Claire

Page 208-212 Passage Analysis

In the final scene of Book Two, Louisa, in a state of hysteria, runs away to her father’s house to beg him to save her from the dilemma she is in. She can no longer stand to be married to Bounderby, who she is “sure that (she) hates”, and is distressed to be in love with Mr. Harthouse. She laments, “What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here! …If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in which my whole life sinks” (208). Louisa recognizes the value that destructive fire can have. Hope and new life can rise from the ashes of death. However, Louisa did not even have that possibility in her life. Her life was always devoid of fancy and passion and her father did not even allow ashes for anything but facts to rise out of. Consequently, Louisa was perpetually unhappy and on the verge of a mental breakdown by the end of Book Two, where she had “a wild dilating fire in the eyes” (211) as she approached her father. In Book One, Louisa would often sit and watch the fireplace for hours at a time. Fire was a metaphor for the passion that Louisa knew existed in life and that she dearly wanted but could never have, leaving her to stare longingly into the fire. But by the end of Book Two, the fire wasn’t merely reflected in her eyes as it would be through watching it. Instead, she had fire “in the eyes” and was able to passionately grieve her life before her father in a state that he had never seen her in before. Louisa was no longer able to endure the life that was forced upon her by her strict upbringing. She could not sit factual and reserved forever, content just to watch other life from a distance, revealing that a facts-only upbringing is not ultimately effective.