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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Tourists as Animals:
At multiple times in the Italian part of the novel, the narrator and characters compare foreigners in Italy to animals. The first of these is a simile that comes directly from the narrator: "So Miss Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence, short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten’s grace." This simile is comedic because Miss Lavish believes she has an authoritative knowledge of the city and a commanding presence, but the narrator reveals her to be as helpless and clumsy as a kitten. Her kitten-like behavior would make her endearing if she weren't so arrogant. She claims to know the true Italy, but she gets herself and Lucy lost on the way to the Santa Croce. This outing contributes the eventual shattering of Lucy's view of Miss Lavish as clever and interesting.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—View Sloping Into Kiss:
At the end of the sixth chapter, Lucy walks through a wooded area with the Italian driver in search of Mr. Eager and Mr. Beebe, whom she has described as good men in Italian. The driver has misunderstood her, however, and is taking her to George. The moment in which Lucy stumbles onto the terrace results in an explosion of imagery, as the view opens up in front of her eyes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+From her feet the ground sloped sharply into the view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.
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Explanation and Analysis—Mr. Eager's Italian:
Mr. Eager serves as the guide when the characters go on an outing to Fiesole in the sixth chapter. He paternalistically sees himself as in possession of the real Italy, which he generously shares with the helpless British tourists. The reader has already sensed that this isn't quite right, but the view of Mr. Eager as a suave expert on Italy is properly shattered by a metaphor in which the narrator presents fluent Italian as a running "stream"—in contrast, the narrator uses a simile to compare Mr. Eager's Italian to an "acid whistling fountain":
Unlock with LitCharts A+Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony. In Mr Eager’s mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.
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Explanation and Analysis—Phaethon the Cab Driver:
In the novel's sixth chapter, a large group from the Pension go on an outing to Fiesole with Mr. Eager. They are divided between two carriages, one of which the narrator claims is driven by Phaethon:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister — Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—A Woman of Leonardo:
In the eighth chapter, Lucy has returned from Italy and accepted Cecil's proposal. When the narrator grants the reader access to this new character's thoughts for the first time, Cecil muses on Lucy and uses a simile to compare her to a painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story’. She did develop most wonderfully day by day.
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Explanation and Analysis—Lucy as Kite:
In the eighth chapter, which begins with Lucy's return from Italy to England, the reader encounters her fiancé Cecil Vyse. Unaware of the engagement, Mr. Beebe shows up at Windy Corner and chats with Cecil about Lucy. Over the course of this conversation, Mr. Beebe metaphorically compares Lucy in Italy to a kite:
Unlock with LitCharts A+There was simply the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them. I can show you a beautiful picture in my Italian diary: Miss Honeychurch as a kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string breaks.
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Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—A Woman of Leonardo:
In the eighth chapter, Lucy has returned from Italy and accepted Cecil's proposal. When the narrator grants the reader access to this new character's thoughts for the first time, Cecil muses on Lucy and uses a simile to compare her to a painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story’. She did develop most wonderfully day by day.
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Explanation and Analysis—Lucy's Consent:
At the end of the ninth chapter, Cecil and Lucy find themselves alone in the woods, and Cecil asks whether Lucy would allow him to kiss her. She says yes in a way that Cecil is unhappy with, as he finds it austere and unromantic. The narrator uses a metaphor to describe her response, and this produces dramatic irony, as the reader knows just how intense and romantic her kiss with George was.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Her reply was inadequate. She gave such a businesslike lift to her veil. As he approached her he found time to wish that he could recoil. As he touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattened between them.
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Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Lucy's Ghosts:
In the thirteenth chapter, after having run into George Emerson at the Sacred Lake in the afternoon, Lucy sits down to dinner with her family. Her mother's questions force her to confront her past in a way that makes her uneasy, and she finds it difficult not to tell lies. Slipping into Lucy's thoughts, the narrator metaphorically refers to Lucy's memories as ghosts:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] the ghosts began to gather in the darkness. There were too many ghosts about. The original ghost — that touch of lips on her cheek — had surely been laid long ago; it could be nothing to her that a man had kissed her on a mountain once. But it had begotten a spectral family — Mr Harris, Miss Bartlett’s letter, Mr Beebe’s memories of violets — and one or other of these was bound to haunt her before Cecil’s very eyes.
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—A Woman of Leonardo:
In the eighth chapter, Lucy has returned from Italy and accepted Cecil's proposal. When the narrator grants the reader access to this new character's thoughts for the first time, Cecil muses on Lucy and uses a simile to compare her to a painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story’. She did develop most wonderfully day by day.
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Chapter 19
Explanation and Analysis—Words like Waves:
In the nineteenth chapter, Lucy has a conversation with Mr. Emerson. During this conversation, the old man eventually discovers that his son's love for Lucy is requited, and he makes it clear that he has figured this out. By way of a simile, the narrator compares Lucy's reaction to being hit by waves in the ocean.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then he burst out excitedly: ‘That’s it; that’s what I mean. You love George!’ And after his long preamble the three words burst against Lucy like waves from the open sea.
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Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Phaethon the Cab Driver:
In the novel's sixth chapter, a large group from the Pension go on an outing to Fiesole with Mr. Eager. They are divided between two carriages, one of which the narrator claims is driven by Phaethon:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister — Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light.
Related Themes:
