On 21/10/2012 13:06, Donna Richoux wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:

On 21/10/12 1:36 AM, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:

ObAUE: Is that drawn meaning open or drawn meaning closed?


Serious question: can "drawn" ever mean the curtains are open? I would
have thought that it had to be "drawn back" or "open" and that "drawn"
always meant they were closed.

However, this one seems to go the other way:

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Page 246
Then he woke up and looked at the light. The curtains were drawn. He
listened to the loud wild calling of blackbirds and thrushes in the
wood. It would be a brilliant morning, about half past five, his hour
for rising.

I'm not sure what this means. He might have seen the light in the gaps
(chinks). It doesn't say he got out of bed to peer around the curtains.
If they were open because a maid had been there, she was darned early.
Maybe they had never been closed. Maybe they were even permanently tied
back.

Which light is he looking at? The light of the dawn outside or the one
inside?

We need some more context to decide what state the curtains were in.

It seems they were closed...

Then he woke up and looked at the light. The curtains were drawn. He
listened to the loud wild calling of blackbirds and thrushes in the
wood. It would be a brilliant morning, about half past five, his hour
for rising. He had slept so fast! It was such a new day! The woman was
still curled asleep and tender. His hand moved on her, and she opened
her blue wondering eyes, smiling unconsciously into his face.

"Are you awake?" she said to him.

He was looking into her eyes. He smiled, and kissed her. And suddenly
she roused and sat up.

"Fancy that I am here!" she said.

She looked round the whitewashed little bedroom with its sloping ceiling
and gable window where the white curtains were closed. The room was bare
save for a little yellow-painted chest of drawers, and a chair: and the
smallish white bed in which she lay with him.
--
Phil Cook