Literary notes about threshold (AI summary)
Throughout literature, "threshold" functions dually as a literal doorway and as a metaphor for transformational passages. Authors use it to mark physical boundaries—a character pausing on an entryway or stepping from one realm to another [1][2][3]—while also evoking moments of change or sudden realization. The word becomes a symbolic marker for transitions, suggesting the delicate moment between the old and the new, between safety and the unknown [4][5]. In some instances, crossing the threshold is charged with emotional intensity or foreboding, imbuing ordinary doorways with the power to redefine a character’s destiny [6][7].
- D’Artagnan stood for an instant, mute, pensive and motionless; then, as he went in, he saw the fair Madeleine, his hostess, standing on the threshold.
— from Twenty years after by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - Once more, Miss Verinder appeared on the threshold, in her pretty summer dress.
— from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - I looked up—I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair across my chamber threshold.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - When our situation appeared perfectly desperate, then were we on the threshold of a new state of things, which was born out of that very distress.
— from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie - All this time, however, we are loitering faintheartedly on the threshold of our story.
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne - This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's [166] presence, but grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
