Antonia: A NovelRoberts, 1870 - 297 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
accept afraid alarmed allow André Antoine's Antonia artist beautiful Camille character convent Countess d'Estrelle courage dear debts Dieu door dowager entered everything eyes feel felt flowers fortune garden genius George Sand GEORGE SHAW give happy havo heart honor horticulturist hotel d'Estrelle house at Sèvres husband idea imagined Jean Jacques Rousseau Julic Julie Julio lady lawyer Leone Leoni live longer looked Louis XIII Louis XVI lover Madam d'Estrelle Madam d'Estrelle's Madam Thierry Marcel Thierry marchioness marquis marriage marry Mauprat mind Monsieur Thierry mother Nanterre nature never noble pardon passion pavilion perfectly perhaps person plebeian poor received replied Julien replied Marcel rich seemed servants speak spite story studio suppose surprised talk tell thing thought tion told trouble uncle Antoine unclo understand waiting wife window wish woman word young
Popular passages
Page 8 - Mulock made perfect — books which Podsnap might have read with approval and put without a scruple into the hands of that modest young person, his daughter ? Certainly one cannot but think that a different kind of early life would have given a quite different complexion to the literary individuality of George Sand. Bulwer Lytton, in one of his novels, insists that true genius is always quite independent of the. individual sufferings or joys of its possessor, and describes some inspired youth in...
Page 3 - ... that of Nello, the hero, would have done the same thing ; and yet so simply and naturally are the characters wrought out, and the incidents described, that the idea of pompous, dramatic selfsacrifice never enters the mind of the reader, and it seems to him that Nello could not do otherwise than as he is doing. I speak of these two stories particularly, because in both of them there is a good deal of the world and the flesh ; that is, both are stories of strong human passion and temptation. Many...
Page 20 - ... and told her story backwards, the author calmly explains that the hero of the narrative in his dying hour called his brother to his bedside, and enjoined him, if occasion should ever arise, if the partner of his sin should ever calumniate him in his grave, to vindicate his memory and avenge the treason practised upon him. "Of course," adds the narrator, "the brother made the promise — and I have since heard that he has kept his word.
Page 15 - ... however ignoble and base, as when contracted in the spirit of the purest mutual love. Here is a woman of great power and daring genius, who says that the essential condition of marriage is love and natural fitness ; that a legal union of man and woman without this is no marriage at all, but a detestable and disgusting sin. Now the more delicately, modestly, plausibly she can put this revolutionary and pernicious doctrine, the more dangerous she becomes, and the more earnestly we ought to denounce...
Page 12 - I venture to think, a single, ''revolutionary" idea, as slow and steady-going people would call it, afloat anywhere in Europe or America, on the subject of woman's relations to man, society, and destiny, which is not due immediately to the influence of George Sand, and to the influence of George Sand's unhappy marriage upon George Sand herself. The world has of late years grown used to this extraordinary woman, and has lost much of the wonder and terror with which it once regarded her. I can quite...
Page 22 - Imaginaire," who invites his fiancee as a delightful treat to see him dissect the body of a woman. I am afraid that George Sand did sometimes invite an admirin'g public to an exhibition yet more ghastly and revolting — the dissection of the heart of a dead lover. But in truth we shall never judge George Sand and her writings at all if we insist on criticising them from any point of view set up by the proprieties or even the moralities of Old England or New England.
Page 7 - GEORGE SAND. BY JUSTIN M'CARTHY. Reprinted from " jfiie Galaxy" for May, 1870. VX7E are: all of us probably inclined, now and then, to waste a little time in vaguely speculating on what might have happened if this or that particular event had not given a special direction to the career of some great man or woman. If there had been an inch of difference in the size of Cleopatra's nose ; if Hannibal had not lingered at Capua ; if Cromwell had carried out his idea of emigration ; if Napoleon Bonaparte...
Page 1 - ... code of ethics which has been so much in fashion of late years. I find nothing in George Sand which does not do homage to the existence of a principle and a law in everything. This daring woman, who broke with society so early and so conspicuously, has always insisted, through every illustration, character, and catastrophe in her books, that the one only reality, the one only thing that can endure, is the rule of right and of virtue. Nor has she ever, that I can recollect, fallen into the enfeebling...