Phrase: "left-over dignity"

[Tom]

Hi

Could you please tell me how you find the red phrase?Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

1- She finally made it to her home town, but, of course, with her left-over dignity.

Tom

I would like to inform you that in her attempts to reach her town she had to go through savagely humiliating stages like forced to sleep with a man who gave her shelter from her monstrous husband and all. So the writer, Tom Archer , uses the phrase left-over dignity to mean whatever was left of it.. Tell me if it strikes as unnatural English.

[Alan]

Hi,

'Left-over dignity' is a telling phrase and suggests 'what remained of her dignity.' The effectiveness of the phrase comes about through the combination of 'left-over' with 'dignity' since 'left-over' is usually associated with mundane things like food for example.

A
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English as a Second Language
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[Yankee]

I also like your concept of "left-over dignity", Tom, but I'd suggest omitting 'her' and adding 'only'.

"... but, of course, with only left-over dignity."

Or possibly this:

"... but, of course, with only a few scraps of left-over dignity."

Just some ideas...

Amy

[Alan]

I don't agree. The very inclusion of 'her' makes this even more effective because you are expecting ' with her left-over supper, for example.

A
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English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Phrasal Verbs/hold

[Conchita]

[Yankee]

That was a question that popped into my head too, Conchita. I suppose it was the inclusion of "of course" that caused me to want to add 'only'. Why should we "of course" expect her to have any of her dignity left over?