It was all pride, pride, insufferable haughtiness and pride!
In The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility from 1857, "Pride" is listed as one of the most hateful dispositions and the reserve that Eleanor and Henry Tilney display in the company of their father is explained by the Guide's author as the means to many a misunderstanding and accidental affronts. (Thornwell, Emily. The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility, 1957.)
To be sure, the pointed arch was preserved — the form of them was Gothic — they might be even casements — but every pane was so large, so clear, so light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone–work, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing.
The Gothic novels that Isabella and Catherine were reading at this time would have used depicted the setting and architecture of the Abbey to reflect and enhance the dark and austere trend of the novels. (Lake, Crystal B. "Studies in English (The Rise of Gothic Literature)."
fickleness
Inconstancy, changeableness.
honours of her house
"The duties of house." As the only female family in residence at Northanger Abbey, Miss Tilney would be expected to act as the hostess.
This duty would normally be performed by the wife of the household, and in her absence, the eldest daughter or at times, the sister of the host.
superciliousness
The quality or character of being supercilious; haughty, proud, arrogant or contemptuousness.
particulars
Details.
want of
Lack of/ absence of.
spirits
Enthusiasm/enjoyment.
did not admit of a doubt
Could not be doubted.
ease
Comfort.
to greater advantage
To see someone "to greater advantage" would be to see them in a more positive way.
Brooklyn Bridge
Bridge: connecting imagery does not connect, bridge function undermined
Ashcan rantings: same hopelessness/ pointlessness of the small town poet who did nothing. Wasted words/ wasted life/ wasted rant/ unheard. Ashcan rantings: same hopelessness/ pointlessness of the small town poet who did nothing. Wasted words/ wasted life/ wasted rant/ unheard.
purgatoried their torsos night after night
Religious imagery, purgatoried their torsos night after night, both endless imagery: “the wheel” motif of the wasteland. While the madness in the first stanza seems imposed, here the purgatory is choice.
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall
The Wasteland: Fallen cities, Germany after WWII?
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
More unexpected imagery: heaven comes to earth, divine found in poverty. Interesting to think in contrast to Frost’s stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. Divine moment found in the city rather than the trees.
ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
Machinery of night: surprising imagery, night usually as an escape from daily grind, hidden in the night, freedom of the night, starry images usually undermines experience of man, makes feel infinitesimal and therefor life as random. Instead used to elevate experience, desire to connect, desire to be significant.
Quicksand: racial geography, racially defined city space
starving hysterical naked,
Wasteland: chaos, destroyed by madness, madness does not seem like it is coming from within, madness imposed on his generation
madness (imposed madness) - yellow wallpaper (madness and anger, few lines down, an angry fix)
And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
Throughout the poem Eliot revisits the imagery of towers. Towers are understood as signs of progress, of civic pride, of civic authority. Towers take on this authority.
In these lines, Eliot literally flips the tower function on its head. The tower that is used to establish a sense of time, Eliot uses to dissociate time. At first it seems that time in the present has ceased to function and all that is left is the ghost of that time. However, Eliot seems more interested in the cyclical nature of time given that the poem opens with a discussion of the inevitability of spring. Because of the cyclical nature of time, the tolling bell seems to be both echoes of past chimes and chimes in the present. The present has now lost its significance and each moment has now lost its sense of originality. Eliot has disoriented time and in doing so, he has undermined one of the most important ordering tools in society. The idea of “now” becomes unreal. The significance of time as a tool is echoed in the architecture of the towers. Clocks are positioned on these towers, these pillars of society.
The tower itself is undermined. Earlier, Eliot references falling towers: Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, and London, which were epic civilizations “in their time.” The reference to falling towers immediately connotes biblical reference to the towers of Babel, which fell when God decided that humans had made too much progress and had become arrogant. All that was left was chaos. Eliot uses towers to undermine the arrogance of the concept of progress and disorients the conception of linear time.
Unreal
the sandy road
Unreal City
Departed, have left no addresses
river’s tent
rats’ alley
throne
king
unreal city
Furious slippers
These two words provide great imagery. Also furry to furious.
The whole poem seems like a brainstorm for the next poem. (Subjects/ lines that could be included.)
but flutter and flaunt sheer rags-succumbing without emotion
Can read "but flutter and flaunt sheer rags, succumbing without emotion" but the lines are broken up so that the women are as sheer rags.
agent
"An agent" but not an agent of change, ironic use of agency as they do not adjust. Lot's of irony here. The woman is without any agency so she is assigned an agent who does nothing.
witness
The narrator is the witness. The reader is now a witness. The reader takes on a certain amount of responsibility now to try to make some adjustment.
thickened lung with breath
love for peace
I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Is this Frost anticipating himself as an older and unreliable narrator? (As a youth when he looks down the roads he sees that they are pretty much the same but when in his old age he will say that the road made all the difference.)
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
Is he in darkness because he is beliefs are so rooted in the New England traditions or because he repeats the traditions without thinking about why he does?
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.
Is Frost also the "something" and does not love a wall?
Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time
To be more human, to be more than human as a king or feel more than the presentation of these humans as a poet who feels is equally futile.
human
i.e. inhuman as they ever were? Lifeless ancient statues just as much as ever?
dreamed of
There is something cyclical and mundane about this dream imagery. Their dreams seem only to be of being young clerks, as if they look back wistfully on images of their former selves serving as clerks.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
The wall paper and writing paper hold her secrets.
I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.
Somehow this phrase seems to highlight the idea that a "scientific" approach to studying the mind is ridiculous given that the mind is not designed/ arranged on these laws?
formless sort of figure
The wallpaper becomes more and more personified as she goes on.
weakness
Weakness again.
nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
Her mental illness is treated as a weakness to be overcome through willpower.
no REASON
Possibly reason here has a double meaning, there is no reason for her to suffer, she suffers because she is without reason, i.e. insane.
He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.
Mentally ill treated as a little child.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise
We see the hypocrisy of a prescribed cure that is not conclusive although it is scientific.
he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen
The reader can understand mental illness as something that is neither to be felt or seen.