LIX explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Sorrow and Melancholy

  Isabel's constant weeping and patient mourning over the basil plant embody deep sorrow.

• Love and Loss

  Isabel's devotion to the basil plant reflects her enduring love and grief for Lorenzo.

Characters to notice

• Isabel

  Isabel is depicted as devotedly tending to her basil plant, weeping over it and rarely leaving its side.

• Basil

  The basil plant is the object of Isabel's obsessive care and mourning.

Key passages

• “Therefore they watch’d a time when they might sift This hidden whim; and long they watch’d in vain; For seldom did she go to chapel-shrift, And seldom felt she any hunger-pain: And when she left, she hurried back, as swift As bird on wing to breast its eggs again: And, patient as a hen-bird, sat her there Beside her Basil, weeping through her hair.”

  So her brothers waited for a chance to uncover her secret, but they watched for a long time without success. She rarely went to confession or felt hunger, and when she did leave, she rushed back as quickly as a bird returning to its nest. Patiently, like a mother hen, she sat by her basil plant, weeping with her hair falling around her.

  This passage describes Isabel's obsessive mourning and her brothers' frustrated attempts to discover her secret.