Night and Day by Virginia Woolf (love story novels in english .txt) 📕
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Although known for her later experiments with style and structure, Virginia Woolf set out in her early novels to master the traditional form. Her second novel, Night and Day, presents itself as a seemingly conventional marriage plot, complete with love triangles, broken engagements, and unrequited affections. Beneath these conventional trappings, however, the book’s deeper concerns are resolutely subversive. The main characters—a quartet of friends and would-be lovers—come together, pull apart, and struggle to reconcile socially-prescribed norms of love and marriage with their own beliefs and ambitions.
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- Author: Virginia Woolf
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“Did you stay long after we’d left?” he asked abruptly.
“No. We went back to my house.”
This seemed to confirm Rodney’s belief that he had been discussed. He turned over the unpalatable idea for a while, in silence.
“Women are incomprehensible creatures, Denham!” he then exclaimed.
“Um,” said Denham, who seemed to himself possessed of complete understanding, not merely of women, but of the entire universe. He could read Rodney, too, like a book. He knew that he was unhappy, and he pitied him, and wished to help him.
“You say something and they—fly into a passion. Or for no reason at all, they laugh. I take it that no amount of education will—” The remainder of the sentence was lost in the high wind, against which they had to struggle; but Denham understood that he referred to Katharine’s laughter, and that the memory of it was still hurting him. In comparison with Rodney, Denham felt himself very secure; he saw Rodney as one of the lost birds dashed senseless against the glass; one of the flying bodies of which the air was full. But he and Katharine were alone together, aloft, splendid, and luminous with a twofold radiance. He pitied the unstable creature beside him; he felt a desire to protect him, exposed without the knowledge which made his own way so direct. They were united as the adventurous are united, though one reaches the goal and the other perishes by the way.
“You couldn’t laugh at someone you cared for.”
This sentence, apparently addressed to no other human being, reached Denham’s ears. The wind seemed to muffle it and fly away with it directly. Had Rodney spoken those words?
“You love her.” Was that his own voice, which seemed to sound in the air several yards in front of him?
“I’ve suffered tortures, Denham, tortures!”
“Yes, yes, I know that.”
“She’s laughed at me.”
“Never—to me.”
The wind blew a space between the words—blew them so far away that they seemed unspoken.
“How I’ve loved her!”
This was certainly spoken by the man at Denham’s side. The voice had all the marks of Rodney’s character, and recalled, with; strange vividness, his personal appearance. Denham could see him against the blank buildings and towers of the horizon. He saw him dignified, exalted, and tragic, as he might have appeared thinking of Katharine alone in his rooms at night.
“I am in love with Katharine myself. That is why I am here tonight.”
Ralph spoke distinctly and deliberately, as if Rodney’s confession had made this statement necessary.
Rodney exclaimed something inarticulate.
“Ah, I’ve always known it,” he cried, “I’ve known it from the first. You’ll marry her!”
The cry had a note of despair in it. Again the wind intercepted their words. They said no more. At length they drew up beneath a lamppost, simultaneously.
“My God, Denham, what fools we both are!” Rodney exclaimed. They looked at each other, queerly, in the light of the lamp. Fools! They seemed to confess to each other the extreme depths of their folly. For the moment, under the lamppost, they seemed to be aware of some common knowledge which did away with the possibility of rivalry, and made them feel more sympathy for each other than for anyone else in the world. Giving simultaneously a little nod, as if in confirmation of this understanding, they parted without speaking again.
XXIXBetween twelve and one that Sunday night Katharine lay in bed, not asleep, but in that twilight region where a detached and humorous view of our own lot is possible; or if we must be serious, our seriousness is tempered by the swift oncome of slumber and oblivion. She saw the forms of Ralph, William, Cassandra, and herself, as if they were all equally unsubstantial, and, in putting off reality, had gained a kind of dignity which rested upon each impartially. Thus rid of any uncomfortable warmth of partisanship or load of obligation, she was dropping off to sleep when a light tap sounded upon her door. A moment later Cassandra stood beside her, holding a candle and speaking in the low tones proper to the time of night.
“Are you awake, Katharine?”
“Yes, I’m awake. What is it?”
She roused herself, sat up, and asked what in Heaven’s name Cassandra was doing?
“I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I’d come and speak to you—only for
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