<p>I don't understand this section of the passage at all....
what exactly does it mean?</p>
<p>(If you want to read the whole passage, it is the 2008-2009 official practice test, section 3, question 10-16)</p>
<p>"I could as easily tell you waht tune she'll play next. there was simply the sense that she found wings and wmeant ot use them. I can show you a beautiful picture in my diary. Miss honeychuch as a kite, Miss bartlett holding the strng. Picture number two: the string breaks.:</p>
<p>The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards, when he viewed things artistically. at the time he had given surreptitious tugs to the string himself.</p>
<p>"But the string never broke?"</p>
<p>"No. I mightn't have seen miss honeychurch rise, but I should certainly have heard miss bartlett fall."</p>
<p>What does this mean, especially the later parts?</p>
<p>It doesn’t really make that much sense unless you read the entire passage. </p>
<p>“I could as easily tell you waht tune she’ll play next” basically means that she’s very predictable.</p>
<p>“there was simply the sense that she found wings and wmeant ot use them.” means that she has freedom but for some reason isn’t using it.</p>
<p>“I can show you a beautiful picture in my diary. Miss honeychuch as a kite, Miss bartlett holding the strng. Picture number two: the string breaks” Miss Bartlett is Honeychurch’s chaperone. Bartlett is being really controlling to Honeychurch, and Honeychurch isn’t “using her wings” to escape her. The second picture of her breaking is kind of a wish. Beebe wants Honeychurch to break free, but you can tell that she hasn’t, based on what Beebe said before.</p>
<p>“The sketch was in his diary, but it had been made afterwards, when he viewed things artistically. at the time he had given surreptitious tugs to the string himself.” OK, I have to admit that this part is confusing. We don’t know just from the passage what is meant by “it had been made afterwards, when he viewed things artistically.” Apparently some time ago the clergyman hadn’t viewed things artistically. I think the tugs mean that he also used to be controlling. The implication is that now he’s not so controlling.</p>
<p>“But the string never broke?” Cecil’s asking why the clergyman doesn’t think Honeychurch is free.</p>
<p>“No. I mightn’t have seen miss honeychurch rise, but I should certainly have heard miss bartlett fall.” I don’t understand the Bartlett falling part either. I don’t get what that has anything to do with kites.</p>
<p>I think this excerpt comes from A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster. Miss Honeychurch is a young woman with the capacity to live life intensely, but she is being reined in by her chaperone, Miss Bartlett. The two are touring Italy together. The idea of Miss Honeychurch as a kite is metaphorical–it is in her nature to soar. If the “kite-string” holding Miss Honeychurch to her chaperone broke, then Miss Honeychurch would “rise.” That is, she would be set free to live fully. At the same time, metaphorically speaking, Miss Bartlett, who had been holding on to the string and pulling against the kite (the tug of Miss Honeychurch toward freedom) would have become imbalanced and fallen. The clergyman (Beebe) remarks that he might have missed seeing Miss Honeychurch rise–that is, he might not have immediately detected the change in her behavior–but he certainly would have noticed Miss Bartlett “falling,” when she lost control. </p>
<p>The idea that the tugs meant that the clergyman had also been controlling in the past is a reasonable interpretation, based on the excerpt. If you’ve read the entire book (or seen the film), though, I think you would conclude that the clergyman’s tugs were actually intended to try to break the kite-string, to set Miss Honeychurch free.</p>
<p>You can find more about the novel on Wikipedia.</p>