Sublime

They were both tall, and their eyes were on a level; but imagine Rosamond’s infantine blondness and wondrous crown of hair-plaits, with her pale-blue dress of a fit and fashion so perfect that no dressmaker could look at it without emotion, a large embroidered collar which it was to be hoped all beholders would know the price of, her small hands du

“But, depend upon it, Mr. Collins,” she added, “that Lizzy shall be brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. She is a very headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her own interest but I willmake her know it.”

The room was cold; it contained nothing of what Grace Macaulay loved. No absurd petticoats of lace and silk – no pendants, bangles, hair-combs and boots with laces replaced by ribbon. She had severed herself from herself.

You may suddenly feel drastically different, have certain intrusive thoughts, or act in a certain way. When you have a ‘mood flip’, as if you suddenly switch from being a rational adult into a tantrum-throwing child, you are re-living the trauma at the level of that of a child. As a result, you may lash out at your partner, have inexplicable rage,

Jude realized that if she tried, she could pretend that the bruises came from someplace else.

When you visit your mother, you find yourself numbing or going into a trance state in which you are not fully present.

She could crouch on the wind-whipped grass and dig the stones from the ground and fling them down at the suspicious cottiers and their fear of any woman who was not tethered to man or hearth. There, upon the mountain, her difference – no matter its great weight, its sharp and restless ache upon her heart – was, in the face of such unyielding beauty

This tactile proof that she had family but no connection to them made the fuzz of panic rise inside her, and she had to press down on her legs to stop them aching.