A Loss of Happiness

"I, who once used to divert him with singing and dancing, in which he greatly delighted, could not, since I grew religious, do it any longer. My singing was turned into mourning, and my dancing into lamenation." (Ashbridge 19)

- Elizabeth Ashbridge

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Analysis

     Ashbridge is like a dancer, a poet, an artist or a musician who lost her touch to the art with which she could make because of a worldly realization. Her becoming a Quaker is the realization for artists that their art may not be enough to express the world. Outside the door of their artistic world, a bolder world suffers, and is sometimes cruel, to one another. A loss of happiness for Ashbridge is also a loss of innocence within that happiness. An unfortunate imbalance has been placed on Ashbridge's chest.

- Aaron Kennell