Both Uses of
travail
in
The Picture of Dorian Gray - 20 chapter version
- Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow....And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, as, with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure, he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face.†
Chpt 3 *travail = difficult experience
- But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail.†
Chpt 11
Definitions:
-
(1)
(travail) a difficult experience -- especially one involving hard work or pain
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much less commonly, travail can refer to a woman in labor during the birth of a baby.