Progressive Derangement: Hannah’s Translation

9 Pages 2126 Words

here on), Hannah was captivated by India’s exquisiteness. “The sounds, shapes and hues swirling around her—the yellowness of the sand, for instance, the hollering of laborers—had a vibrancy that sucked all breath out of her chest.” She discovered new beauties with every waking glance. India seemed a feast for the eyes and she was destined to be guilty of the sin of gluttony. The air, the heat, the food, the people, the markets, everything seemed to hold some new sense of wonder which she had never experienced. It all seemed to overwhelm her in the beginning as she took appreciation in nearly every detail. She was awestruck by the appearance of the natives; “This was Hannah’s first vision of what she was to call the ‘perfected human form,’ angelic faces and straight, small-scaled, dignified bodies ‘as gilt or blush.’” She was also entranced by the beautiful materials abundant in the Coromandel. These “rich silks, brocades, cottons, in colors and combinations of colors that only a garden in high blossom could rival,” as well as all the rest that amazed her with it’s beauty, caused Hannah to displace any fears she had of encountering this strange new land. “Despite an inner voice that tried to summon up ancient fears of Turks and Ottomans and infidels, she couldn’t quite credit those Christian terrors.”
Hannah’s immediate enchantment with the land could be credited to her independence, her free spirit, and her strength as an individual, all of which were uncommon and unaccepted for women in those times. The fascinating beauty of the Coromandel Coast immediately lured Hannah’s spirit away from the familiar imprisonment of the Puritan norms as she wandered away from the Fortune into exploration of this undiscovered society. The magnetization on her spirit wa...