Jenny struggles with her emotions

Jenny struggles with her emotions

Literature--Twentieth Century--Sean O'Faolain--Lough Derg

Jenny struggles with her sense of spirituality as she completes the circuits of the penitentian beds

Sean O'Faolain, 1900-1991

The Lovers of the Lake', in The Collected Stories of Sean O'Faolain, Vol. 2, pp. 18-43, here pp. 26-27

Constable and Company, London

1981

Citation for the purposes of criticism

Edited edition

English

Collection of short stories

DD_0240

54.608913,-7.870977

“A slur of wet feet; patter of rain on leaded windows; smells of bog water and damp clothing; the thousand voices responding to the incantations. At her right a young girl of about seventeen was uttering heartfelt responses. On her left an old man in his sixties gave them out loudly. On all sides, before her, behind her, the same passionate exchange of energy, while all she felt was a crust hardening about her heart, and she thought, in despair, ‘I have no more feeling than a stone!’ And she thought, looking about her, that tonight this vigil would go on for hour after hour until the dark, leaded windows coloured again in the morning night. She leaned her face in her palms and whispered. ‘O God, please let me out of myself!’ The waves of voices beat and rumbled in her ears as in an empty shell.”

Short stories