Diana - Tenant ch 20-25

These chapters contain too many elements to comment on thoroughly. One thing that struck me was the beautiful prose Helen uses to describe nature while contrasting that beauty with her own misery due to Arthur's absence. "When I wander in the ancient woods, and meet the little wild-flowers smiling in my path. . .with the trees that crowd about its bank, some gracefully bending to kiss its waters. . .still I have no pleasure; for the greater happiness that nature sets before me, the more I lament that he is not here to taste it" (212) - absolutely gorgeous prose!

The last paragraph in chapter 25 is telling. I'm not sure if this is free and indirect discourse, but Helen is describing how she supposes Milicent might feel under the circumstances of her marriage to Hattersley. "I trust she may yet be happy; but if she is, it will be entirely the reward of her own goodness of heart; for had she chosen to consider herself the victim of fate, or of her mother's worldly wisdom, she might have been thoroughly miserable; and, if, for duty's sake, she had not made every effort to love her husband, she would doubtless have hated him to the end of her days" (216). However, it's clear that Helen is actually speaking of herself and what she is actually feeling, although her admission of feelings seem unconscious or subconscious at this point.