Read the following passage carefully:
The clock on the mantelpiece struck five, its chime muffled by the heavy velvet drapes that kept the afternoon heat at bay. For a moment, Marian remained motionless, her pen hovering over the blank sheet of parchment. It was the same desk her father had used during the long winter of the fever, when the house fell into a silence so absolute that the scratching of his steel nib was the only proof of life in the north wing. Now, the summer air carried the faint, salt-tinged scent of the tide coming in, a reminder that the harbor lay just beyond the cliffs. She lowered the pen, her fingers tracing the ink stain near the inkwell—a dark, star-shaped blotch he had left there on the night he decided to sell the orchard. How fiercely she had protested then, believing the old trees to be the very anchor of their family. Yet, looking out at the shimmering bay today, she realized that the sale had not been an ending, but a release. The tide would rise, washing away the salt-marsh grass, and by evening the fishermen would return with their nets full. She stood up, smoothing the front of her linen dress, and turned her back on the desk, ready at last to meet the visitor waiting in the hall.
How does the author’s use of temporal shifts and memory within the narrative sequence contribute to the overall meaning of the passage?
- AIt provides a chronological summary of the family's decline from the winter of the fever to the final sale of the orchard.
- BIt establishes the harbor and the incoming tide as literal physical obstacles that prevent Marian from leaving the house.
- It juxtaposes Marian's past anxieties about familial loss with her present state of acceptance and readiness to move forward.Answer
- DIt reveals the author's critique of industrialization by contrasting the father's labor at the desk with the fishermen's traditional lifestyle.
- EIt highlights a bitter, unresolved conflict between Marian's desire for independence and her father's authoritarian rule.