Here we see a moment of dependency. Life cannot live without Love around to help her through all of the bad things that could happen to her. Schreiner could be commenting here on how this is how many women during this time sounded; they always needed a man beside them to help them through everything because they did not know how to be independent and take are of themselves. This is something that she clearly wants to change and could be a reason why she felt she needed to have a dialogue such as this one. She may have wanted women to hear what they sounded like when they said things like this and how this is not the way women should be speaking about themselves. She felt that women should hold themselves to a higher standard and not need a man around to do everything for them.

This paragraph really struck me as I was reading because it was so beautifully and elegantly written in order to describe the characters here, which are Love, Life, and Joy. It fascinated me the Olive Schreiner decided to brilliantly personify these words in order to show the relationship between them. It is interesting to note that Life is female and Love is male because when I first read it, I assumed it would be the other way around. Could this have been done intentionally to break the gender norms? I think that this could be a pretty strong argument that could be made, based off of the headnote and how this story was meant to empower women and speak about feminism in a thoughtful and productive way. The fact that Joy is something that Life and Love share was something else that I found to be really beautifully written, which is why it is referred to as "it." This paragraph sounds as though they do not have a care in the word and are genuinely enjoying each other's company and that is how Joy is created between the two of them.

This particular line really caught my attention when I was reading because it it such a pivotal moment that really makes the reader understand what people thought about women during this time. Stating that a married woman would grab her baby and an unmarried woman would grab her jewelry box shows that many people believed that once a woman got married, her only job was to take care of the house and the family; she had no other priorities in her life but these things, while an unmarried woman was more concerned with materialistic things because she does not have a house or a family to worry about. While I obviously would hope that a woman with a child would grab her baby if there ever was a fire, I think it is interesting that the author had to make it a point to distinguish between the two types of women. I feel that this line was not completely necessary for the reader to have in order to understand the story, yet he thought it was important to include this, which I found to be quite intriguing.

This line really struck me because she stated that she had never visited the old College Library even though the reader can tell that she wants nothing more than to visit this library, or, arguably, any college library for that matter. During this time, college was not usually in the cards for women; their main job was to stay home and take care of the house. We can see in this moment that she does not want to be a typical woman for her time. This girl is longing for an education and for the privilege of going to college, which is why she finds so much enjoyment out of reading next to this window every day and is so attached to this window. She is clearly a girl that is eager to learn and expand her mind and thoughts because of the fact that she constantly reading. It seems that she believes that if she sits by the window and can look out at the library, she can pretend that she is actually in the library, reading and studying rather than being an outsider looking in.

This paragraph of the short story really struck me as I was reading because, during this time, it was seen as though women were not as educated as men and because of this, nobody paid much mind to the things that women had to say. In this moment, when he receives a letter from a woman, before he even opens the letter and begins reading it, he has this preconceived notion that the writing is not going to be well written. He expects the letter to be fairly short because he does not think that the woman is educated enough to write and long, thought out, and coherent letter. Once he opens the letter, he is taken back by the "most charming little missive he had ever read." Because he is so taken back by this letter, he begins reading every little detail and is closely paying attention to all of the intricacies of the letter. It is almost as if he is doing this, waiting to find a trip up or mistake that she made so that he can prove that women do not know how to write properly because of their lack of education. He is proved wrong when he sees that there are no mistakes and it is a very coherent letter. In this moment, the woman is proving that females are capable of much more than men during this time thought. She is breaking the gender norms and proving that women are of value in more than just the domestic aspects of life.

In this moment, it seems to me as if the signalman is struggling with his job on the train. His primary role on the train is to operate the points and signals from a signal box in order to control the movement of the train. That being said, he must be the one looking out and making sure that there is nothing in the way of the train's path so that it can get to its destination. If there is something hindering the train from getting through its path, that is where the signalman must come in and do his job in a fast and efficient manner. Here, we see the signalman reminiscing on a moment when a woman had died because the train was not able to stop fast enough in order to not hit the woman. It can be argued that the signalman feels as this was his fault and is questioning whether or not he is good at his job. Could this questioning of his worth come from the fact that he himself has "ghost-like" qualities and ghosts technically cannot have a job like this one because nobody can actually see or hear them?

When reading this story, it sounds to me as if this was a fairytale, which is not a typical way of telling a "scary story" and was not the way I expected to be reading this story. It has a sing-songy way about it and sounds as if it could be read to a child because of the simple, yet descriptive language. Was this way of writing done intentionally? I feel that this could have been done intentionally. This "fairytale-like" way of telling the story makes sense for the book of Christmas stories that it was published into. Being that these scary Christmas stories were read together as a family, it would make sense for a story to be written in this way because it would have to appeal to people of all different ages and have to keep everyone engaged and want to keep listening.

Beautiful language to explain how influential and symbolic art books were during this time. Speaks about how the art book was more than just a book that can be read for pleasure; these books connected with many different senses and made it very enjoyable to read and look at because it was different than a typical book that, to some people, can just look like words on a page.

When initially reading this, the reader may be a little confused because the wording doesn't seem to make much sense. After, analyzing it deeper, the reader begins to realize that Eliot is trying to prove a point about time. He is stating that the past, present, and future are all wrapped up into one. This might be a confusing concept to some people because we all have a tendency to want to seperate the past, present, and future. We all believe that each moment in time has nothing to do with the other. Eliot argues the total opposite. This poem is stating that the past and future and bound up in the present. Everything that happened in the past is the reason we are this way in the present and everything that you are doing in the present will affect your future. In this way, the past and future seem to be a sort of fantasy. This may seem like a very messy entanglement and hard to wrap your head around, but this was the message that Eliot was trying to prove. Time is a strange concept and is limitless, yet people try to put restrictions on it.

When initally reading this line, one would not think to put fire and a rose in one sentence. They seem to be opposites and totally unrelated with one another. Once the reader rememebers the main focus of the poem, we can see why Eliot chose to end "Four Quartets" this way. Throughout each section, one seems to build on the other (one could even say that the poems have a fugal quality) with the idea of conflict or tension. Eliot, here is saying that you are the only person who can create where you are going in life and what you are going to do; you could either create the destruction in your life, or the happiness. People have a tendency to want to seperate things based on time, when in reality, Eliot feels that that is almost impossible to do. Your past, present, and future are all one, which makes up your life. By putting something so beautiful as a rose and something so destructive as fire, together, he is helping to resist people from caegorizing and naming things in this world.