Lucky’s Reviews > The Post-Office Girl > Status Update

Something had happened to her; she knew it herself. It was as though someone had sprinkled some venom into her eyes while she slept, so that now she saw the world in its light: everything was ugly, malignant, and hostile when viewed with malignant and hostile eyes. She began every day in a rage.

There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it. Thus the telegram causes Christine no new distress

And as she moves through the hotel that dazzled her before, through the lounge she adored, past the people like so many painted and well-dressed stones, she feels only one thing: hate for him, for everyone here, for all of them.

But now she's learned that, inexplicably, evil-minded people are looking into her nieces background: didn't it stand to reason that theyd include her too, that she herself would become the focus of attention? Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities.

In her giddiness, unable to imagine that everyone isn't burning with enthusiasm, isn't in a fever of high spirits, of passionate delight, she's lost her sense of balance. She's discovered herself for the first time in twenty-eight years, and the discovery is so intoxicating that she's forgetting everyone else.

Constantly courted by so many charming and elegant strange men, dizzy from being the center of such an intense circle of admirers, she shakes herself awake for a moment and wonders in bewilderment, "Who am I? Who am I really?" — She feels somehow uneasy in this company; it seems so friendly, yet she has a feeling of danger.

At home you can dream for months, years on end, in the creaky, broken-down wooden bed with the hard mattress at night, and at the ink-spotted work-table while the peasants are off in the fields, the clock on the wall like a sentinel, ticking inexorably and punctiliously. There, dreaming is better than being awake; here in this celestial world, sleep is a waste of time.

Soon boxes are flying off the shelves in the sports shop. They choose a sweater in a checkerboard plaid, a chamois belt that cinches the waist, a pair of fawn walking shoes with a pungent new smell, a cap, snug colorful sport stockings, and all sorts of odds and ends. In the fitting room Christine peels off the hated blouse like a dirty rind: the poverty she brought with her is packed out of sight in a cardboard box

Her first reaction is to marvel that anything like this can exist at all, so much gleaming magnificence. Her next thought is one that for years has been indissolubly linked to anything desir-able: what this must cost, how much money, what an incredible amount of money!

Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any feeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it. This first blow marks the end of Christine's unselfconsciousness.