“Heavenly Twins”
A moment arrives for the narrator of this tale to weigh in on a particular course of action by a woman whose lifelong uselessness has directed her toward finding a purpose and when that decision arrives, the woman—like so many before—chooses religion. Which, the narrator notes:
“is a delicious opiate which gives immediate relief, but it soothes without healing and is in the long run deleterious.”
“Ideala”
This story contains a metaphor that is just plain fun; making little polemical points about either men or women in general. Though it is a general observation manifested in the actions of one man:
"The old gentleman, meanwhile, was absorbed in his newspaper, and he marked his enjoyment of it by inhaling his breath and exhaling it again in that particular way which is called `blowing like a porpoise.’"
“The Beth Book”
It is only right that an example of metaphorical language in novel titled The Beth Book would directly implicate Beth:
“Beth had the sensation of having been nearer to something in her infancy than she ever was again—nearer to knowing what it is the trees whisper—what the murmur means, the all-pervading murmur which sounds incessantly when everything is hushed”
“New Aspect of the Woman Question”
Grand provides a coupled, but antagonistic and opposition set of metaphors to describe the teams playing on the field of battle in the war of the sexes. She also is kind enough to specifically describe what she means by the Brotherhood: either the kind of man who dismisses all women as worthless or the type of man who only knows women from one class and applies that judgement gender-wide:
“We have our Shrieking Sisterhood as the counterpart of the Bawling Brotherhood.”
“Emotional Moments”
This volume is a collection of short stories, one of which is titled “The Rector’s Bane.” The story opens with lovely bit of simple poetic simile:
“The Rectory was in a flutter from earliest dawn. It was like a tree full of sparrows in the spring, all twitter and chirp and bustle.”
