hello, again, here i go again, throwninng at you a bunch of questions all at once, hoping for an explanation from a generous veteran reader…
1 – is this a typo?
“Mrs. Giles Oliver drew the comb through the thick tangle of hair which, after
giving the matter her best attention, she had never had shingled or bobbed;
and lifted the heavily embossed silver brush that had been a wedding
present and had its uses in impressing chambermaids in hotels. She lifted it
and stood in front of the three-folded mirror, so that she could see three
separate versions of her rather heavy, yet handsome, face; and also, outside
the glass, a slip of terrace, lawn and tree tops.
Inside the glass, in her eyes, she saw what she had felt overnight for the
ravaged, the silent, the romantic gentleman farmer”
“isa” is the one who loves the gentleman farmer not mrs.giles oliver? am i right?
and isa is the wife of the stokebroker, mrs.giles oliver is the wife of mr.oliver right? but why the description there said her hair is so tangled like an old granny? like old mrs.oliver
2 – are the comb and hairbrush two separate tools? so first she drew the comb then lifted the hairbrush? or she replaced one by the other when she saw that it’s not gonna help
3 – so here’s the part where i got lost :
” George grubbed. The flower blazed between the angles of the roots. Membrane after membrane was torn. It blazed a
soft yellow, a lambent light under a film of velvet; it filled the caverns behind the eyes with light. All that inner darkness became a hall, leaf smelling, earth smelling of yellow light. And the tree was beyond the flower; the grass, the flower and the tree were entire.
so what hall? what caverns? i know that she doesn’t write realistically, but this is not subjective here right? she jumped suddenly from the boy to her contemplations of nature, so here that ” inner darkness ” and ” caverns behind th eyes ” are not attached to one person, it’s just the exprience that anybody can have, right? it’s not refreing to a specific person having these emotions?
and also, the caverns behind the eyes and the inner darkness refers to the mind, the conscious or the subconscious , right?
and the grass and the tree and the flower became all one whole, it’s like unification? oh, my god i’m gonna suffer translatiing this meaning in understandable way but i’m up for it.
4 – so here it described mrs.swithin age as ” gallant”, it means noble right?
5 – “she had stretched for her favourite reading–an Outline of History–and
had spent the hours between three and five thinking of rhododendron
forests in Piccadilly; when the entire continent, not then, she understood,
divided by a channel, was all one ”
so here it was all understandable until that damnable “not then” showed its ugly face, not then refering to the past or to that moment? or to what time exactly?
6 – “and, she supposed, barking monsters; the iguanodon, the mammoth, and the mastodon; from
whom presumably, she thought, jerking the window open, we descend.”
so is this a wierd version of darwin’s evolution theory? we descend from mammoths iguanodon and mastodon? i don’t have any tusks…
7- “The nurses after breakfast were trundling the perambulator up and down
the terrace; and as they trundled they were talking–not shaping pellets of
information or handing ideas from one to another, but rolling words, like
sweets on their tongues; which, as they thinned to transparency, gave off
pink, green, and sweetness”
so in this part, the sweets are metaphor for the words, right? it’s not real sweets they’re chewing, because in arabic when i see a mephor being used or when i use a metaphor in my writings i don’t delve in it so much as to tell what color those sweets gave off.
8 – and this is the last one ” This morning that sweetness was: “How cook
had told ‘im off about the asparagus; how when she rang I said: how it was a
sweet costume with blouse to match ”
so this part is telling the reader about the diffrent subjects they were talking about, i get that, even though when i first read it i got baffled by the way the sentences jumped from an incident to another until i read it twice and i got it, now can anybody tell me who’s cook? is he a cook? and he told off who? and who’s the woman that rang ( rang what? a bell? ) is she a lady? and they are maids? and also nurses here meaining baby sitters or something like that, right? not nurses as in hospitals?
that’s it, see you next time with another bag of questions
by SaidNadir2021
3 Comments
As a native speaker, these are not clear sentences. 1. I’m not sure which typo you’re referring to. 2. Comb and brush are distinct objects. 3. I would support your reading of this. 4. Gallant is more ‘chivalrous’ than noble. There’s a connotation of masculinity. 5. I believe she’s referring to a period prior to the English Channel. 6. Yes. 7. 100% metaphor, there are no sweets. 8. Cook is the cook, ‘Im is the client(s), she is the lady of the house who rang a bell, they are basically nannies/servants.
>”isa” is the one who loves the gentleman farmer not mrs.giles oliver?
Isa *is* Mrs. Oliver. Giles is her husband’s name; in Virginia Woolf’s time, it was common to refer to women as Mrs. [Husband’s Full Name], even though only her last name was officially changed to her husband’s last name when she married.
>but why the description there said her hair is so tangled like an old granny?
“Thick tangle of hair” just makes me think she has thick, curly hair. I know it’s confusing, but describing hair in particular as “a tangle” doesn’t necessarily mean that it *is tangled*, just that it is so thick and curly that it looks tangled. But even if it really was tangled, nothing about “tangled hair” implies “like an old granny’s hair”. I have curly hair; it tangles easily.
> not then refering to the past or to that moment?
To the past; the time when Great Britain was still connected to mainland Europe, so there was no English channel.
Please format your posts better. And also maybe r/English or a translation subreddit is a better place to discuss this?