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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Lamps Like Sentinels:
When describing the sights Sophy takes in outside her window when unable to sleep, the narrator uses a simile, as seen in the following passage:
Taking no exercise, she often could not sleep, and would rise in the night or early morning and look out upon the then vacant thoroughfare, where the lamps stood like sentinels waiting for some procession to go by. An approximation to such a procession was indeed made every early morning about one o’clock, when the country vehicles passed up with loads of vegetables for Covent Garden market.
The narrator uses a simile when describing how the lamps along Sophy’s street “stood like sentinels waiting for some procession to go by.” (As the narrator notes, a procession does come by, in the form of country farmers bringing their vegetables to sell at market.)
This simile is significant in the way it captures Sophy’s loneliness in the city. She imagines that the lamps, like her, await the procession of the farmers. In reality, it is only her awake at that hour, reveling in these signs of rural life. As readers know by this point in the story, Sophy misses the rural village of Gaymead where she grew up and wishes she could live there, even if it means giving up the luxuries of her urban upper-class life.
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