what is the meaning of this sentence?

More context is needed. However, the suggestion is that the term "woman" should be dropped and replaced by "adolescent" in order to account for the behaviour of the subject.

"She was coming to strength" is an unusual and a very awkward phrase.

It looks like a sentence that was written by a non-native English speaker.

What if instead of a scared young woman, more young than a woman, she was coming to strength?

COULD equal ... let's give it a context; a screen play, some people are discussing the players;

What if, instead of a scared young woman, who really is more young than she is a woman, we have someone who was finding her strength, her fortitude?

Whatever that means.

Original sentence:

What if instead of a scared young woman, more young than a woman, she was coming to strength?



But I actually wrote: who really is more young than she is a woman,




What if instead of a scared young woman,

At this point we don't know just how old this young lady/woman is, so the author of this sentence expanded it and I expanded it further for clarity, within the context I supplied.

who really is more young than she is a woman,

We often call early teens young lady or young woman when they really aren't yet women. Now do you understand?

Another paraphrase,

What if instead of a scared young woman, who is more on the young side than she is on the woman side, ... ?


Everyone ooohs and aaaahs when Shakespeare or some other author turns a phrase that needs a bit of thought to comprehend, but the pronouncements come fast and furious when someone else does the same thing.

The original sentence, in the proper context, is unremarkable.

That's a bit of a stretch. Awkward and unusual, I'd say. In fact I already have.

You only said that,

"She was coming to strength"

is an unusual and a very awkward phrase, McTag.

The sentence as a whole is fine. It only needs context. I agree that the above is not usual but that really doesn't mean a thing other than it's unusual.

When a context is given, it's not at all awkward. Grammatical with context is what language is all about. There's nothing wrong with pushing the envelope in language. That's how new meanings, new phrases come to be.