Poetry · Chapter
XLVII explained
Isabel, in her grief, finds a soiled glove that she had embroidered with purple fantasies.
What happens
Isabel, in her grief, finds a soiled glove that she had embroidered with purple fantasies. She kisses it with a cold, stone-like lip and places it in her bosom, where it dries and freezes against her skin. She then resumes her work, only pausing occasionally to throw back her veiling hair.
Themes in this chapter
Sorrow and Melancholy
Isabel's actions—kissing a soiled glove with a chill lip and freezing it against her bone—embody profound sorrow and melancholy.
Love and Loss
The glove, a token of lost love, is cherished and mourned over, highlighting the theme of love and loss.
Characters to notice
- Isabel
Isabel mourns deeply, handling a soiled glove with a cold kiss and placing it in her bosom, then continues her work.
Key passages
“Soon she turn’d up a soiled glove, whereon Her silk had play’d in purple phantasies: She kiss’d it with a lip more chill than stone, And put it in her bosom, where it dries And freezes utterly unto the bone Those dainties made to still an infant’s cries;”
She soon found a dirty glove that she had once embroidered with purple designs. She kissed it with lips as cold as stone and placed it in her bosom, where it dried and froze against her skin, which was meant to soothe a baby's cries.
Isabel's grief is palpable as she treats the glove as a relic of her lost love, her coldness symbolizing her emotional numbness.
“Then ’gan she work again; nor stay’d her care, But to throw back at times her veiling hair.”
Then she began to work again, not stopping her sorrowful care except to occasionally toss back her hair that veiled her face.
Isabel's relentless work and the gesture of throwing back her hair show her obsessive mourning and distraction.