“an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment”

The expression “an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment” names the double effect of reading in Philip Carey’s childhood: books provide a refuge from distress, yet the imaginative world they create threatens to sharpen his dissatisfaction with ordinary life.

Context and Meaning

Philip discovers Lane’s translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night and is first captivated by its illustrations. He reads the stories of magic, moves on to the others, and returns repeatedly to the ones he likes. Reading absorbs him so completely that he forgets the life around him and must be called several times before coming to dinner. The narrator presents the habit as something Philip acquires without understanding its future cost: it offers escape even as it reshapes his expectations of reality.

Refuge and Disappointment

The phrase holds comfort and danger in the same image. Books give Philip shelter from distress, but the imaginative world they open is set against the everyday world, making the latter a potential source of disappointment. This tension is not presented as a conscious choice or a judgment Philip has already reached; he does not yet know that reading is providing refuge or that it may color how he experiences ordinary life. The expression therefore looks ahead from a childhood pleasure to a lasting contrast between imagined possibility and lived experience.

The Reading Habit Takes Root

The habit soon extends beyond the Arabian stories. Philip searches the books in his uncle’s collection, where old novels lie among sermons, religious histories, travel books, and lives of the Saints. He chooses novels by their titles and finds a particular reassurance in stories that begin with two solitary travellers riding beside a dangerous ravine. In summer, he spends long hours reading in a hammock made by the gardener and hung in the branches of a weeping willow. The secluded setting makes the refuge concrete: Philip is hidden from visitors, absorbed in books, and increasingly withdrawn from the everyday life around him.