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Hyperbole
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Book 1: Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—White Oval:
Unable to sleep, Lily observes herself in a mirror in her bedroom at Bellomont. Her features are ghostly, obscured by the darkness that’s only broken with dimmed lights and candles. Wharton uses dramatic visual imagery to bring the unnerving scene to life for the reader:
She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but the two lines about the mouth remained.
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Book 1: Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Tableaux Vivants:
As Selden observes the performance of the tableaux vivants (people impersonating famous paintings) at a party at Bellomont, Wharton makes several allusions to art and history. As she describes the fabulously costumed and adorned high-society women, she also employs powerful visual and tactile imagery and satirizes the opulence and silliness of such activities:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The scenes were taken from old pictures, and the participators had been cleverly fitted with characters suited to their types. No one, for instance, could have made a more typical Goya than Carry Fisher, with her short dark-skinned face, the exaggerated glow of her eyes, the provocation of her frankly-painted smile. A brilliant Miss Smedden from Brooklyn showed to perfection the sumptuous curves of Titian's Daughter, lifting her gold salver laden with grapes above the harmonizing gold of rippled hair and rich brocade.
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Book 1: Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—A Mild Beam:
In Book 2, Chapter 14, Gerty reflects on Selden’s attentions towards her. The narrator employs a metaphor of illumination to describe Selden’s effect on her, supporting this description with visual imagery of light and shadow:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Waters Everywhere:
Gerty is overwhelmed when she realizes the depth of Selden's affection for Lily. In this passage, Wharton invokes the novel's motif of metaphors describing water and drowning to illustrate Gerty's extreme emotions. In addition to this, she uses vivid sensory language, invoking hearing and touch to represent Gerty's total lack of control over her romantic situation:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to her own part in the talk—but it was all as meaningless as the boom of waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
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Book 2: Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Gleam of a Knife:
In Book 2, Chapter 2, Lily Bart and Bertha Dorset have a conversation on the yacht that touches upon a strained aspect of their relationship. The tension is palpable, and Wharton’s use of simile and tactile imagery help to convey the emotional undercurrents of the scene:
Unlock with LitCharts A+A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk.
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Book 2: Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—The Reynolds Dress:
As Lily unpacks her trunk in the boarding house, Wharton employs an allusion to the artist Joshua Reynolds, a simile evoking the glamorous evening of the Tableaux Vivants, and strong scent imagery to demonstrate Lily’s fall from grace:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Last of all, she drew forth from the bottom of her trunk a heap of white drapery which fell shapelessly across her arm. It was the Reynolds dress she had worn in the Bry TABLEAUX. It had been impossible for her to give it away, but she had never seen it since that night, and the long flexible folds, as she shook them out, gave forth an odour of violets which came to her like a breath from the flower-edged fountain where she had stood with Lawrence Selden and disowned her fate.
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