Mr_Shank

I don’t think that I can live up to Mallory’s last 4 1/2 page post, so I won’t try. 

Instead,  I’m going to help you guys with some difficult words, the get on to the summary.

The first disgustingly ridiculous word that I found was Ægean.  First off, this word has a combined A and E, which automatically make it a doozie.  The A and the E combined, æ, is actually a letter in many other languages.  As you can imagine, it is pronounced like it is to separate letters side by side, AE.  On page 92, Ægean is used.  In this case it is simply referring to the Aegean sea.  So this word doesn’t really have a hard definition, but it is confusing because of the Æ.

This word fortunately uses all standard letters, but unfortunately is a lot more difficult.  The word superciliousness makes it’s debut on page 92. Superciliousness is defined by WordReference.com as “the trait of displaying arrogance by patronizing those considered inferior.“   As you can imagine, it is used to describe Eustacia’s feelings for Diggory Venn the Reddleman.

I found this word worthy of discussion due again to strange letter.  On page 104…

…As I gazed down on my paper to find the word of which I was about to define, a far more challenging word caught my eye, so I instead chose to define it.  The word I was going to talk about was manœuvring.  Again note this use of fancy letters.  Anyway…

The new word that I saw is disparagement. It means “the act of speaking contemptuously of.”  You guessed it, this one is also used by the always friendly Eustacia Vye!  Diggory Venn uses this word in his conversation with her on page 104 to describe the way she is talking to him.

Another word frequently used throughout this section was mummers.  Mummers are actors, as you could have guessed, but I thought this word was worthy to be in this post because of the infrequency of its use in or lives.

I think that those are sufficient words for this section, so I’ll skip right along to the summary.

This section begins with Diggory Venn meeting with Eustacia Vye.  After a long conversation which spans many a page, Eustacia tells him to go away.  Nothing was really acomplished during their long winded discussion except Eustacia becoming aware of Diggory’s affection for Thomasin.  Later, Diggory expresses his love for Thomasin to Thomasin’s Aunt.  She responds by telling Wildeve that their is another suitor after Thomasin’s hand.  Wildeve is pretty cool with this, because he’s tight with Eustacia, but learns that Eustacia really isn’t interested in him when he is only wanted by herself.  With Wildeve not exciting anymore, Eustacia goes looking for adventure.  She convinces a mummer to trade places with her so that she can act in the Christmas play.  The whole purpose to being in the play was to get closer to Clym Yeobright.  The section comes to  close when Eustacia goes to the plays final performance and attempts to contact Clym.  

(Clym Yeobright is the Native that is returning as alluded to by the title.)

And finally, at long last, I finish this post with a question.  This has crossed my mind many times while reading the book.  How do you visualize Eustacia and Thomasin?  Give some details, try to be descriptive.

Edit- Haha I was reading over this and realized I didn’t put my name in it.  That would have been unfortunate.

Double Edit-  2/22/09 (Sunday) 11:29 AM:  I Can’t find Adam’s Blog yet! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! And he already responded to this one so he won’t see this message!!!

Brian Wawrzyniak