{"id":54,"date":"2017-02-07T06:11:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T06:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=54"},"modified":"2020-08-31T20:39:13","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T20:39:13","slug":"that-breath-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2017\/02\/07\/that-breath-of-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"That Breath of Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThus, the rustling of an Angel\u2019s wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie in a hushed murmur–like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore\u201d (Dickens 203).<\/span><\/p>\n

The text surrounding this passage describes the worries that Lucie faces in her life: she thinks constantly of the echoes of the people and events that have played roles in her life. In the first six paragraphs of Chapter XXI from Book II, years fly by in Lucie\u2019s life. Without fully concentrating on what is happening, the reader could miss the death of Lucie\u2019s child. Only two paragraphs are devoted to the event, and the narrator never even directly states what happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

When her child dies, he seemingly ascends into heaven on his deathbed, creating an image of the Darnay family as blessed by God.\u00a0<\/span>This holiness is evident in the narrator\u2019s description of Lucie\u2019s son\u2019s death. The \u201cecho\u201d that Lucie hears when her son dies is the \u201crustling of an Angel\u2019s wings.\u201d The sound is soft, mild, and comforting. The sound is connected with domesticity, as we can imagine the rustling of sheets or a bed. The death of this child contrasts with the rest of those who have thus far died in the novel; there is no violence or horror in his passing. Moreover, the boy leaves earth accompanied by an \u201cAngel,\u201d therefore placing him in a category of a being innocent enough to merit divine accompaniment into heaven. The narrator further promotes this idea of the child\u2019s divinity by stating that his echo had in it a \u201cbreath of Heaven.\u201d For Lucie, this is soothing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that her child\u2019s echo comforts Lucie in her darker moments presents itself in the description of how she hears these echoes. There are no haunting footsteps in the echoes of her son\u2019s death; there are the \u201cSighs\u201d of wind through a garden with a \u201clittle garden-tomb.\u201d These Sighs come from the natural world\u00a0and the loss of purity. They reflect sadness, but not fear. For Lucie, however, she enjoys the solace of the fact that her child entered into heaven. The divine and comforting sound of the Angel\u2019s wings combine with and the worldly sighs that drift over a tombstone, and they mix to produce the \u201cbreathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, Lucie is almost in a trance of calmness after her child\u2019s death. Although it might appear that she is not terribly affected by the event, she is in reality torn between her devotion to the divine and her belief in heaven and her own worldly pain from losing her child. She responds to this pain not unlike her father responded when he was locked away: she relies on a rhythmic, ocean motion to rock her back to a place of comfort and security that she would have otherwise lost.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThus, the rustling of an Angel\u2019s wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie in a hushed murmur–like the breathing … Continue reading That Breath of Heaven<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138876,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2017","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}