"Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words illuminate the acute vulnerability that accompanies self-consciousness, particularly for young women. The “blush” signifies not only a physical response but an internal conflict – an instinctive awareness of scrutiny and exposure. The phrase “because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame” evokes the extent of discomfort, the desperate desire to escape the gaze and the mortifying consequence of being noticed. The intensity of emotion is so overwhelming that the very experience of existence, of being present, becomes almost unbearable.

Browning likens the blush spreading across “neck and brow” to being consumed by flames, suggesting shame or embarrassment is an all-devouring force. The simile comparing girls to gnats drawn too close to “the fire of life” deepens the imagery. Life’s vitality and social interaction, the metaphorical “fire,” are at once alluring and dangerous. The gnat, tiny and fragile, is lured by brightness yet incinerated instantly, it “flare[s] up bodily, wings and all.” This mirrors the devastating swiftness with which embarrassment can consume a young woman, making her feel her entire being is exposed and destroyed in the moment of a blush.

The extract closes with chilling indifference: “Who’s sorry for a gnat or girl?” Browning points to society’s lack of empathy for such suffering, trivializing the pain by equating it with the inconsequence of a gnat’s life. The question challenges the reader to reconsider dismissive attitudes toward feminine sensitivity, implying that young women’s emotional struggles are too often overlooked or minimized. In summation, Browning’s vivid imagery and rhetorical question expose both the depth of shame experienced on the cusp of adulthood and the societal disregard for such emotional hardship, ultimately appealing for greater understanding and compassion.