This seems to be a description of a person or character (female) who teeters back and forth between being a very difficult person and someone who can be quite loving. There seems to be more emphasis on her difficult nature here, though. These words and phrases indicate her "hard" side:
soft malice
scratching
ferocity and impetuousness
savagely
she had clawed
Can you please tell me what this is trying to say. I don't understand it. It's a paragraph out of a book. Its really confusing to me. Thank you for your help.
Sometimes she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked. Then she was capable of scratching and very effectively too. Or driver to anger, she would fight with a ferocity and impetuousness that disregarded or forgot any danger; superior strength, numbers, or other unfavorable circumstances. How savagely she had clawed those boys the day they had hooted her parent and sung a derisive rhyme, of their own composing, which pointed out certain eccentricities in his careening gait!
2 answers
That is a descriptive paragraph of a certain aspect of a character. This could either be a "cat" or a "girl" with catlike qualities.