A Life's Morning

For the final failure of his plot Dagworthy was in no wise prepared. He had anticipated prolonged scenes, passionate pleadings, appeals to his better nature, and to his shame; but that his threat should prove ineffectual was not among his fears. … his reckless egoism based its confidence on the presumed existence of heroic self-devotion in his victim.

Blackmail plot fails against Emily's refusal of self-immolation — love, milltown coercion, and renunciation lock before the six-year leap — so plot scores 88.

The last to enter the room was the governess, Miss Emily Hood. Mr. Athel, having pronounced a grace, mentioned that he thought of running up to town; did anybody wish to give him a commission?

Emily enters as hired presence at the Athel table — governess status named before romance — Wilfrid, Dagworthy, Beatrice later individuated against that hire — so cast scores 87.

Let time and change do their work for six years and six months, their building and their destroying, their ripening for love, their ripening for death. Then we take our way to the Capital… There, last night, the young member for a Surrey borough made his maiden speech; his name, Mr. Wilfrid Athel.

Mid-book crisis then explicit six-year jump to Parliament — tempo dilates by design after Dunfield knot — so pace scores 83.

Wilfrid, whose battle with circumstances was all before him, declined to believe that the body was anything but the very humble servant of the will. So the body took its revenge.

Will and body named in two dry sentences — character as overwork without romantic haze — so prose scores 88.

Not the least of many mysteries in the natural history of the Cartwrights was, how they all managed to bestow themselves in the house which they occupied. … Mrs. Cartwright and her five grown-up daughters, together with a maid-servant, lived, moved, and had their being in an abode consisting of six rooms, a cellar, and a lumber closet.

Dunfield squeeze-house comedy maps provincial class decline beside mill and Levels — world as room-count and district — so world scores 86.

Wilfrid Athel went down invalided a few days after the beginning of Trinity term. The event was not unanticipated. At Christmas it had been clear enough that he was overtaxing himself…

Invalided Oxford opening establishes nervous ambition before Emily — inviting character comedy of will — so hook scores 85.

Starting from a knowledge of the close affection between Emily and her father, the logic of desire had abundant arguments to prove that the girl must and could act in but one way. Dagworthy's was not an original mind; the self-immolation of daughters…

Wooing as calculated daughter-sacrifice — governess plot rewritten as blackmail logic — so innov scores 86.

'Where does she find her strength? Is her nature so spotless that self-sacrifice is her highest joy? Wilfrid, I could have asked pardon at her feet; my heart bled for her.' … 'Take your love from me and you take my life.'

Emily's awe at Beatrice's surrender seals the morning's storm as mid-day marriage without melodrama death — so ending scores 87.