"Do you fancy another word?" She asks, appearing excited to share her knowledge with her.
"Sure, why not?"
"This is one of my personal favorites."
--
"While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood...while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality..." (Bronte 77-78).
--
"Effluvia?" It feels weird coming off your tongue.
"It means a noxious vapor."
"So mortality is a noxious vapor."
"Not literally, no, but it is figuratively. Mortality is death, and noxious vapors are called noxious for a reason. Therefore..."
You complete her sentence in your head.
"Can I have an example of effluvia in a literal way, please?"
"The effluvia coming from the stove posed a threat to the home's inhabitants."
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Signet Classics, 2008. Print.
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