This passage is excerpted from George Gissing, New Grub Street. Originally published in 1891. Reardon was a newly successful author and had married, but soon found himself unable to write. Following a conversation with his wife, he takes a walk and thinks about the time just before his wedding.www.satpanda.com
And the words sang about him, filled the air with a mad pulsing of intolerable joy, made him desire to fling himself in passionate humility at her feet, to weep hot tears, to cry to her in insane worship. He thought her beautiful beyond anything his heart had imagined; her warm gold hair was the rapture of his eyes and of his reverent hand. Though slenderly fashioned, she was so gloriously strong. 'Not a day of illness in her life,' said Mrs. Yule, and one could readily believe it.
She spoke with such a sweet decision. Her 'I love you!' was a bond with eternity. In the simplest as in the greatest things she saw his wish and acted frankly upon it. No pretty petulance, no affectation of silly-sweet languishing, none of the weaknesses of woman. And so exquisitely fresh in her twenty years of maidenhood, with bright young eyes that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come.
He went about like one dazzled with excessive light. He talked as he had never talked before, recklessly, 20exultantly, insolentlyâin the nobler sense. He made friends on every hand; he welcomed all the world to his bosom; he felt the benevolence of a god.
'I love you!' It breathed like music at his ears when he fell asleep in weariness of joy; it awakened him on 25the morrow as with a glorious ringing summons to renewed life. Delay? Why should there be delay? Amy wished nothing but to become his wife. Idle to think
of his doing any more work until he sat down in the home of which she was mistress. His brain burned with visions of the books he would henceforth write, but his hand was incapable of anything but a love-letter. And what letters! Reardon never published anything equal to those. 'I have received your poem,' Amy replied
to one of them. And she was right; not a letter, but a poem he had sent her, with every word on fire.
Which choice best describes a major theme of the passage?
A. The internal battle between true love and self-doubt
B. The unequivocal joy of marital bliss
C. The destructive power of encroaching poverty
D. The fear of never reaching one's ultimate According to the narrator, when the woman he loved learned of his feelings for her, she
A. pledged her undying affection in return.
B. dedicated herself to her maidenhood.
C. reconsidered her prior refusal of his advances.
D. wrote her own book of poetry.www.satpanda.com