Untitled Gothic Novel

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story… A wonderful future beckoned and winked. … And, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
– Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object: it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune."
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"I wish I had never been born – there or anywhere else!" - Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles