泛读读后感

Books are something that promote the development of mankind, therefore, the more books you have read, the better. Recently, I have read a book named Passion Flowers in Winter, which impresses me greatly.

The leading character of this book is Mary Delany, who born in 1700. Being a remarried woman, Mrs. Delany began her life's work at the age of seventy-three, which for nearly all women or even men, is an age that means retirement and a leisure life time. I wonder how could she possess such a great enthusiasm towards life, even though at seventy-three, which set her apart from the ordinary.

Also, besides her passion, her patience is, beyond question, very impressing. It was Mrs. Delany who invented the precursor of what we call collage. To make a collage, one need to drench the front of white laid paper with India ink, waited for it to dry, and then began to paste hundreds into the thousands — of the tiniest slices of brightly colored paper onto the background. It is really a complex work that requires great patience.

The author looks forward to searching for a role model, and Mary Delany is the best choice.

Mrs. Delany was born Miss Mary Granville, in the beginning of eighteen century. She was the first daughter of Colonel Bernard Granville, who was the second son of his family. And because of her uncle, who was busily consolidating his political power, Mary got to know a sixty-year-old drunken squire, who fascinated her. But one day later, the uncle informed her that he had found an ideal suitor for her, one who could provide a large house and an income. In an effort to help support her family, Mary said yes to Pendarves. However, things did not go well because actually, the man was so badly poor and their living condition was so dark, dank, and gloomy that Mary heard a heavy door clang shut on her life.

The author’s mother, graduating early from high school, lived with her parents at the age of sixteen and led a comfortable life. To support her family better,

Mrs. Peacock packed her car to head for a new life in California. However, because of invasion, she canceled her plan and got a assembly-line job at Bell Aircraft, where she was given a chance to meet her husband, the nephew of her boss.

Mary took care of her husband, Alexander Pendarves, who suffered from gout and died in 1726. After his death, the young Mary traveled to Dublin, where she met Dr. Patrick Delany, a man she would marry soon after. Their sweet marriage lasted for twenty-five years, allowing Mary time and space to enjoy her life.

However, by contrast, the author’s mother divorced at forty-five and got a job as a secretary in a hospital. And the author, the same as Mrs. Delany, remarried the man who had been the boy she had dated in high school and led a happy life. After Patrick Delany’s death, Mary began the work of her life— collages. Maybe her education of the art of cutting silhouettes in Mademoiselle Puelle’s school has been preparing her since she was a little child. But for the author, the eye-hand coordination required to make these silhouettes defeats her before she even start to imagine the steps.

Mrs. Peacock possessed a silhouette of the author, which did by the author’s teacher in the early 1950s, who moves the author because she cared so much for details. Mary Delany was also such a careful woman that it is as if she delved into the details of her happiness and the collages, in fact, became her next life.

And the end of the twenty-year lockup of her marriage, Mrs. Peacock had the Great Throw Out. She called both of her daughters and asked for their suggestions. After that, Mrs. Peacock began a new life, which she seemed to fill out her own outline, to embody her silhouette. She cared for all her family until each of them died and went on working and after they were all gone, she pitched drawerfuls of paper goods. Despite of her throwing out, the author did not think that she was moving on, because throwing out only closed a door against the past.

When the author visited the mansion where Mary Delany once lived, she found a matter of class between them as well as a substantial difference in their wealth. Mrs. Denaly was related to royalty, to kings and queens, and her living circumstance was so pretty. By contrast, the author’s branch of the family were farmers and small-business people on her mother’s side, truck drivers and factory workers on her father’s and she lived in a house with no foundation, just a dirt crawl space underneath.

Mrs. Delany had no children and survived her mourning after the death of her husband by diving down through the ocean of everyday life to an ocean floor of meditative, repetitive making. She took her exercise and walked for miles, which, by contrast with Mrs. Peacock, whose motto was People never change, was a positive attitude towards life. Fortunately, despite her motto, Mrs. P. did change. There’s hope. An imagination activated a vision of a future life.

The author herself was sick of the loneliness of leaving her working-class family, although it was filled with depression and alcoholism, a family was always a family, no one could change the fact. Mrs. Peacock encouraged her daughter to make her own life, and the author liked to be doing things, creating things, going places, which was led by Mary Delany, her role model long past adolescence.