"The name, like a sudden spark of electric fire, seemed for a moment to suspend his faculties--for a moment he was transfixed; but recovering, he caught Belcour's hand, and cried--'Stop! stop! I beseech you, name not the lovely Julia and the wretched Montraville in the same breath."
— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for William Lane, at the Minerva
Date
1791, 1794
Metaphor
"The name, like a sudden spark of electric fire, seemed for a moment to suspend his faculties--for a moment he was transfixed; but recovering, he caught Belcour's hand, and cried--'Stop! stop! I beseech you, name not the lovely Julia and the wretched Montraville in the same breath."
Metaphor in Context
"With Julia Franklin," said Belcour. The name, like a sudden spark of electric fire, seemed for a moment to suspend his faculties--for a moment he was transfixed; but recovering, he caught Belcour's hand, and cried--'Stop! stop! I beseech you, name not the lovely Julia and the wretched Montraville in the same breath. I am a seducer, a mean, ungenerous seducer of unsuspecting innocence. I dare not hope that purity like her's would stoop to unite itself with black, premeditated guilt: yet by heavens I swear, Belcour, I thought I loved the lost, abandoned Charlotte till I saw Julia--I thought I never could forsake her; but the heart is deceitful, and I now can plainly discriminate between the impulse of a youthful passion, and the pure flame of disinterested affection."
(II.xxiv, pp. 52-3; p. 93 in Penguin edition)
(II.xxiv, pp. 52-3; p. 93 in Penguin edition)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Susanna Rowson, Charlotte: A Tale of Truth (London: Minerva Press, 1791). Republished in America: Charlotte: A Tale of Truth (Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1794). <Link to UVA Special Collections> <Link to UVA E-Text Center>
Text from U.Va. edition. Reading in Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, ed. Ann Douglas (New York: Penguin, 1991).
Text from U.Va. edition. Reading in Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, ed. Ann Douglas (New York: Penguin, 1991).
Date of Entry
05/29/2013
