“Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.”
Source: The Portrait of a Lady
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Henry James 154
American novelist, short story author, and literary critic 1843–1916Related quotes
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
Black God's Kiss (1934)
Context: She half expected, despite her brave words, to come out upon the storied and familiar red-hot pave of hell, and this pleasant, starlit land surprised her and made her wary. The things that built the tunnel could not have been human. She had no right to expect men here. She was a little stunned by finding open sky so far underground, though she was intelligent enough to realize that however she had come, she was not underground now.
13 November
Without Dogma (1891)
Context: It is not merely a question of sorrow after the death of a beloved being, but of the reproaches she will apply to herself, thinking that if she had loved him more he might have clung more to his life. Empty, trivial, and unjust reproaches, for she did everything that force of will could command, — she spurned my love and remained pure and faithful to him. But one must know that soul full of scruples as I know it, to gauge the depth of misery into which the news would plunge her, and how she would suspect herself, — asking whether his death did not correspond to some deeply hidden desire on her part for freedom and happiness; whether it did not gratify those wishes she had scarcely dared to form.
