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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Lord Warburton's Love:
When Lord Warburton proposes to Isabel, the narrator captures the intensity of his feelings for the young American woman using imagery and a simile:
“I don’t make mistakes about such things; I’m a very judicious animal. I don’t go off easily, but when I’m touched, it’s for life. It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life,” Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion—the heat, the violence, the unreason—and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place.
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Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Like Harps and Payments:
After Isabel rejects Goodwood’s attempt to bring her back to the United States with him near the beginning of the novel, the narrator uses a pair of similes to capture her excitement and relief:
Unlock with LitCharts A+She was not praying; she was trembling—trembling all over. Vibration was easy to her, was in fact too constant with her, and she found herself now humming like a smitten harp. She only asked, however, to put on the cover, to case herself again in brown holland, but she wished to resist her excitement, and the attitude of devotion, which she kept for some time, seemed to help her to be still. She intensely rejoiced that Caspar Goodwood was gone; there was something in having thus got rid of him that was like the payment, for a stamped receipt, of some debt too long on her mind.
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Chapter 33
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Rudderless Vessel:
After Ralph learns that Isabel is going to marry Osmond, the narrator captures Ralph’s despair using a simile and imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Ralph was shocked and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less.
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Chapter 55
Explanation and Analysis—Firm as a Rock:
At the end of the novel, when making his final plea to Isabel to leave Osmond and return to the United States with himself, Goodwood uses a simile:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“Why shouldn’t we be happy—when it’s here before us, when it’s so easy? I’m yours for ever—for ever and ever. Here I stand; I’m as firm as a rock […] You must save what you can of your life; you mustn’t lose it all simply because you’ve lost a part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look of the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the world. We’ve nothing to do with all that; we’re quite out of it; we look at things as they are.”
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