Bad Dreams

by

Tessa Hadley

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Bad Dreams Quotes

Something had happened, she was sure, while she was asleep. She didn’t know what it was at first, but the strong dread it had left behind didn’t subside with the confusion of waking. Then she remembered that this thing had happened inside her sleep, in her dream.

Related Characters: The Girl
Related Symbols: The Girl’s Book
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:

Susan lived to a ripe old age. Susan was the dullest of the Swallows, tame and sensible, in charge of cooking and housekeeping. Still, the idea of her ‘ripe old age’ was full of horror: wasn’t she just a girl, with everything ahead of her?

Related Characters: The Girl
Related Symbols: The Girl’s Book
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

When she was younger she had called to her mother if she woke in the night, but something stopped her from calling out now: she didn’t want to tell anyone about this. Once the words were said aloud, she would never be rid of them; it was better to keep them hidden.

Related Characters: The Girl, The Mother
Related Symbols: The Girl’s Book
Page Number: 116-117
Explanation and Analysis:

She had read about moonlight, but had never taken in its reality before; it made the lampshade of Spanish wrought iron, which had always hung from a chain in the hallway, seem suddenly as barbaric as a cage or a portcullis in a castle.

Related Characters: The Girl
Page Number: 117-118
Explanation and Analysis:

[…] sometimes she felt a pang of fear for her father, as if he were exposed and vulnerable […]. She never feared in the same way for her mother: her mother was capable; she was the whole world.

Related Characters: The Girl, The Mother , The Father
Related Symbols: The Trumpet Case
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:

The reality of the things in the room seemed more substantial to the child than she was herself—and she wanted in a sudden passion to break something, to disrupt this world of her home, sealed in its mysterious stillness, where her bare feet made no sound on the lino or the carpets.

Related Characters: The Girl
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:

Perhaps he’d like bacon for his breakfast—she had saved up her housekeeping to buy him some. His mother had cooked bacon for him every morning.

Related Characters: The Mother , The Father
Page Number: 123
Explanation and Analysis:

This time, for once, she was clearly in the right, wasn’t she? He had been childish, giving way to his frustration—as if she didn’t feel fed up sometimes. And he criticised her for her bad temper!

Related Characters: The Mother , The Father
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:

[…] she seemed to see the future with great clarity, looking forward through a long tunnel of antagonism, in which her husband was her enemy. This awful truth appeared to be something she had always known, though in the past it had been clouded in uncertainty and now she saw it starkly.

Related Characters: The Mother , The Father
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:

But he came at some point to stand behind his wife at the stove and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck, kissing her behind her ear, and she leaned back into his kiss, as she always did, tilting her head to give herself to him.

Related Characters: The Mother , The Father
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.