| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: a kind of secondary sexual characteristic, with any additional strength of
social instinct, with any exceptional width of human sympathy and any
instinctive comprehension; then, it is not merely possible, but certain,
that, in the ages that are coming, in which the labour of the human race
will be not mainly destructive but conservative, in which the building up
and developing of humanity, and not continually the inter-destruction of
part by part, will be the dominant activity of the race, that woman as
woman, and by right of that wherein she differs from the male, will have an
all-important part to play in the activity of the race.
The matter is one of curious and subtle interest, but what practically
concerns the human race is, not which of the two sexual halves which must
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: Talks of his being going on so well! How does he know that he is
going on well, or that there may not be a sudden change half an hour hence?
I did not think Charles would have been so unfeeling. So here he is to
go away and enjoy himself, and because I am the poor mother,
I am not to be allowed to stir; and yet, I am sure, I am more unfit
than anybody else to be about the child. My being the mother
is the very reason why my feelings should not be tried. I am not at all
equal to it. You saw how hysterical I was yesterday."
"But that was only the effect of the suddenness of your alarm--
of the shock. You will not be hysterical again. I dare say we shall have
nothing to distress us. I perfectly understand Mr Robinson's directions,
Persuasion |
