Sophia also has restlesness. She forced her weak body to spy on Gerald. She even feels fatigue but she kept on following Gerald to know what he does behind
her. She sprang up, threw the book on the bed, and seized her gloves. She would
follow him, if she could. She would do what she had never done before-she would spy on him. Fighting against her lassitude, she descended the long
winding stairs, and peeped forth from the door way into the street p. 346. It is hard for Sophia to live in Paris that she even feels anxious about her
surroundings. Sophia experienced dejection. She shut herself in the hotel after Gerald left her. She also does not want to eat. Moreover, Sophia hides herself in
the darkness. „Madame is suffering?‟ the landlady began.
Sophia refused offers of food and nursing. „... Then madame has want of nothing?‟
„If you will extinguish the candle,‟ said Sophia p. 352. Another symptom is the lonely feeling. Sophia feels lonely too. She thinks
about herself as a foreign woman and deserves to be sick alone in Paris. She is trapped in her loneliness and preserves it.
She kept saying to herself, „I‟m all alone now, and I‟m going to be ill. Iam ill.‟ She saw herself dying in Paris, and heard the expression of facile
sympathy and idle curiosity drawn forth by the sight of the dead body of this foreign woman in a little Paris hotel p. 353.
3. Anxiety Attack
Gerald C. Davison in Abnormal Psychology and Eperimental Clinical identifies anxiety attack as:
A sudden and inexplicable attack of a host of jarring symptoms labored breathing, heart palpitations, chest pain, feelings of choking and smothering;
dizziness, sweating, and trembling; and intense apprehension, terror, and feelings of impending doom p. 128.
During her life, Sophia often shows the symptoms of anxiety attack. The clinical pictures like dizziness and terror appear during her life time in Paris.
Sophia‟s anxiety towards the circumstances, people, and lifestyle in Paris are painful enough since Gerald never listen to her opinion. She keeps her anxiety
alone. Sophia even does not make friends with anyone. She just follows Gerald‟s lifestyle.
Sophia has suffered from dizziness since she lives in Paris. It usually attacks her after a meal and certain situations. There are several description when the
dizziness attacks Sophia. It sometimes occurs while discussing with Gerald and walking on the street in Paris. This attack usually appears for five minutes.
H is warning against a repetition of „fuss‟ had reference to the gastric
dizziness from which she had been suffering for two years. It would take her usually after a meal. She did not swoon, but her head swam and she could not
stand. She would sink down wherever she happened to be, and, her face alarmingly white, murmur faintly, „My salts.‟ Within five minutes the attack
had gone and left no trace p. 343. Her anxiety towards the family is a terror for her. She has not written any
letter to her family in England. She thinks that she is nothing. When Gerald in crisis at the end, he brings her painful anxiety to the surface because he forces her
to write a letter to her family for money. Sophia faces it in silent. She does not do what Gerald asks her to. Then Gerald leaves her for good. After that she begins to
think about her family. Sophia is surrounded by terror in her mind because of her guilty abandoning her family.
There is an attack that Sophia does surprisingly. She wants to cut off her hair. The event happens when she thinks about Constance and her mother. She directly
screams and plans to cut her hair.
She cried aloud for a pair of scissors. She wanted to cut off her hair, and to send part of it to Constance and part of it to her mother, in separate packages.
She insisted upon separate packages. Nobody would give her a pair of scissors p. 360.
The anxiety attack becomes more dangerous when Sophia attacks someone just for scissors. While no one gives her a pair of scissors, she loses her control
and fights for scissors. It seemed to her shocking that all her hair should go with her into her coffin
while Constance and her mother had nothing by which to remember her, no tangible souvenir of her beauty. Then she fought for the scissors. She
clutched at some one-always through those baffling veils who was putting her into the bath by the bedside, and fought frantically p. 361.
4. Hysteria
