Hello fellow readers!
Here are my questions to help you read Part 3.
Please if you don’t mind, put your answers as comments on this post. You can of course also put them all together as a post on your own blog, but it’s easier for the conversation if we can centralize all our answers, so that we can comment on each other’s answers. Thanks!
Part 3: pp.339-448 [from ‘Catching Butterflies’ to ‘The Choice’ included]
Please share your favorite lines
Catching butterflies:
1. What are your impressions on Deborah?
Down the rabbit hole:
2. What do you like most in this chapter?
Resurrection
3. So by now, we know why Mr Frederick is watching in the cemetery, right? This seems to confirm what I found in the Fall of Icarus, part 2. Do you see what I mean?
The choice:
4. What do you think about the scene between Grace and Alfred??
5. “There was no choice.” p. 448. Do you agree with these last words of part 3? Was there really no choice for Grace. Would you have made the same decision?
Feel free to add your own questions
*** *** ***
November 26:
Part 4: pp.451-593 [from ‘Hannah’s Story’ to the end]
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Words And Peace 
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My favorite lines:
– “I am resigned to my future. It is the past that troubles.” p.369
– “I allow my gaze to tiptoe over the room.” p.403
– “I closed between us the doorway into what-might-have-been.” p.448
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1. What are your impressions on Deborah?
My first reaction was: here is now Mrs Danvers!!
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I really disliked her from the start, and it made me dread the kind of life that Hannah would have in that house and family. I wanted her to kick all the servants out and claim her position as the lady of the house, putting Deborah firmly back in her place.
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Absolutely, like a certain new lady coming in Manderley…
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I haven’t read Rebecca yet, so I missed all the similarities. Definitely need to get to that one next year! 🙂
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Yes! A great great classic, so well written, so modern I thought for its time as well.
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2. What do you like most in this chapter?
The mixing of the past and the present, and the presentation of the past as a violent wind making Grace collapse.
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It shows just how strongly the past can still affect Grace; it seems even more real to her than the present at this point.
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5. “There was no choice.” p. 448. Do you agree with these last words of part 3? Was there really no choice for Grace. Would you have made the same decision?
I think I would have chosen the future for my own family, than preserving the life of the persons I discovered were my sisters, but who were living in a different world than mine. I would have been turned more towards the future than the past.
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I think I would have absolutely picked my future over my job. I understand that the maid/lady relationship is different from an employee/employer and that they are also sisters, but I still think I would have chosen love.
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yes! what do you think this choice reveals about her character?
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I wasn’t surprised at all that Grace felt she had no choice, as she has always chosen to live through Hannah and Emmeline rather than prioritizing her own needs and dreams. I felt much worse for Alfred than I did for her–she seems happy enough to stay with Hannah, especially as she now believes her to be her true sister.
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You are right, that makes sense, we are used by now to seeing her putting her own feelings and needs behind.
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