IN THE COUNTRY

I ran over the little bright brook that came from the weedy, bottom pond. The stepping-stones were white in the sun, and the water slid sleepily among them. One or two butterflies, indistinguishable against the blue sky, trifled from flower to flower and led me up the hill, across the field where the hot sunshine stood as in a bowl, and I was entering the caverns of the wood, where the oaks bowed over and saved us a grateful shade. Within, everything was so still and cool that my steps hung heavily along the path. The bracken held out arms to me, and the bosom of the wood was full of sweetness, but I journeyed on, spurred by the attacks of an army of flies which kept up a guerrilla warfare round my head till I bullied the black rhododendron bushes in the garden, where they leftme, scenting, no doubt, Rebecca’s pots of vinegar and sugar.

The low red house, with its roof discoloured and sunken, tinged in sunlight, and slept profoundly in the shade thrown by the massive maples encroaching from the wood.

There was no one in the dining-room, but I could hear the whirr of a sewing-machine coming from the little study, a sound as of some great, vindictive insect buzzing about, now louder, now softer, now settling. Then came a jingling of four or five keys at the bottom of the keyboard of the drawing-room piano, continuing till the whole range had been covered in little leaps, as if some very fat frog had jumped from end to end.

‘That must be mother dusting the drawing-room,’ I thought.

From ‘The White Peacock’ by D.H.Lawrence

Questions for Discussion

1. Sum up the atmosphere of this passage.

2. How many things mentioned in the description are said to be moving? What effect do you think this emphasis on movement has?

3. Why does Lawrence use the word ‘caverns’? Why does he say that the bracken ‘held out arms to me’? How does he continue the idea of the flies as an attacking army?

4. With what does he compare the sound of the sewing-machine? With what does he compare the sound of the piano being dusted? Why do you think he chose each of these comparisons? In which passage are you more conscious of colour? In which is there more sound? Why?

5. Both these passages follow the same pattern. There is description of the approach to the house and then the reader faces the house itself, but the atmosphere of each could hardly contrast more. Compare language and stylistic means used in each extract and comment on their function.

Seminar 13

Unit III

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