The meaning that we derive from our memories of past is shaped according to our present situation as well as on our future anticipations. Thus, the past is not “solid and settled” but rather dynamic (Randall 23).When Elizabeth looks back at her past she discovers altogether new meanings to it, and interprets the past according to her needs. In other words, Elizabeth persuades the past. Now when she thinks of her promiscuity and lust she finds herself guilty. “Looking back, lust is always difficult to understand .And ugly. One’s own is uglier than anybody else’s.”(White, 432).
The most crucial memory Elizabeth’s consciousness visits and revisits is that of the storm she had survived after she had been abandoned by Dorothy and Edvard Pehl, the botanist whom Dorothy wanted to court but Mrs. …show more content…
Hunter had already possessed him with her supple beauty, while on their holiday to the Warmings Island. Hunter survives the storm by finding shelter in the underground cellar used for preserving wine. When suddenly a dead silence prevailed in, she got out to experience the eye of the storm, the still centre of the storm where one experiences the calmest of calm. Though she could see the cyclone spinning and boiling at a distance, she was safe inside its eye. It was in this eye that her “myth of womanhood had been exploded” (White 424). Everything around her had been destroyed, everything seemed to be getting dissolved in that silence. How desperately had she wanted to become one with the shambles that lay on the beach .For a moment she identified with the debris, her turbulences with human relationships. She was mystified with the aura of the eye, till she had realized that the eye was no longer focused on her, but the storm was returning to engulf everything that came its way. This experience of surviving the eye had given her a new insight on her attitude towards life. It was as if she had discovered the secret of survival and it seemed to her that parts of her distorted self, with its flawed and failed relationships were gathering themselves into a whole again. And then she had realized, “Nothing will kill me before I am intended to die” (White 414), that whatever has been given to you can be lived and relived only and only by you. She becomes aware of the truth that suffering can’t be avoided in this world, hence one has to remain happy within that fringe …show more content…
Though everything around her seemed to be falling apart, she remained calm and serene till the end. Even her death is symbolic of the calm she stood for, she refuses to be victimized by her children and before they could send her away from her house, desires to die. “My will shall withdraw, if I decide its necessary” (White 459).And while she sits on the commode she doesn’t withdraw her will but tries “to will enough strength into her body to put her feet on the ground” (White 550).She could feel that same texture of sand beneath her feet as she had experienced in the storm, she could see the black swans, the blue sky and in this reverie tries to stand on her own and falls from her throne and dies. She dies as she had lived, unaffected by her surrounding, turbulence and
The most crucial memory Elizabeth’s consciousness visits and revisits is that of the storm she had survived after she had been abandoned by Dorothy and Edvard Pehl, the botanist whom Dorothy wanted to court but Mrs. …show more content…
Hunter had already possessed him with her supple beauty, while on their holiday to the Warmings Island. Hunter survives the storm by finding shelter in the underground cellar used for preserving wine. When suddenly a dead silence prevailed in, she got out to experience the eye of the storm, the still centre of the storm where one experiences the calmest of calm. Though she could see the cyclone spinning and boiling at a distance, she was safe inside its eye. It was in this eye that her “myth of womanhood had been exploded” (White 424). Everything around her had been destroyed, everything seemed to be getting dissolved in that silence. How desperately had she wanted to become one with the shambles that lay on the beach .For a moment she identified with the debris, her turbulences with human relationships. She was mystified with the aura of the eye, till she had realized that the eye was no longer focused on her, but the storm was returning to engulf everything that came its way. This experience of surviving the eye had given her a new insight on her attitude towards life. It was as if she had discovered the secret of survival and it seemed to her that parts of her distorted self, with its flawed and failed relationships were gathering themselves into a whole again. And then she had realized, “Nothing will kill me before I am intended to die” (White 414), that whatever has been given to you can be lived and relived only and only by you. She becomes aware of the truth that suffering can’t be avoided in this world, hence one has to remain happy within that fringe …show more content…
Though everything around her seemed to be falling apart, she remained calm and serene till the end. Even her death is symbolic of the calm she stood for, she refuses to be victimized by her children and before they could send her away from her house, desires to die. “My will shall withdraw, if I decide its necessary” (White 459).And while she sits on the commode she doesn’t withdraw her will but tries “to will enough strength into her body to put her feet on the ground” (White 550).She could feel that same texture of sand beneath her feet as she had experienced in the storm, she could see the black swans, the blue sky and in this reverie tries to stand on her own and falls from her throne and dies. She dies as she had lived, unaffected by her surrounding, turbulence and