“Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head peeping out of the lurid mass of colour, as if out of a raging furnace. Indeed, the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely-painted background, all combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an agreeable one” (p. 65)
In this description of the painting of Lady Audley, adjectives dominate the passage and are pretty consistent through out the paragraph. The descriptive adjectives and nouns used, such as “flames”, “raging”, “gleaming”, and “scarlet”, portray a fiery aspect of Lady Audley. The adjective crimson is used twice to emphasize the power that the painter thinks Lady Audley has. The use of the color red in this paragraph, usually representing strength, power, extreme love, or malice, makes Lady Audley seem not so innocent. At first I viewed the character of Lady Audley to have long, wavy blonde hair, but the portrayal of the red tinge in her hair in this passage makes her seem even more rebellious. The sentences in this paragraph are rather long, separated by lots of commas. This sentence structure is used to emphasize each individual descriptive word for the reader to feel as if they are looking at the painting and are experiencing what is being described. Several examples of figurative language are used in this passage. Her dress, hanging in folds, “looked like flames”. This imagery depicts Lady Audley as intense and strong, and possibly angry. The painting describes her “fair head peeping out of the lurid mass of color, as if out of a raging furnace”. This description makes Lady Audley seem fierce, yet at the same time not completely menacing because her head is described as “fair”, which makes it seem like everything around her is causing her to be so aggressive and intense.
i like your final point–it might be worth exploring throughout the paragraph! there’s a good level of specificity here, but you need a little more explicitness. for instance, how do long sentences with lots of commas emphasize each word and replicate the experience of looking at a painting?