SOURCE: Freeman, Barbara Claire. “The Awakening: Waking Up at the End of the Line.” In The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction, pp. 13-39. Berkley: University of California Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Freeman explores the notion of the sublime in The Awakening.

The sublime does not so properly persuade us, as it ravishes and transports us, and produces in us a certain Admiration, mingled with Astonishment and with Surprize, which is quite another thing than the barely pleasing, or the barely persuading: that it gives a noble Vigour to a Discourse, an invincible Force, which commits a pleasing Rape upon the very Soul of the Reader.

(John Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry)

You can't make a political “program” with it, but you can bear witness to it.—And what if no one hears the testimony, etc.?

(Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend)

Love is...