READ STUDY GUIDE: Chapters VI–IX |
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Part VI
| Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the |
| beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and |
| in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two |
| contradictory impulses which impelled 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 thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had |
| overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears. |
| In short, Mrs. Pontellier 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. This |
| may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul |
| of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy |
| Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. |
| But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is |
| necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. |
| How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls |
| perish in its tumult! |
| The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, |
| clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in |
| abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward |
| contemplation. |
| The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea |
| is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. |
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