Social Stereotypes
Eugenia begins sleeping late, making clothing, staring at her face in the mirror and staring off into space as open but unread book rests across her chest. What has happened to Eugenia and where has she gone? Eugenia is pregnant and
“With her pregnancy, Eugenia disappeared into a world of women.”
The Book
So Harald says to William, he says, I’m writing a book or did I mention it already. And William, to whom he had not yet mentioned the book, says no and then goes on to express curiosity. The response from Harald, steeped in self-important metaphor designed to shock, conveys much of his character:
“The kind of impossible book everyone now is trying to write. A book which shall demonstrate—with some kind of intellectual respectability—that it is not impossible that the world is the work of a Creator, a Designer.”
Angels
There is much serious discussion of angels in the book. The cahracters speak of Swedenborg, Gabriel, the fallen sons of God, archangels and man kneaded into form. But surely the most memorable single metaphorical image comes courtesy of Mrs. Jesse’s sculptor brother Horatio when he once observed:
“Angels are only a clumsy form of poultry.”
Mr. Hearnshaw
Similes are a writer’s best friend when it comes to describing character. One or two judicious chosen visual comparisons create an image in the mind of the reader more tangibly than two or three paragraphs of non-comparative prose. Take Mr. Hearnshaw, for instance. It is very difficult to not imagine him almost fully developed in one’s mind following this depiction:
“He as a little man, like a black wasp, with a lot of black stiff whiskers to make him look bigger, to puff him out, and a crest of coarse black hair like a horse’s hogged mane on his head.”
Social Insects
William, an entomologist, discovers his calling in life and the historical event is situated as metaphor. Upon first examining ants and bees in close-up detail:
“He stood like a stupid giant and saw incomprehensible, purposefully intelligent beings building and destroying in cracks of his own paving stones. Here was the clue to the world.”