The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen
1904
In the summer of 1901, a woman with a carriage, a coachman, a maid, and a knitting companion set off to explore the Baltic island of Rügen. What could have been a stuffy Edwardian holiday becomes, in Elizabeth von Arnim's hands, a ravishing comedy of manners and misadventures. She encounters a bishop's wife with designs on a personable son, a dressmaker with opinions, and astonishingly, a long-lost cousin perpetually evading her professor husband's pursuit. Through it all, her friend knits. And knits. And knits. Von Arnim transforms the simple act of traveling through prettier landscapes into a meditation on freedom, wit, and the small rebellions available to women who refuse to be bored. Her prose cracks with self-deprecating humor and the particular pleasure of noticing what others miss. This is travel literature at its most disarming: a woman alone, finding the world hilarious, and refusing to look away.
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“[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“There is nothing so absolutely bracing for the soul as the frequent turning of one's back on duties.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“How good it is to look sometimes across great spaces, to lift one’s eyes from narrowness, to feel the large silence that rests on lonely hills!””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“I have a peculiar capacity for doing nothing and yet enjoying myself.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“It was a place to bless God in and cease from vain words.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“Put out? My dear Gertrud, I have been thinking of very serious things. You cannot expect me to frolic along paths of thought that lead to mighty and unpleasant truths. Why should I always smile? I am not a Cheshire cat.’‘I trust the gracious one will come in now and enter her bed,’ said Gertrud decidedly, who had never heard of Cheshire cats, and was sure that the mention of them indicated a brain in need of repose.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“It might have been the entrance to some holy place, so strange and solemn was the quiet; and looking from out of its shadows to the brightness shining at the upper end where the sun was flooding the bracken with happy morning radiance, I felt suddenly that my walk had ceased to be a common thing, and that I was going up into the temple of God to pray.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“What a place for him who intends to pass an examination, to write a book, or who wants the crumples got by crushing together too long with his fellows to be smoothed out of his soul.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“Oh Gertrud,' I cried, intolerably stirred by the bare mention of thatbed, 'this is a bleak and mischievous world, isn't it? Do you think weshall ever be warm and comfortable and happy again?””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
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Arnim, Elizabeth Von. The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-adventures-of-elizabeth-in-r-gen-20cbce75-5474-47e2-8606-ea6216b5f7c6.Arnim, E. V. (1904). The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-adventures-of-elizabeth-in-r-gen-20cbce75-5474-47e2-8606-ea6216b5f7c6Arnim, Elizabeth Von. The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-adventures-of-elizabeth-in-r-gen-20cbce75-5474-47e2-8606-ea6216b5f7c6.
