth and the modern pretense of ease, as evidenced in Drabble and in some of the sterile myth-making which surrounds the modern hospital birth, is an overly simplistic and not very useful one.

I have also hesitated to assign typically "male" or "female" meanings. I was surprised at how most of these common images resisted male labelling, with the obvious exceptions of images of warfare and of Erdrich's "rocket" mentioned above. And while the equation between women and animals can be queried, I believe for a feminist to prolong that argument the one that goes - are animals, or women, "lower" forms of life than men? The use that many of these writers make of natural or animalistic examples is simply to underline our connection to other forms of life; a heavily gendered interpretation is a mistaken one, I believe.

My point is that I have not found in my research the preponderance of patriarchal images which feminist childbirth scholars led me to believe I should. It is true that some of the writing I am discussing is of fairly recent vintage, but I have also found that Sylvia Plath's metaphors, 35 years ago, do not always, or even often, fall in with Carol Poston's judgement that male language has tyrannized this female experience.

Perhaps the complaint of feminist critics is valid when applied to birth as written by Sterne, Hemingway, Joyce, and Lawrence, as Maria Curro Kreppel claims. But Virginia Woolf, in Orlando, uses the flight of a kingfisher and the music of an organ grinder to sketch the birth of Orlando's child; neither of these ideas, it seems to me, is poisoned by the patriarchy.

Byatt in Still Life attempts to use language which has neither a male nor a female bias. The obvious exception is the use of water imagery often considered to be stereotypically female. However, there is a precedent for Byatt challenging or disregarding the established hierarchies of symbols; in The Virgin in the Garden she deliberately attempted to reverse the usual association of men with the sun and women with the moon, by emphasizing the identification of Elizabeth I and, by extension, Frederica Potter, who is acting the part of Elizabeth in Alexander Wedderburn's play with sun iconography see her introduction to the reprint of The Shadow of the Sun.

THE telephone was downstairs, in the rear end of the hall which divided the lower floor into two equal parts. But hardly had Mrs. Warham given the Sinclairs' number to the exchange girl when Ruth called from the head of the stairs:. You'll have the whole town talking about how I'm throwing myself at Sam's head--and that I'm jealous of Susan. Warham said, "Never mind" into the telephone sender and hung up the receiver. She was frightened, but not convinced. Hers was a slow, old-fashioned mind, and to it the scheme it had worked out seemed a model of skillful duplicity.

But Ruth, of the younger and subtler generation, realized instantly how transparent the thing was. Warham was abashed but not angered by her daughter's curt contempt. They don't believe nowadays everything that's told them. There isn't anybody that doesn't know I'm never sick. She reflected a moment, pausing halfway down the stairs, while her mother watched her swollen and tear-stained face. Then Sam'd come straight on to the Sinclairs'. Provost, and tell him papa's coming. Then you can talk with papa when he gets home to dinner.

The mother and the daughter avoided each other's eyes. Both felt mean and small, guilty toward Susan; but neither was for that reason disposed to draw back. Warham was trying the new dress on her daughter, she said:. He'd hang round her for no good. She'd simply get talked about.

The poor child can't be lively or smile but what people begin to wonder if she's going the way of--of Lorella. And she's so sweet and good, I'd hate to have her feelings hurt. She'd give up anything rather than see someone else put out. She's too much that way. But I guess if you want to get along you've got to look out for Number One. Yes, she ought to visit somewhere. But it's so lonesome out there I haven't the heart to send her. Besides, she wouldn't know what to make of it. Warham had latterly grown jealous--not without reason--of her husband's partiality for Susan.

How's she ever going to get married! Warham, on her knees, taking the unevenness out of the front of the skirt. Ruth made no reply. She smiled to herself--the comment of the younger generation upon the older. Sin it might have been; but, worse than that, it was a stupidity--to let a man make a fool of her. Lorella must have been a poor weak-minded creature. By dinner time Ruth had completely soothed and smoothed her vanity. Sam had been caught by Susan simply because he had seen Susan before he saw her.

All that would be necessary was a good chance at him, and he would never look at Susan again. He had been in the East, where the admired type was her own--refined, ladylike, the woman of the dainty appearance and manners and tastes. A brief undisturbed exposure to her charms and Susan would seem coarse and countrified to him. There was no denying that Susan had style, but it was fully effective only when applied to a sunny fairy-like beauty such as hers.

But at midday, when Susan came in with Warham, Ruth's jealousy opened all her inward-bleeding wounds again. Susan's merry eyes, her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace things--how could quiet, unobtrusive, ladylike charms such as Ruth's have a chance if Susan were about? She waited, silent and anxious, while her mother was having the talk with her father in the sitting-room. Warham, mere man, was amused by his wife's scheming. But you'll only make a mess interfering. Let the young people alone. Warham thought it was, in a sense.

But she would never have dared say so aloud, even to her husband--or, rather, especially to her husband. In matters of men and women he was thoroughly innocent, with the simplicity of the old-time man of the small town and the country; he fancied that, while in grocery matters and the like the world was full of guile, in matters of the heart it was idyllic, Arcadian, with never a thought of duplicity, except among a few obviously wicked and designing people.

I'm not so sure, though, that marrying any of old Wright's breed would be marrying what ought to be called well. Money isn't everything--not by a long sight--though, of course, it's comfortable. But then you women like that in a man. No, mother, you let Ruth alone.

If she wants him, she'll get him--she or Susan. Warham compressed her lips and lowered her eyes. Ruth or Susan--as if it didn't matter which! She moved toward the door. She saw that without revealing her entire scheme--hers and Ruth's--she could make no headway with George. And if she did reveal it he would sternly veto it. So she gave up that direction. She went upstairs; George took his hat from the front hall rack and pushed open the screen door.

As he appeared on the veranda Susan was picking dead leaves from one of the hanging baskets; Ruth, seated in the hammock, hands in lap, her whole attitude intensely still, was watching her with narrowed eyes. Ruth lowered her eyes and compressed her lips, a trick she had borrowed from her mother along with the peculiarities of her mother's disposition that it fitted. Susan flung a laughing glance over her shoulder at her uncle. I saw him first, so he's mine. He's coming to see me this evening. Well, the moon's full and your aunt and I'll not interrupt--at least not till ten o'clock.

No callers on a child like you after ten. I'm going to wear my white dress with embroidery, and it's got to be pressed--and that means I must do it myself. And I suppose, when he calls, you'll come down as if you'd put on any old thing and didn't care whether he came or not. And you'll have primped for an hour--and he, too--shaving and combing and trying different ties.

Ruth, pale, kept her eyes down and her lips compressed.

She was picturing the gallant appearance the young Sophomore from Yale, away off in the gorgeous fashionable East, would make as he came in at that gate yonder and up the walk and seated himself on the veranda--with Susan! Evidently her mother had failed; Susan was not to be taken away. When Warham departed down the walk Ruth rose; she could not bear being alone with her triumphant rival--triumphant because unconscious. She knew that to get Sam to herself all she would have to do would be to hint to Susan, the generous, what she wanted.

But pride forbade that. As her hand was on the knob of the screen door, Susan said: Susan felt the sting; but, seeing only the flowers, did not dream whence it had come. You must admit he's handsome. Such rage against Susan was swelling within her that it seemed to her she would faint if she did not release at least part of it. Ruth drew a breath of relief. The shaft had glanced off the armor of innocence without making the faintest dent. She rushed into the house. She did not dare trust herself with her cousin.

What might the demon within her tempt her to say next? I think it's going to hang beautifully. Ruth dragged herself up the stairs, lagged into the sitting-room, gazed at the dress with a scowl. Right in the face, Sam's as plain as Dick's hatband. His looks is all clothes and polish--and mighty poor polish, I think. Arthur's got rise in him, too, while Sam--well, I don't know what'd become of him if old Wright lost his money. But Arthur, a mere promise, seemed poor indeed beside Sam, the actually arrived. To marry Sam would be to step at once into grandeur; to marry Arthur would mean years of struggle.

Besides, Arthur was heavy, at least seemed heavy to light Ruth, while Sam was her ideal of gay elegance. It's insulting to us all. Why, his sister" and she related their conversation at the gate that morning. Warham, with dangerously sparkling eyes. Warham spread the skirt, using herself as form. Ruth dried her eyes as she gazed. The dress was indeed lovely.

But her pleasure in it was shadowed by the remembrance that most of the loveliness was due to Susan's suggestions. Still, she tried it on, and felt better. She would linger until Sam came, would exhibit herself to him; and surely he would not tarry long with Susan. This project improved the situation greatly. She began her toilet for the evening at once, though it was only three o'clock. Susan finished her pressing and started to dress at five--because she knew Ruth would be appealing to her to come in and help put the finishing touches to the toilet for the party.

And, sure enough, at half-past five, before she had nearly finished, Ruth, with a sneaking humility, begged her to come "for half a minute--if you don't mind--and have got time. Susan did Ruth's hair over, made her change to another color of stockings and slippers, put the dress on her, did nearly an hour's refitting and redraping. Both were late for supper; and after supper Susan had to make certain final amendments to the wonderful toilet, and then get herself ready.

So it was Ruth alone who went down when Sam Wright came. And his eyes no less than his tone showed that he meant it. He hadn't realized what a soft white neck the blond cousin had, or how perfectly her shoulders rounded into her slim arms. As Ruth moved to depart, he said: Wait till Susie finishes her primping and comes down.

No, I must get along. Ruth went away happy. At the gate she glanced furtively back. Sam was looking after her. She marched down the street with light step. Sam, at the edge of the veranda, regretting his promise to call on Susan, was roused by her voice: Sam's regret vanished the instant he looked at her, and the greedy expression came into his sensual, confident young face. Susan's dress was not cut out in the neck, was simply of the collarless kind girls of her age wear. It revealed the smooth, voluptuous yet slender column of her throat.

And her arms, bare to just above the elbows, were exquisite. But Susan's fascination did not lie in any or in all of her charms, but in that subtlety of magnetism which account for all the sensational phenomena of the relations of men and women. She was a clever girl--clever beyond her years, perhaps--though in this day seventeen is not far from fully developed womanhood. But even had she been silly, men would have been glad to linger on and on under the spell of the sex call which nature had subtly woven into the texture of her voice, into the glance of her eyes, into the delicate emanations of her skin.

They talked of all manner of things--games and college East and West--the wonders of New York--the weather, finally. Sam was every moment of the time puzzling how to bring up the one subject that interested both above all others, that interested him to the exclusion of all others. He was an ardent student of the game of man and woman, had made considerable progress at it--remarkable progress, in view of his bare twenty years.

He had devised as many "openings" as an expert chess player. None seemed to fit this difficult case how to make love to a girl of his own class whom his conventional, socially ambitious nature forbade him to consider marrying. As he observed her in the moonlight, he said to himself: While he was still struggling for an "opening," Susan eager to help him but not knowing how, there came from the far interior of the house three distant raps.

It must be ten o'clock. I thought it was early. Her shy innocence was contagious. He felt an awkward country lout. It was her first real beau--the first that had interested her--and what a dream lover of a beau he looked, standing before her in that wonderful light! But Ruth--she'll always be here. Oh, I must go in! She took it with a queer reluctance. She felt nervous, afraid, as if there were something uncanny lurking somewhere in those moonlight shadows.

She gently tried to draw her hand away, but he would not let her. She made a faint struggle, then yielded. It was so wonderful, the sense of the touch of his hand. And she knew he felt as she did. Before she realized it his arms were round her, and his lips had met hers. Both were trembling; she had become quite cold--her cheeks, her hand, her body even.

Tears were glistening in her long dark lashes. The sight of them maddened him. Because you do--don't you?

User:AndrewS/Susan Lenox

The moonlit world seemed a fairyland. And moved beyond her power to control herself, she broke from his detaining hand and fled into the house. She darted up to her room, paused in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped over her wildly beating heart. When she could move she threw open the shutters and went out on the balcony. She leaned against the window frame and gazed up at the stars, instinctively seeking the companionship of the infinite.

Curiously enough, she thought little about Sam. She was awed and wonderstruck before the strange mysterious event within her, the opening up, the flowering of her soul. These vast emotions, where did they come from? Why did she long to burst into laughter, to burst into tears?

Why did she do neither, but simply stand motionless, with the stars blazing and reeling in the sky and her heart beating like mad and her blood surging and ebbing? Yes--it must be love. Oh, how wonderful love was--and how sad--and how happy beyond all laughter--and how sweet! She felt an enormous tenderness for everybody and for everything, for all the world--an overwhelming sense of beauty and goodness. Her lips were moving. She was amazed to find she was repeating the one prayer she knew, the one Aunt Fanny had taught her in babyhood. Why should she find herself praying?

She was a woman and she loved! So this was what it meant to be a woman; it meant to love! She was roused by the sound of Ruth saying good night to someone at the gate, invisible because of the intervening foliage. Why, it must be dreadfully late. The Dipper had moved away round to the south, and the heat of the day was all gone, and the air was full of the cool, scented breath of leaves and flowers and grass. Ruth's lights shone out upon the balcony. Susan turned to slip into her own room. But Ruth heard, called out peevishly:. She longed to go in and embrace Ruth, and kiss her.

She would have liked to ask Ruth to let her sleep with her, but she felt Ruth wouldn't understand. Ruth's voice somehow seemed to be knocking and tumbling her new dream-world. She was standing in her window now. Susan saw that her face looked tired and worn, almost homely. He and Lottie brought me home. Susan flushed again--a delicious warmth from head to foot. So he, too, had been dreaming alone. Ruth began to sob, turned fiercely on Susan.

Ruth looked at her cousin, hung her head in shame. WHEN Fanny Warham was young her mother--compelled by her father--roused--"routed out"--the children at half-past six on week days and at seven on Sundays for prayers and breakfast, no matter what time they had gone to bed the night before. The horror of this made such an impression upon her that she never permitted Ruth and Susan to be awakened; always they slept until they had "had their sleep out.

Until the last year Mrs. Warham had made her two girls live a life of the strictest simplicity and regularity, with the result that they were the most amazingly, soundly, healthy girls in Sutherland. And the regimen still held, except when they had company in the evening or went out--and Mrs. Warham saw to it that there was not too much of that sort of thing. In all her life thus far Susan had never slept less than ten hours, rarely less than twelve.

It lacked less than a minute of ten o'clock the morning after Sam's call when Susan's eyes opened upon her simple, pale-gray bedroom, neat and fresh. She looked sleepily at the little clock on the night stand. And her bare feet were on the floor and she was stretching her lithe young body, weak from the relaxation of her profound sleep. She heard someone stirring in Ruth's room; instantly Ruth's remark, "He'd never think for a minute of marrying you," popped into her head.

It still meant nothing to her. She could not have explained why it came back or why she fell to puzzling over it as if it held some mysterious meaning. Perhaps the reason was that from early childhood there had been accumulating in some dusky chamber of her mind stray happenings and remarks, all baring upon the unsuspected secret of her birth and the unsuspected strangeness of her position in the world where everyone else was definitely placed and ticketed.

She was wondering about Ruth's queer hysterical outburst, evidently the result of a quarrel with Arthur Sinclair. This love that had come to her so suddenly and miraculously made her alert for signs of love elsewhere. She went to the bolted connecting door; she could not remember when it had ever been bolted before, and she felt forlorn and shut out. This reminded her that she was hungry. She gathered her underclothes together, and with the bundle in her arms darted across the hall into the bathroom. The cold water acted as champagne promises to act but doesn't.

She felt giddy with health and happiness. And the bright sun was flooding the bathroom, and the odors from the big bed of hyacinths in the side lawn scented the warm breeze from the open window. When she dashed back to her room she was singing, and her singing voice was as charming as her speaking voice promised. A few minutes and her hair had gone up in careless grace and she was clad in a fresh dress of tan linen, full in the blouse. This, with her tan stockings and tan slippers and the radiant youth of her face, gave her a look of utter cleanness and freshness that was exceedingly good to see.

There was no answer; doubtless Ruth had already descended. She rushed downstairs and into the dining-room. No one was at the little table set in one of the windows in readiness for the late breakfasters. Molly came, bringing cocoa, a cereal, hot biscuit and crab-apple preserves, all attractively arranged on a large tray. We're going to have the grandest chicken that ever came out of an egg. Susan surveyed the tray with delighted eyes. She's got a headache. It was that salad for supper over to Sinclairs' last night.

And at night--it's sure to bust your face out or give you the headache or both. Susan ate with her usual enthusiasm, thinking the while of Sam and wondering how she could contrive to see him. She remembered her promise to her uncle. She had not eaten nearly so much as she wanted. But up she sprang and in fifteen minutes was on her way to the store. She had seen neither Ruth nor her aunt.

And she was not disappointed. There he stood, at the footpath gate into his father's place. He had arrayed himself in a blue and white flannel suit, white hat and shoes; a big expensive-looking cigarette adorned his lips. The Martins, the Delevans, the Castles and the Bowens, neighbors across the way, were watching him admiringly through the meshes of lace window curtains. She expected that he would come forward eagerly.

Instead, he continued to lean indolently on the gate, as if unaware of her approach. And when she was close at hand, his bow and smile were, so it seemed to her, almost coldly polite. Into her eyes came a confused, hurt expression. In Sutherland the young people were not so mindful of gossip, which it was impossible to escape, anyhow. Still--off there in the East, no doubt, they had more refined ways; without a doubt, whatever Sam did was the correct thing. The effect of his words upon her was so obvious that he glanced nervously round. It was delightful to be able to evoke a love like this; but he did wish others weren't looking.

She looked at him in surprise. They think differently about those things in the East. Sam, whose secret dream was to marry some fashionable Eastern woman and cut a dash in Fifth Avenue life, had no intention of explaining what was what to one who would not understand, would not approve, and would be made auspicious of him. But she was thinking of the joys in store for her at the close of the day.

He was red and stammering. As they shook hands emotion made them speechless. He stumbled awkwardly as he turned to leave, became still more hotly self-conscious when he saw the grin on the faces of the group of loungers at a packing case near the curb. Susan did not see the loafers, did not see anything distinctly. Her feet sought the uneven brick sidewalk uncertainly, and the blood was pouring into her cheeks, was steaming in her brain, making a red mist before her eyes. She was glad he had left her. The joy of being with him was so keen that it was pain.

Now she could breathe freely and could dream--dream--dream. She made blunder after blunder in working over the accounts with her uncle, and he began to tease her. But it seems to me any time's good enough. Still--the first time's mighty fine eh? It did not leak out until supper that Sam was coming. Susan felt two pairs of feminine eyes pounce--hostile eyes, savagely curious. She paled with fright as queer, as unprecedented, as those hostile glances. It seemed to her that she had done or was about to do something criminal.

She could not speak. An awful silence, then her aunt--she no longer seemed her loving aunt--asked in an ominous voice: Susan felt horribly guilty, and for no reason. Let the young folks have a good time. You didn't think you were too young at Susie's age. Susie's gaze was on the tablecloth. Ruth's eyes were down also. About her lips was a twitching that meant a struggle to hide a pleased smile. Warham in the same precise, restrained manner. Warham met his eyes steadily. At last she had found what she felt was a just reason for keeping Sam away from Susan, so her tone was honest and strong.

Warham lowered his gaze. He turned on Susan with his affection in his eyes. Susan's bosom was swelling, her lip trembling. She choked back the sobs, faltered out: There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Warham said, "I must say, Fan, I think--if you had to do it--you might have spared the girl's feelings. Warham felt miserable about it also. Then, defiantly, "And what else can I do? You know he doesn't come for any good. Her tone made him understand. He reddened, and with too blustering anger brought his fist down on the table. Ruth pushed back her chair and stood up.

Her expression made her look much older than she was. I might have known! Haven't you noticed she isn't invited any more except when it can't be avoided? Warham's face was fiery with rage. He looked helplessly, furiously about. But he said nothing. To fight public sentiment would be like trying to thrust back with one's fists an oncreeping fog. Finally he cried, "It's too outrageous to talk about.

A long silence, while Warham was grasping the fullness of the meaning, the frightful meaning, in these revelations so astounding to him. At last he said:. I don't believe she does. She's the most innocent child that ever grew up. Warham became suddenly angry again. And he strode from the room, flung on his hat and went for a walk. Warham came from the dining-room a few minutes later, Ruth appeared in the side veranda doorway. Thus it came about that Susan, descending the stairs to the library to get a book, heard Ruth say into the telephone in her sweetest voice, "Yes--tomorrow evening, Arthur.

Some others are coming--the Wrights.

Susan Lenox: her rise and fall [sic]

You'd have to talk to Lottie. I don't blame you. The girl on the stairway stopped short, shrank against the wall. A moment, and she hastily reascended , entered her room, closed the door. Love had awakened the woman; and the woman was not so unsuspecting, so easily deceived as the child had been. She understood what her cousin and her aunt were about; they were trying to take her lover from her!

She understood her aunt's looks and tones, her cousin's temper and hysteria. She sat down upon the floor and cried with a breaking heart. The injustice of it! The meanness of it! The wickedness of a world where even her sweet cousin, even her loving aunt were wicked! She sat there on the floor a long time, abandoned to the misery of a first shattered illusion, a misery the more cruel because never before had either cousin or aunt said or done anything to cause her real pain.

The sound of voices coming through the open window from below made her start up and go out on the balcony. She leaned over the rail. She could not see the veranda for the masses of creeper, but the voices were now quite plain in the stillness. Ruth's voice gay and incessant. Then his voice speaking--then the two voices mingled--both talking at once, so eager were they! Her lover--and Ruth was stealing him from her! Oh, the baseness, the treachery! And her aunt was helping!. Sore of heart, utterly forlorn, she sat in the balcony hammock, aching with love and jealousy.

Every now and then she ran in and looked at the clock. He was staying on and on, though he must have learned she was not coming down. She heard her uncle and aunt come up to bed. Now the piano in the parlor was going. First it was Ruth singing one of her pretty love songs in that clear small voice of hers. Then Sam played and sang--how his voice thrilled her!

She could see Ruth at the piano, how beautiful she looked--and that song--it would be impossible for him not to be impressed. She felt the jealousy of despair. She heard them at the edge of the veranda--so, at last he was going. She was able to hear their words now:. It was all the girl at the balcony rail could do to refrain from crying out a protest.

But Sam was saying to Ruth:. See you in the morning. Give my love to Susie, and tell her I was sorry not to see her. Susan was all in a glow as her cousin answered, "I'll tell her.