“My lady had not fainted; she allowed the girl to assist her, and rose from the ground upon which she had grovelled. Her golden hair fell in loose, dishevelled masses about her ivory throat and shoulders; her face and lips were colourless; her eyes terrible in their unnatural light” (311).
I chose to close-read this short paragraph from LAS, which takes place after Lady Audley confesses her sinful life story to Sir Michael. The paragraph is broken into two long sentences, with extensive use of the semicolon. The first sentence contains most of the verbs, while the second holds lots of adjectives and nouns. Some verbs, such as “allowed” and “rose” are active, but “fainted” and “grovelled” are passive. I looked up “grovelled” in the OED and found that it is an archaic word meaning, “humiliated or debased”. These verbs are presented inconsistently in the sentence. “Grovelled” is the only verb with a negative connotation, but is placed at the end giving it a lasting impact. The following sentence describes Lady Audley’s features using concrete nouns and many adjectives. “Dishevelled” is another archaic word from this time period meaning “disarranged or disordered dress; untidy” (OED). Most of the adjectives describe Lady Audley adversely, even her “golden” hair is “dishevelled.” This makes “unnatural” the most important word in the paragraph. Following the most unsympathetic adjective, “terrible,” regarding her eyes, the narrator adds that they aren’t normal. This implies that Lady Audley is not normal in this state, symbolizing her disease. The two sentences are opposite in that one ends with Lady Audley “humiliating” the ground while the other presumes her mental health the cause of her wrongdoings. Structuring this description to end with “unnatural” suggests that the narrator doesn’t entirely loathe Lady Audley despite her sins.
great focus on parts of speech here. a couple of suggestions: you may be overreading “unnatural,” since that word is describing not LA but the light in her eyes (can that really be indicative of mental illness?). and a bit more of a point-of-view would help you transition from sentence to sentence, something as simple as a consistent juxtaposition of how the two sentences function.