the omitted second verse, as found on Google:

I dreamt that suitors sought my hand. That knights upon bended knee, And with vows no maiden's heart could withstand, They pledg'd their faith to me. And I dreamt that one of that noble host Came forth my hand to claim. But I also dreamt, which charmed me most That you lov'd me still the same

probably no coincidence that her name is Maria

i guess this is one of Joyce's unique ways of explaining monetary items. he could've told us how much tram fare was, but he decided that the emphasis was on the purse, and probably didn't want to take away the significance of it with an abrupt non sequitur

instead of clothes or material being a source of class anxiety, here we see marriage as the root cause. Mr Doran is afraid of marrying down, while Mrs Mooney wants Polly to marry up

was this all a ploy? seems to me that she didn't conspire with her mother, so did she kind of 'beat the system' by taking advantage of her mother's business acumen and Mr Doran's 'social' anxiety?

i think i remember seeing yellow in 'Araby' too, as well as 'An Encounter'. all of them are used in the context of ageing.

oh, the woes of young love

there's a lot of these garden path sentences. i always have to go back and read them a second time because without a comma it becomes quite ambiguous to the reader

in the previous story, the narrator mentioned 'discoloured teeth'. is this a recurring motif to describe a man with ill-intentions? perhaps the Father wasn't a very decent man, and i had only thought so because we read the story through a young, naive narrator's POV.

this did not age well

it appeared to me that he was happy to leave the world. he seemed to be a wise man, and knew a lot about the nuances of the Church. perhaps he had thoughts that contradicted with the Church, and thus felt paralysed by his inability to do anything about it. this could be why his death felt freeing, after confessing his 'sin' in the confession box.

oh i spoke too soon lol. but there's a lack of warmth / intimacy in which he speaks about his wife

this incomplete sentence could be a device to show, rather than tell what is inside the house. or it could be that Mr. Neave found it too dreary to continue

i thought Charlotte wasn't his daughter, because previously he said Where would Lola and her sisters and Charlotte be if he’d gone in for hobbies, he’d like to know? it doesn't seem to be the case that he dislikes Charlotte so much so that he refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter, because he called her "remarkable", so why did he not call her one of his daughters?

rather than just being afraid to grow old and fat (the resulting decrease in women's worth is so painfully transgenerational) perhaps Leila also sees the ball as a symbol of escape from her countryside life

i was wondering if refrigerators already existed then. here it says that they were invented in the late 1920s, around when the book was written. just another detail on the opulence

LOL

does anyone else listen to music while reading these texts? pardon my music taste, but this came on shuffle and it kind of matches the yearning i feel in William

a Shakespearean character

is this a form of class anxiety? donkeys and engines are representative of farms or the countryside, and it seems like Isabel wants them to appear more sophisticated by buying imported toys.

like the sisters in The Daughters of the Late Colonel, she is waiting for something in the future that is, unfortunately, unlikely to happen. same as Laura, whom i interpret as yearning for a future where the wretched don't suffer so (if only for her peace of mind). is this what modernism is about?

we never know the identity of the girl, not even her name. and up till now, we only know she is very pretty and has an abrasive attitude. we never get to her what she thinks, only how she reacts to other people, and how they in turn react to her. she feels objectified, and in this sentence, it implies she's very well-aware of that

i feel like the whole chapter with Cyril meeting his grandfather was also made up in her mind. an alternate world where their father was less acrid. the shifts in viewpoints are very subtle. for some reason, i get the feeling that they are twins, which helps me get a sense of the narrative. twins usually share similar experience, and although they have different emotions and thoughts, most of the times you can't tell where one twin's memory ends and where the other's starts

an abrupt change, as if the POV has shifted to Cyril's. also, Josephine and Constantia are older than i thought, i don't know why i assumed they were both teenagers

an interesting way to describe a voice, and i'm not sure how to interpret it. if it were someone from the upper class, i would think it's more like "buttery", but this obviously has negative tones. reddit (very credible) says it means a voice that makes someone sound abnormally polite

this is a literal demarcation of the lower class and the upper class. they've given us glimpses of it in the past few paragraphs, but this just hammers it in. gives me "Parasite" vibes, and we can analyze the motifs that demonstrate social stratification

same

i was wondering why his narrative was taken from his journal, and not his writing at present. this novel is smart, and all the little details are accounted for in meta. if there ever was a behind-the-scenes or thought process of the author, i'd be very interested

i was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt but not anymore >:(

so interesting that medicine was used to be seen as hocus-pocus, even though it is more scientific and rigorous than law. but seeing how they are administering booze and drugs as panaceas, i'm not surprised

what does this mean?

archaic spellings make it harder to analyse text. is there a way to standardize such words? my best bet is that we have to do it manually, or leave it as is for cross-analyses with modern texts

is this an anomaly? or has he lost all prior respect for Rachel? but in the following sentences her name is capitalized. probably in this context alone, he thinks it lowly of her to conjecture based on one piece of evidence (which kinda feels like what i'm doing here)

not trying to degrade Rosanna or anything, but this is the perfect example of a creepy fan letter

i wonder why Mrs Betteredge didn't just let him cook his own dinner for the rest of her life.

interesting character. is he a convenient mouthpiece for the author, or should we attach significance to how much he knows about the matter? is he an attempt at 'localising' (for lack of a better word) Indians? by giving him a rather English-sounding name and having him criticize the Indian superstitious practices as they would?

in comparison to the previous narrators, Bruff's part is brief yet concise. he cuts to the chase, there is no thinly veiled sarcasm, and he tells us mostly facts. very lawyer-like, and in his own words, he respected our time

but i like her, sharp and quick-witted

1860's shade level. it's funny how Betteredge was trying so hard to defend his young lady, but here she comes off as a right ol' brat

what a creative way to use footnotes. maybe it's because Ms Clack was directly under Franklin, but we didn't see his thoughts when he was criticized by Betteredge. i hope his presence doesn't somehow create another unreliable narrator

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

most of the times when he's recounting the Sergeant's queries, Betteredge tends to omit his own responses. it either points to the Sergeant being a no-nonsense person, or that Betteredge seems to think his contribution isn't quite so important

i'm beginning to wonder if some of the capitalizations/non-capitalizations we've seen so far are just a result of the lack of beta-reading / other typo-checking resources in the 1860s.

what a curious way to tell things from Penelope's side! he refers to himself in third person and even signs it off. you can tell there's a real sense of pride in his daughter, and he seems to want to let everyone reading to know this too. in Malaysia, we have a term for it: "confirm plus chop"

capitalized as if it were a character, like the Diamond. the Musk Rose was also described with such care that one might think its worth was equal to that of the Diamond

wasn't John Herncastle, the supposed black sheep of the family, titled with Honourable as well? it seems to me that Caroline's title was less associated with her own nature than it was with John. running theme of Betteredge's less than kind remarks about women perhaps?

so many brackets in the last few paragraphs! almost like he's breaking the fourth wall of the fourth wall

judging by how he's been treating women these past few chapters, definitely not a trustworthy narrator. he has also tried repeatedly to establish authority over the story by appealing to the reader as a sweet, frail, helpless old man. wonder how this characteristic (and storywise, point of view) of his is going to tie in to the plot/theme

well played betteredge

so far i've been seeing stories as a recurring theme, acting as motivation for the characters. the legend of the Yellow Diamond served as motivation for Herncastle to covet a fabled item. Robinson Crusoe as motivation for this narrator to decide his next step in life. and of course, the retelling of the travelling diamond, probably as motivation for the Herncastle family to recover it or to claim ownership. curious to see if the theme continues throughout the main story