And she tried the high heels but she couldn't bring herself to prance.

She stayed there, in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, on a chair, without a fire, without a thought.

By the living jingo, she was all of a muck of sweat.

The woman was in abject misery—that worst of poverty, which is haunted by shame—the only relic left by better days. She shrunk from all efforts at recovery, refused to administer the medicines, and spoke of the child's death but as a blessing.
My God! and is the daily page of life
Darken'd with wretchedness like this?

After a few weeks of this she'd spend a whole day weeping, beating at herself as if on fire.

Words rolled forth from her lips, as they should from every human lip, red with shame. And as Rominka pulled the crust off her sins, she cried. Because it hurts to be left naked.

She’s sad because she’s drinking to be sad because she’s afraid that what she does not feel is actually a feeling. Typical post-modern Manhattan bullshit.

She fell into the moody, miserable state of mind which often comes when strong wills have to yield to the inevitable.

And while the lady would sometimes smile, she would often scowl and scold”

and she had altogether the air of a woman clipped and pruned by severe discipline, an under–brightness shining through from the depths which that discipline had not yet been able to reach.

Her ankles were wobbling in her tall black pumps, and I saw that it could not be an easy thing to be a drunken transvestite.

For seven days she lay in bed looking sullenly at the ceiling as though resenting the death she had cultivated for so many years. Like some people who cannot vomit despite horrible nausea, she lay there unable to die, resisting death as she had resisted life, frozen with resentment of process and change.

Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else.

She had never acquired in-between shades of character, had not had the opportunity. She had been utterly selfish, and was now selfless, because she had never become a whole person, did not like herself, or know herself. Nor had she ever gained sufficient wisdom to be properly horrified at what she meant to do. She couldn’t think that intensely.