The Voyage Out

More English tourists arrive in Santa Marina. Helen is glad to have her villa to escape to. She notices that Rachel has become increasingly moody; at one moment, she’s happy, and in another, she seems very down. Helen doesn’t want to interfere too much in Rachel’s emotional process, but she’s acutely aware of what Rachel is going through. Rachel doesn’t tell Helen that she’s become infatuated with the idea of Terence Hewet. Hewet (whom she now calls Terence) sends her many notes, which Rachel holds onto and reads over and over. Rachel’s “mind [is] as the landscape outside when dark beneath clouds and straitly lashed by wind and hail” (271). Rachel doesn’t analyze or reflect on her feelings; she doesn’t admit to herself that she’s in love with Hewet. Because she’s never been in a courtship before, Rachel doesn’t think about how she can make plans to see Hewet; instead, she lets the days go by, maybe running into Terence and maybe not seeing him at all.

Rachel attends church service at the hotel with the other English tourists. Though she has attended many similar church services before in her life, at which she felt little more than a pleasant familiarity, here she finds herself for the first time paying skeptical attention.