Sentence No. 30 · 26 April 2026
A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Kate Chopin — The Awakening (1899) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The subordinate clause opens with "as if," signalling a hypothetical comparison — this conjunction always introduces an imagined condition, never a fact. Spotting "as if" tells you its phrase belongs inside the clause that follows the main statement, not before it.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. Edna Pontellier, swimming alone in the sea for the first time, discovers something that has no name yet. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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