Blanche Stroeve Character Analysis

Her black dress, simple to austerity, suggested her bereaved condition, and I was innocently astonished that notwithstanding a real emotion she was able to dress the part she had to play according to her notions of seemliness.

“Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist.”

Their life in its own way was an idyll, and it managed to achieve a singular beauty.

[T]here was in his face an outrageous sensuality; but, though it sounds nonsense, it seemed as though his sensuality were curiously spiritual.

Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind, and petulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad.

“Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed. It’s generally a gesture to arouse pity or terror in their lover.”

Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. […] It was not only the bold simplification of the drawing which showed so rich and so singular a personality; it was not only the painting, though the flesh was painted with a passionate sensuality which had in it something miraculous; it was not only the solidity, so that you felt extraordinarily the weight of the body; there was also a spirituality, troubling and new[.]

It may be that in rogues the writer gratifies instincts deep-rooted in him, which the manners and customs of a civilized world have forced back to the mysterious recesses of the subconscious. In giving to the character of his invention flesh and bones he is giving life to that part of himself which finds no other means of expression. His satisfaction is a sense of liberation.

“She had a wonderful body, and I wanted to paint a nude. When I’d finished my picture I took no more interest in her.”

Here lies the unreality of fiction. For in men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes its place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life […] As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

I suppose that art is a manifestation of the sexual instinct […]. It is possible that Strickland hated the normal release of sex because it seemed to him brutal by comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation.

“She leaves me alone […]. She cooks my food and looks after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me what I want from a woman.”

Her black dress, simple to austerity, suggested her bereaved condition, and I was innocently astonished that notwithstanding a real emotion she was able to dress the part she had to play according to her notions of seemliness.

“Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist.”

Their life in its own way was an idyll, and it managed to achieve a singular beauty.

[T]here was in his face an outrageous sensuality; but, though it sounds nonsense, it seemed as though his sensuality were curiously spiritual.

Blanche Stroeve was in the cruel grip of appetite. Perhaps she hated Strickland still, but she hungered for him, and everything that had made up her life till then became of no account. She ceased to be a woman, complex, kind, and petulant, considerate and thoughtless; she was a Maenad.

“Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed. It’s generally a gesture to arouse pity or terror in their lover.”

Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. […] It was not only the bold simplification of the drawing which showed so rich and so singular a personality; it was not only the painting, though the flesh was painted with a passionate sensuality which had in it something miraculous; it was not only the solidity, so that you felt extraordinarily the weight of the body; there was also a spirituality, troubling and new[.]

It may be that in rogues the writer gratifies instincts deep-rooted in him, which the manners and customs of a civilized world have forced back to the mysterious recesses of the subconscious. In giving to the character of his invention flesh and bones he is giving life to that part of himself which finds no other means of expression. His satisfaction is a sense of liberation.

“She had a wonderful body, and I wanted to paint a nude. When I’d finished my picture I took no more interest in her.”

Here lies the unreality of fiction. For in men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes its place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life […] As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

I suppose that art is a manifestation of the sexual instinct […]. It is possible that Strickland hated the normal release of sex because it seemed to him brutal by comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation.

“She leaves me alone […]. She cooks my food and looks after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me what I want from a woman.”