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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Poverty and Equality:
The tenth chapter begins with background information about Lucy's father and her family's social standing. Before Lucy went to Italy, her understanding of the world was largely formed by her immediate social circles. The narrator uses a simile to explain Lucy's conception of the outside world before her trip:
Life, so far as she troubled to conceive it, was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and identical foes. In this circle one thought, married, and died. Outside it were poverty and vulgarity, for ever trying to enter, just as the London fog tries to enter the pine-woods, pouring through the gaps in the northern hills.
Until Lucy goes to Italy, she understands society as a circle that she belongs to, and she thinks that poverty and vulgarity—like the London fog—attempt to spread into this circle. The image of the fog is notable, as fog is hard to get ahold of and is an ever-present menace. When Lucy goes to Italy, however, her worldview changes. The narrator goes on to describe her conception of the world through nature similes:
But in Italy, where anyone who chooses may warm himself in equality, as in the sun, this conception of life vanished. [...] You jump over them just as you jump into a peasant’s olive-yard in the Apennines, and he is glad to see you. She returned with new eyes.
On her trip, Lucy recognizes the value of striving for equality. Encountering working-class Italians and, perhaps more so, encountering middle-class British people like the Emersons shows Lucy that people who do not share her social standing are nothing like a fog. Although her new conviction that social barriers can be jumped over as easily as one jumps into a peasant's olive-yard seems excessively naive, the simile does speak to the progressive aspirations her trip gave her. Lucy no longer sees life as "a circle of rich, pleasant people" in which "one thought, married, and died," and this new perspective excites her as well as alienates her from her family.
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