Time & Perspective Quote by Frances Goodrich

A bell is one of the oldest sound effects in the culture: it cuts through noise, demands attention, and turns an ordinary moment into an event. Frances Goodrich taps that reflex and gives it a job - to domesticate the supernatural. Instead of thunder, prophecy, or stained-glass grandeur, you get a tiny, almost comic transaction: ring, wings. The afterlife becomes legible, even quaint, scaled to the size of a living room.

The line’s intent is consolation with a grin. It doesn’t argue that death is fair or that grief is noble; it offers a manageable image you can carry through the day. That’s the subtext: if the cosmos is frighteningly large and indifferent, we’ll make it personable. The bell, a sound associated with churches and ceremonies, gets repurposed as a private proof system - a way to feel the invisible responding to you on cue.

Context matters because Goodrich is a dramatist, writing for audiences who need emotion to land in real time. This is stagecraft disguised as theology: a repeatable motif that an audience can latch onto, hear later, and feel the scene return. It’s also a distinctly 20th-century American spiritual sensibility: faith rendered as sentiment you can share without doctrinal debate, a comforting metaphor that travels easily across households, holidays, and pop culture reruns.

The genius is its soft certainty. No one has to believe in angels to enjoy what the line offers: a small ritual of hope, triggered by sound.