Shards of the Past // Ian Blair

    "So long as time flows like the sand in the hour glass, there will be those of us who all the more romanticize our pasts..." - Ian Blair. Cool quote right? I typically don't draw on my poetry/rap background much these days because of the mixed bag of reactions I get when I do use it, but I think this sentiment ties in with the point I want to make about our dear girl Esther, specifically in chapter XXXVI. The changing of her appearance after her illness is still fresh on her mind at this point in the story, and Esther, as previously revealed just a couple chapters before, notes to the reader that Mr. Woodcourt may have harbored feelings for her at a past moment in time. In Chesney Wold, we find out the other half of the equation with Esther opening up about her own response:

"I had kept Mr. Woodcourt's flowers. When they were withered I had dried them, and put them in a book that I was fond of. Nobody knew of this, not even Ada. . . I wished to be generous to him, even in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because I could have loved him-could have been devoted to him. At last I came to the conclusion that I might keep them; if I treasured them only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to be looked back on any more, in any other light." (Dickens, 445).

    Sheesh, and I thought this was supposed to be a romantic novel- oh who am I kidding, it's Dickens! The story's mysterious and brooding vibe has to continue in ever-changing forms, otherwise it gets stale. That acknowledged, I can't really blame Esther for having a normal reaction to an event like this; however, she also can't afford to dwell on it either. By keeping the flowers, Esther still tries to hold on to a past "what if?" that is not going to help her grow as an individual; it shows that she (at least a part of her) thinks that her most desirable days are behind her when she has yet to really make her mark on the world yet! Her beauty may have been great in detail before her illness, but I think she understands that she still has the majority of her life still in front of her; and that she, in time, will grow past this. In present day, I feel like we sometimes get so caught up in the things we've lived that we don't realize that life is happening NOW, with OR without us to experience the best of it. I could keep driving the point home, but I think the gospel of Luke hits this right on the head: Luke 9:62; "But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

I commented on Abigale's and Taylor's posts.

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