Jansy Mello adds this postscript after seeing Alexey's latest posting:

 

 

Alexey Sklyarenko has just posted this sentence from ADA (1.39): He [Van] remembered with a pang of pleasure the indulgent skirt Ada had been wearing then, so
swoony-baloony as the Chose young things said...

Here we find a skirt that is "indulgent," (and "swoony"), but the skirt's licentiousness is of a different order from those of "reluctant armchairs" or "doubtful roads", although I cannot pinpoint what I see as representative of a different approach to 'personification" Just like in the personifications, its quality resides in a shareable projection of human emotions onto the world but a critical distance blocks the reader's response and seems to stimulate him onto a more intellectual appreciation of the proposed image.

Suggestions?