Maggie rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe up-stairs. They were very bitter tears: everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie: there was no indulgence, no fondness such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by feeling fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved their best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?
[...]
Maggie in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay, to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it.
No wonder, when there is contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come out of it.
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2 comments:
the cover of every dostoevsky book should have a little sticker that says "think your life is bad?"
that was beautiful, and comforting. funny when two negatives make a positive.
maggie is one of two eliot characters that define the way i would like to live my life.
don't you love the bit where she explains why she coloured in that picture of the demon?
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