Genre:

Novel, Serial

Subjects:

Entomology, Animal Behaviour

    Describes the 'moth-like weakness, ignorance, and blindness' of Joseph Cradell (788–89), and suggests that, like the lovelorn Cradell, when 'the unfortunate moth in his semi-blindness whisks himself and his wings within the flame of the candle, and finds himself mutilated and tortured, he even then will not take the lesson, but returns again and again until he is destroyed' (788). Later, Lily Dale tells Adolphus Crosbie that in the six weeks since they met, 'I've left off being a grub, and begun to be a butterfly [...] my real position in the world,—that for which I would fain hope that I was created,—opened to me only when I knew you' (794).

Reprinted:

Trollope 1864