“She is a daughter of earth; you are an angel of heaven”
During a conversation between just the two of them, Arthur quotes Shakespeare which leads Helen to wonder what the quote indicates that his fancy is turning toward Lady Lowborough. It is as sure a sign of the times in which this novel was written as any other could be that Arthur’s response is framed as this particular set of metaphors.
Passion and Tears
Arthur proves himself a master of the metaphor throughout the novel. Just as he is able to emphasize the finer qualities of Helen through a comparison with Lady Lowborough so is he able to point out the defects in his character through figurative language: “A burst of passion is a fine rousing thing upon occasion, Helen, and a flood of tears is marvellously affecting, but, when indulged too often, they are both deuced plaguy things for spoiling one's beauty and tiring out one's friends.”
“Well, but you will treat him like a girl—you'll spoil his spirit, and make a mere Miss Nancy of him”
What is most interesting about the connected simile and metaphor in this particular case is the warning being addressed from one mother to another is being done so in a completely serious and sincere fashion. This is a case of genuinely considered parental advice being passed along from one generation to another. Today, of course, such language is only used with irony at best and as parody at worst. Nowadays, this quote would seem as equally at home in a satire of the novel as it would in a straight adaptation of the novel.
The Mediator
Early in the novel the narrator displays a truly breathtaking gift for connecting a series of unrelated imagery into a unified metaphor delineating his point of comparison. It is the kind of densely layered and sumptuously figurative writing that populates the novels of this era to a degree that shall likely never be seen again.
“In love affairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child—ever ready to cement divided hearts, to span the unfriendly gulf of custom, to melt the ice of cold reserve, and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride.
Ever After
The richness of the use of metaphor extends from the life-affirming presence of a young child to the description of what form the soul takes after the affirmation of live itself has been extinguished. From birth to afterlife, metaphor and simile is the literary device of choice displayed throughout this representative example of Victorian-era fiction.
“It gives me little consolation to think I shall next behold you as a disembodied spirit, or an altered being, with a frame perfect and glorious, but not like this!—and a heart, perhaps, entirely estranged from me.”
