(I just have the online version, so I copied the section I wanted to close read because there are no pages!) \u201cSad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of her age and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Although the passage above seemed insignificant as just a passing thought by Mr. Gilmore, it stood out as it demonstrates the contrast of Laura Fairlie. Throughout Mr. Gilmore’s narration, he often talks about, or to, Laura as if she were a child. Innocent, and unable to make her own decisions with the need of an older man to guide her through her impending marriage. His exclamation of \u201cSad!\u201d paired with \u201cand now\u201d is a dismal view of Laura. By assuming \u201cand now\u201d it insinuates that she is unable to change and is now stuck in this cycle of childhood purity, unable to be the woman she is. He then goes on to say that she is \u201cbroken\u201d and \u201cbrought down\u201d to who she is yet again reaffirming that she is no longer a woman but a shell of one. \u201cBroken\u201d followed by \u201cbrought down\u201d sounds as if she is unable to be put back together like glass shattered. And if she were to be able to be rebuilt, she would still have pieces missing as it\u2019s difficult to put together a glass broken.<\/p>\n
Mr. Gilmore then uses the \u201cflower of her age and beauty\u201d to describe her. He could be using \u201cflower\u201d to depict her beauty like a flower; or, in the way that flower is used in a sexual manner. Not that he is viewing her as a sexual object, but that she is at the age to be \u201cdeflowered\u201d. This view then contrasts his previous observations, viewing her as the \u201cchild that laughed the day through\u201d. This again insinuates the young characteristics that Laura embodies, and that Mr. Gilmore looks down on her as a woman and a child, whether that be implicitly or explicitly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(I just have the online version, so I copied the section I wanted to close read because there are no pages!) \u201cSad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of her age and her beauty, so broken and … Continue reading Mr. Gilmore Description of Laura<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5608,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5608"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}