Bakhtin2008

Victor escorted her out upon the banquette, lifted her parasol, and held
it over her while he walked to the car with her. He entreated her
to bear in mind that the disclosures of the afternoon were strictly
confidential. She laughed and bantered him a little, remembering too
late that she should have been dignified and reserved.

"How handsome Mrs. Pontellier looked!" said Madame Lebrun to her son.

"Ravishing!" he admitted. "The city atmosphere has improved her. Some
way she doesn't seem like the same woman."

He knew Mademoiselle Reisz a good deal better than he wanted to know
her, he informed his questioner. In truth, he did not want to know her
at all, or anything concerning her--the most disagreeable and unpopular
woman who ever lived in Bienville Street. He thanked heaven she had left
the neighborhood, and was equally thankful that he did not know where
she had gone.

"It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household,
and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be
better employed contriving for the comfort of her family."

"I feel like painting," answered Edna. "Perhaps I shan't always feel
like it."

"Then in God's name paint! but don't let the family go to the devil.
There's Madame Ratignolle; because she keeps up her music, she doesn't
let everything else go to chaos. And she's more of a musician than you
are a painter."

"She isn't a musician, and I'm not a painter. It isn't on account of
painting that I let things go."

Victor laughed sardonically as he thanked his mother for her holy wish,
of which he failed to see the benefit to anybody, except that it might
afford her a more ample opportunity and license to talk herself.

Monsieur Farival thought that Victor should have been taken out in
mid-ocean in his earliest youth and drowned. Victor thought there would
be more logic in thus disposing of old people with an established claim
for making themselves universally obnoxious. Madame Lebrun grew a trifle
hysterical; Robert called his brother some sharp, hard names.

"There's nothing much to explain, mother," he said; though he explained,
nevertheless--looking chiefly at Edna--that he could only meet the
gentleman whom he intended to join at Vera Cruz by taking such and such
a steamer, which left New Orleans on such a day; that Beaudelet was
going out with his lugger-load of vegetables that night, which gave him
an opportunity of reaching the city and making his vessel in time.

Sometimes--I
hope God will forgive me--but positively, sometimes I wish Victor would
lose the power of speech."

The letter was on the bookshelf. It possessed the greatest interest and
attraction for Edna; the envelope, its size and shape, the post-mark,
the handwriting. She examined every detail of the outside before opening
it. There were only a few lines, setting forth that he would leave the
city that afternoon, that he had packed his trunk in good shape, that
he was well, and sent her his love and begged to be affectionately
remembered to all. There was no special message to Edna except a
postscript saying that if Mrs. Pontellier desired to finish the book
which he had been reading to her, his mother would find it in his
room, among other books there on the table. Edna experienced a pang of
jealousy because he had written to his mother rather than to her.

"How do you get on without him, Edna?" he asked.

"It's very dull without him," she admitted. Mr. Pontellier had seen
Robert in the city, and Edna asked him a dozen questions or more. Where
had they met? On Carondelet Street, in the morning. They had gone
"in" and had a drink and a cigar together. What had they talked about?
Chiefly about his prospects in Mexico, which Mr. Pontellier thought
were promising. How did he look? How did he seem--grave, or gay, or how?
Quite cheerful, and wholly taken up with the idea of his trip, which
Mr. Pontellier found altogether natural in a young fellow about to seek
fortune and adventure in a strange, queer country.

The novel's epic
mode permits the writer to embed voices within voices (e.g., character
speech within narrator speech, narrator speech within authorial speech,
etc.), and to orchestrate a dialogue among them.  In Yonnondio,
for example, the layering of character speech within narrative discourse
allows Olsen to present a rich diversity of human voices and ideologies
on one hand, and on the other, to collect those diverse, particularized
voices and ideologies into a resounding social protest against an alien
capitalist society.