Night and Day by Virginia Woolf (love story novels in english .txt) ๐
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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 bookโs deeper concerns are resolutely subversive. The main charactersโa quartet of friends and would-be loversโcome 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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Here Rodney stopped the carriage and helped Katharine to alight. Henry, too, gave her his hand, and fancied that she pressed it very slightly in parting as if she sent him a message. But the carriage rolled on immediately, without wakening Mrs. Hilbery, and left the couple standing by the obelisk. That Rodney was angry with her and had made this opportunity for speaking to her, Katharine knew very well; she was neither glad nor sorry that the time had come, nor, indeed, knew what to expect, and thus remained silent. The carriage grew smaller and smaller upon the dusky road, and still Rodney did not speak. Perhaps, she thought, he waited until the last sign of the carriage had disappeared beneath the curve of the road and they were left entirely alone. To cloak their silence she read the writing on the obelisk, to do which she had to walk completely round it. She was murmuring a word to two of the pious ladyโs thanks above her breath when Rodney joined her. In silence they set out along the cart-track which skirted the verge of the trees.
To break the silence was exactly what Rodney wished to do, and yet could not do to his own satisfaction. In company it was far easier to approach Katharine; alone with her, the aloofness and force of her character checked all his natural methods of attack. He believed that she had behaved very badly to him, but each separate instance of unkindness seemed too petty to be advanced when they were alone together.
โThereโs no need for us to race,โ he complained at last; upon which she immediately slackened her pace, and walked too slowly to suit him. In desperation he said the first thing he thought of, very peevishly and without the dignified prelude which he had intended.
โIโve not enjoyed my holiday.โ
โNo?โ
โNo. I shall be glad to get back to work again.โ
โSaturday, Sunday, Mondayโ โthere are only three days more,โ she counted.
โNo one enjoys being made a fool of before other people,โ he blurted out, for his irritation rose as she spoke, and got the better of his awe of her, and was inflamed by that awe.
โThat refers to me, I suppose,โ she said calmly.
โEvery day since weโve been here youโve done something to make me appear ridiculous,โ he went on. โOf course, so long as it amuses you, youโre welcome; but we have to remember that we are going to spend our lives together. I asked you, only this morning, for example, to come out and take a turn with me in the garden. I was waiting for you ten minutes, and you never came. Everyone saw me waiting. The stable-boys saw me. I was so ashamed that I went in. Then, on the drive you hardly spoke to me. Henry noticed it. Everyone notices it.โ โโ โฆ You find no difficulty in talking to Henry, though.โ
She noted these various complaints and determined philosophically to answer none of them, although the last stung her to considerable irritation. She wished to find out how deep his grievance lay.
โNone of these things seem to me to matter,โ she said.
โVery well, then. I may as well hold my tongue,โ he replied.
โIn themselves they donโt seem to me to matter; if they hurt you, of course they matter,โ she corrected herself scrupulously. Her tone of consideration touched him, and he walked on in silence for a space.
โAnd we might be so happy, Katharine!โ he exclaimed impulsively, and drew her arm through his. She withdrew it directly.
โAs long as you let yourself feel like this we shall never be happy,โ she said.
The harshness, which Henry had noticed, was again unmistakable in her manner. William flinched and was silent. Such severity, accompanied by something indescribably cold and impersonal in her manner, had constantly been meted out to him during the last few days, always in the company of others. He had recouped himself by some ridiculous display of vanity which, as he knew, put him still more at her mercy. Now that he was alone with her there was no stimulus from outside to draw his attention from his injury. By a considerable effort of self-control he forced himself to remain silent, and to make himself distinguish what part of his pain was due to vanity, what part to the certainty that no woman really loving him could speak thus.
โWhat do I feel about Katharine?โ he thought to himself. It was clear that she had been a very desirable and distinguished figure, the mistress of her little section of the world; but more than that, she was the person of all others who seemed to him the arbitress of life, the woman whose judgment was naturally right and steady, as his had never been in spite of all his culture. And then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.
โIf she were callous all the time and had only led me on to laugh at me I couldnโt have felt that about her,โ he thought. โIโm not a fool, after all. I canโt have been utterly mistaken all these years. And yet,
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