Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "No! But he doesn't really want it. He only loves me to be near him, but not to touch him." "My God, what a generation!" "He would like me most of all to be a model for him to paint from. Only I never wanted to." "God help him! But he looks down-trodden enough for anything." "Still, you wouldn't mind so much the talk about him?" "My God, Connie, all the bloody contriving!" "I know! It's sickening! But what can I do?" "Contriving, conniving; conniving, contriving! Makes a man think he's lived too long." "Come, Father, if you haven't done a good deal of contriving and conniving in your time, you may talk." "But it was different, I assure you." "It's _always_ different." Hilda arrived, also furious, when she heard of the new developments. And she also simply could not stand the thought of a public scandal about her sister and a gamekeeper. Too, too humiliating! "Why should we not just disappear, separately, to British Columbia, and have no scandal?" said Connie. But that was no good. The scandal would come out just the same. And if Connie was going with the man, she'd better be able to marry him. This was Hilda's opinion. Sir Malcolm wasn't sure. The affair might still blow over. "But will you see him, Father?" Poor Sir Malcolm! he was by no means keen on it. And poor Mellors, he was still less keen. Yet the meeting took place: a lunch in a private room at the club, the two men alone, looking one another up and down. Sir Malcolm drank a fair amount of whiskey, Mellors also drank. And they talked all the while about India, on which the young man was well informed. This lasted during the meal. Only when coffee was served, and the waiter had gone, Sir Malcolm lit a cigar and said, heartily: "Well, young man, and what about my daughter?" The grin flickered on Mellors's face. "Well, Sir, and what about her?" "You've got a baby in her all right." "I have that honour!" grinned Mellors. "Honour, by God!" Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. "Honour! How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what!?" "Good!"

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  And more people will remain convinced there is something terribly wrong with them because they have these awful fantasies about being restrained, dominated, or punished, and if they ever dare to look for someone who will do any of those wicked things, they will “get what they deserve”—i.e., snuffed. Two distributors of S/M videos—a small business in Florida that sold wooden bondage devices and a handful of movie titles, and Centurions in Los Angeles—have been busted. The LAPD has reportedly visited gay video companies and warned them to stop distributing S/M movies. Vice cops in Grand Rapids, Michigan, went on a campaign against kiddy porn early in 1987. When they couldn’t find any, they went outside their own city limits into another town to arrest an S/M couple who frequently entertain folks in the scene and market movies they’ve made of themselves and some of their friends. In the process, Faye Marie (“Marquise Marie”) Bond and Gerald Bond reported that their home was trashed, all their business records and personal address books were confiscated, and their bank accounts were frozen. This has made it difficult for them to organize support and impossible for them to continue to make a living. Until the police killed all of her fish by emptying ashtrays into the tanks, Mrs Bond had raised and sold tropical fish. Her husband ran a straight video production company. They are charged with obscenity and running a house of ill-fame. They may succeed in getting acquitted, but the arrest alone has punished them in a way that having their charges dismissed will not repair. In 1986, local police raided an S/M party held in the home of a heterosexual couple in a small town in Pennsylvania, and arrested nearly thirty people. Marie Morrell and her husband had to endure sensationalistic publicity and high legal costs to fight the resulting prostitution charges. They were acquitted, but many of their belongings have not been returned, and their privacy, happiness, and livelihood (they ran an Italian restaurant) are irreparably damaged. Drummer , a gay male S/M magazine, has run into so many distribution problems, they have decided to remove most bondage photos so they can keep the magazine on newsstands. The venerable S/M contact publication, SMAds , has ceased publication, reportedly because the producer feared prosecution for obscenity.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  The situation undergoes a structural simplification. In anger, and doubtless in all the emotions, there is a weakening of the barriers that separate the deeper from the more superficial levels of the self which normally ensure the regulation of action by the deep personality and maintain the self-control: a weakening of the barriers between the real and the unreal. On the other hand, because the path to action is blocked, tensions between the external and the internal continue to augment: a negative character extends uniformly to all the objects in the field, they lose their proper value. . . . The privileged way towards the goal having vanished, the differentiated structure that the problem had imposed upon the field is destroyed. The particular facts, notably the various physiological reactions which we are pleased to describe by attaching particular meanings to them, are not intelligible unless we start from this integral conception of the topology of emotion ...' Here, then, at the end of this long quotation, we arrive at a functional conception of anger. Clearly anger is not an instinct nor a habit, nor is it a calculated action; it is an abrupt solution of conflict, a way of cutting the gordian knot. And we are back again at Janet's distinction between the superior kind of behaviour and the inferior or derived. But here that distinction assumes its full meaning: it is we who put ourselves into a state of total inferiority, because at that very low level our demands are smaller; we satisfy ourselves at less cost. Being unable, in a state of high tension, to find the delicate and precise answer to a problem, we act upon ourselves, we abase and transform ourselves into a being for whom the grossest and least adapted solutions are good enough (for example, tearing up the paper on which a problem is stated). Thus anger now appears as an escape; the angry subject is like a man who is unable to untie the knots of the cords that bind him, and who writhes about in his bonds. And the 'angry' conduct, though less well adapted to the problem than the superior — and impossible — behaviour that would solve it, is still precisely and perfectly adapted to his need to break the tension, to shake the leaden weight off his shoulders. We shall be better able to understand the examples we were citing above: the psychasthenic who comes to see Janet wants to make her confession to him. But the task is too difficult. Here she is, in a confined, threatening world which is waiting for her to perform a definite action and at the same time repelling her. Janet himself signifies by his attitude that he is listening and is attentive; but at the same time his prestige, his personality, etc. repulse that confession.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I hated it. And she hated me. My God, how she hated me before that child was born! I often think she conceived it out of hate. Anyhow, after the child was born I left her alone. And then came the war, and I joined up. And I didn't come back till I knew she was with that fellow at Stacks Gate." He broke off, pale in the face. "And what is the man at Stacks Gate like?" asked Connie. "A big baby sort of fellow, very low-mouthed. She bullies him, and they both drink." "My word, if she came back!" "My God, yes! I should just go, disappear again." There was a silence. The pasteboard in the fire had turned to grey ash. "So when you did get a woman who wanted you," said Connie, "you got a bit too much of a good thing." "Ay! Seems so! Yet even then I'd rather have her than the never-never ones: the white love of my youth, and that other poison-smelling lily, and the rest." "What about the rest?" said Connie. "The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit distasteful. And most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up.--Then there's the ones that love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off, every kind except the natural one. They always make you go off when you're _not_ in the only place you should be, when you go off.--Then there's the hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off, like my wife. They want to be the active party.--Then there's the sort that's just dead inside: but dead: and they know it. Then there's the sort that puts you out before you really 'come,' and go on writhing their loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian." "And do you mind?" asked Connie. "I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her." "And what do you do?" "Just get away as fast as I can." "But do you think Lesbian women any worse than homosexual men?"

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, the king, who had at first sight been greatly taken with the damsel, calling her to mind and feeling himself well of body, determined, albeit it was nigh upon day, to go and abide with her awhile. Accordingly, he betook himself privily to La Cuba with certain of his servants and entering the pavilion, caused softly open the chamber wherein he knew the girl slept. Then, with a great lighted flambeau before him, he entered therein and looking upon the bed, saw her and Gianni lying asleep and naked in each other's arms; whereas he was of a sudden furiously incensed and flamed up into such a passion of wrath that it lacked of little but he had, without saying a word, slain them both then and there with a dagger he had by his side. However, esteeming it a very base thing of any man, much more a king, to slay two naked folk in their sleep, he contained himself and determined to put them to death in public and by fire; wherefore, turning to one only companion he had with him, he said to him, 'How deemest thou of this vile woman, on whom I had set my hope?' And after he asked him if he knew the young man who had dared enter his house to do him such an affront and such an outrage; but he answered that he remembered not ever to have seen him. The king then departed the chamber, full of rage, and commanded that the two lovers should be taken and bound, naked as they were, and that, as soon as it was broad day, they should be carried to Palermo and there bound to a stake, back to back, in the public place, where they should be kept till the hour of tierce, so they might be seen of all, and after burnt, even as they had deserved; and this said, he returned to his palace at Palermo, exceeding wroth.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  fundamentals of the Constitution.” On October 4, 1982, Dan was driving home after meeting with another candidate for sheriff (the American Fork police chief, with whom Dan had hoped to engage in a public debate), when he was stopped on Interstate 15 by a Utah state trooper for speeding and not having a vehicle inspection sticker. “I had already had some confrontations with the officer who pulled me over,” Dan allows. “He knew I would be driving home from this debate meeting, and he had set a trap for me. They wanted to get a felony against me so I couldn’t run for office, and they swarmed me on the freeway. I had just published an important article in the paper—a very important article—which had really unnerved a lot of people, about how the powers of government were being improperly used through improper warrants of arrest—how it was unconstitutional to stop a person on the freeway and arrest them. “When the officer pulled me over, he told me he had read my article—‘I’ve got it right here in my car,’ he said. So I told him, ‘Well, if you’ve read the article, you understand why you can’t arrest me right now. If you want to arrest me, go get a warrant from a judge, bring it to my home, and I’ll conform to the proper procedures.’ ” Dan had by now locked the car doors and rolled up all the windows, leaving only a one-inch gap at the top of the driver’s window, which, he says, “I figured was narrow enough to keep a hand from reaching in and grabbing me, but would allow me to talk to the officer.” The trooper wasn’t amused. He ordered Dan out of the car. “When I refused to get out,” says Dan, “the cop did something I hadn’t anticipated: he grabbed the top of the window with both hands and pulled hard, pulling the window out of its tracks, and then he tried to reach in and grab me. So I said, ‘Well, I gotta go now! See you later!’ and took off.” The state troopers gave chase and apprehended Dan a short while later. He was charged with five crimes (including second-degree felony escape, third- degree felony assault by a prisoner, and evading an officer) and locked up in the county jail. At his justice court trial, Dan served as his own attorney and attempted to mount a defense based on several arcane points of constitutional law. The judge repeatedly pointed out, however, that justice courts in Utah are not empowered to hear constitutional matters, which infuriated Dan. He was further angered when the judge overruled his objection to the makeup of the

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  Escape she must from the unbearable tension! And the patient can do so only by exaggerating her weakness and her disarray, by distracting his attention from the task in hand and turning it upon herself (how unhappy I am!). Her own demeanour will transform Janet from her judge into her comforter by exteriorising and 'playing up' the very impossibility she finds in speaking, by commuting the precise need to give such and such information into a heavy, undifferentiated pressure of the whole world upon her. It is then that the sobbing and the nervous crisis ensue. Similarly it is easy to understand the fit of anger that seizes me when I can think of nothing more to reply to a mocker. Here anger does not play quite the same part as in the example given by Dembo. My need is to switch the discussion on to another plane. I have not been witty enough, so I become formidable and intimidating. I want to arouse fear. At the same time I make use of inferior alternatives (ersatze) to vanquish my adversary — insults, threats which have to 'do instead of' the shaft of wit I failed to think of; for the abrupt change of attitude that I impose upon myself makes me less exacting about the choice of means. And yet, at the point we have come to, we still feel unsatisfied. The emotional behaviour theory is perfect, but in its purity and perfection we can see its insufficiency. In all the examples we have quoted, the functional part played by emotion is indubitable. But as it stands, it is also incomprehensible. I mean that, for Dembo and the Gestalt psychologists, the passage from the state of seeking to the state of anger is explained as the break-up of one form and the reconstitution of another. And I can understand, if need be, the breakup of the form 'problem without solution'; but how can I admit the appearance of the other form? We must suppose that it presents itself clearly as the substitute for the previous form. It exists only in relation to this. We have, then, a single process — a transformation of form. But I cannot comprehend this transformation without first positing consciousness. Consciousness alone, by its synthetic activity, can break up and reconstitute forms without ceasing. It alone can account for the finality of emotion. Moreover, we have seen that the whole of the description of anger given by Guillaume according to Dembo shows that its aim is to transform the aspect of the world. It serves to 'weaken the barriers between the real and the unreal', to 'destroy the differentiated structure that the problem has imposed upon the world'.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  until this day been able to decide whether I was right or wrong in using the ruler. Probably it was improper, for it was prompted by anger and a desire to punish. Had it been an expression only of my distress, I should have considered it justified. But the motive in this case was mixed. This incident set me thinking and taught me a better method of correcting students. I do not know whether that method would have availed on the occasion in question. The youngster soon forgot the incident, and I do not think he ever showed great improvement,. But the incident made me understand better the duty of a teacher towards his pupils. Cases of misconduct on the part of the boys often occurred after this, but I never resorted to corporal punishment. Thus in my endeavour to impart spiritual training to the boys and girls under me, I came to understand better and better the power of the spirit. 114. TARES AMONG THE WHEAT It was at Tolstoy Farm that Mr. Kallenbach drew my attention to a problem that had never before struck me. As I have already said, some of the boys at the Farm were bad and unruly. There were loafers, too, amongst them. With these my three boys came in daily contact, as also did other children of the same type as my own sons. This troubled Mr. Kallenbach, but his attention was centred on the impropriety of keeping my# boys with these unruly youngsters. One day he spoke out: ‘Your way of mixing your own boys with the bad ones does not appeal to me. It can have only one result. They will become demoralized through this bad company.’ I do not remember whether the question puzzled me at the moment, but I recollect what I said to him: ‘How can I distinguish between my boys and the loafers? I am equally responsible for both. The youngsters have come because I invited them. If I were to dismiss them with some money, they would immediately run off to Johannesburg and fall back into their old ways. To tell you the truth, it is quite likely that they and their guardians believe that, by having come here, they have laid me under an obligation. That they have to put up with a good deal of inconvenience here, you and I know very well. But my duty is clear. I must have them here, and therefore my boys also must needs live with them. And surely you do not want me to teach my boys to feel from today that they are superior to other boys. To put that sense of superiority into their heads would be to lead them astray. This association with other boys will be a good discipline for them. They will, of their own accord, learn to discriminate between good and evil. Why should we not believe that, if there is really anything good in them, it is

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I tell thee that Madam Ginevra thy wife hath under her left pap a pretty big mole, about which are maybe half a dozen little hairs as red as gold.' When Bernabo heard this, it was as if he had gotten a knife-thrust in the heart, such anguish did he feel, and though he had said not a word, his countenance, being all changed, gave very manifest token that what Ambrogiuolo said was true. Then, after awhile, 'Gentlemen,' quoth he, 'that which Ambrogiuolo saith is true; wherefore, he having won, let him come whenassoever it pleaseth him and he shall be paid.' Accordingly, on the ensuing day Ambrogiuolo was paid in full and Bernabo, departing Paris, betook himself to Genoa with fell intent against the lady. When he drew near the city, he would not enter therein, but lighted down a good score miles away at a country house of his and despatched one of his servants, in whom he much trusted, to Genoa with two horses and letters under his hand, advising his wife that he had returned and bidding her come to him; and he privily charged the man, whenas he should be with the lady in such place as should seem best to him, to put her to death without pity and return to him. The servant accordingly repaired to Genoa and delivering the letters and doing his errand, was received with great rejoicing by the lady, who on the morrow took horse with him and set out for their country house. As they fared on together, discoursing of one thing and another, they came to a very deep and lonely valley, beset with high rocks and trees, which seeming to the servant a place wherein he might, with assurance for himself, do his lord's commandment, he pulled out his knife and taking the lady by the arm, said, 'Madam, commend your soul to God, for needs must you die, without faring farther.' The lady, seeing the knife and hearing these words, was all dismayed and said, 'Mercy, for God's sake! Ere thou slay me, tell me wherein I have offended thee, that thou wouldst put me to death.' 'Madam,' answered the man, 'me you have nowise offended; but wherein you have offended your husband I know not, save that he hath commanded me slay you by the way, without having any pity upon you, threatening me, an I did it not, to have me hanged by the neck. You know well how much I am beholden to him and how I may not gainsay him in aught that he may impose upon me; God knoweth it irketh me for you, but I can no otherwise.' Whereupon quoth the lady, weeping, 'Alack, for God's sake, consent not to become the murderer of one who hath never wronged thee, to serve another! God who knoweth all knoweth that I never did aught for which I should receive such a recompense from my husband.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  He spent all his time in class drawing out, encouraging, and praising the brighter and better-looking boys. I couldn’t even get him to argue with me. He would call on me when my nuisance factor reached a certain level, let me talk as long as I wanted to, stare out the window, then take up where he had left off as soon as I shut up. Coincidentally, Students for Solidarity was running short of targets. Everybody had pulled in and tightened up and battened down so carefully that we were in danger of becoming obsolete. Who needs cops in a law-abiding society? Everyone insisted we had to put this rogue professor up against the wall. We had been assigned reading from the annotated version of Engels’ “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.” When I walked into the classroom, I noticed that Roger, the only boy who dared sit in the front row, was not there. When the professor stood to begin his lecture, he seemed to have a cold. “I invite,” he said, “your predictable comments on this so-called piece of history.” I was astonished, and gleefully stood to object. “It would seem to me that you are calling fundamental truths into question,” I said. He actually, for a change, responded to me. He said, “Young lady, you do not know what you are talking about.” The insult was mind-ripping. My single cell of hatred fissioned, and I was hosting a colony of feverishly reproducing and breeding and multiplying rage. He then lambasted what he called the matriarchal “theory.” According to him, there was no evidence to support the belief that women had controlled all pre-industrial cultures. Nor was there any reason to believe that these societies, regardless of who ran them, were any more ecologically balanced, less violent, or more evolved than any other “community of homo sapiens.” He was repeatedly interrupted by a chorus of hisses from all the students. Some of the more timid boys were sneaking out the back door. “Cite your sources!” I shouted at him. He had to answer me. I was the only one saying something instead of drumming my feet on the floor and making a noise like a rabid goose. “If I were allowed to teach any anthropology in this benighted institution, I would!” he shouted back. Was this man having a nervous breakdown? He could not be that stupid. “The very name of that pseudoscientific cult discredits it,” I yelled. “How dare you call yourself a historian?” Another member of StudSolid, this girl who had ignored my tactful suggestion that one observer would attract less attention than two, was drowning us both out by shouting, “Boycott! Walk out! Boycott! Walk out!” And people were doing what she said. The small auditorium was emptying out. I was somehow going in the other direction, down to the front.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Come on, EZ, you been starin’ at her basket all night long, now it’s right in your face and you damn well better look good and hard. ” Michael was not being nice. She ran her tongue around her mouth, pushed down on her cock with two fingers, then wrapped her hand around it and jacked it off. “See, you don’t want to suck it because you figure that makes you pussy, but welcome to the twentieth century, EZ, where it takes a real man to suck cock. Blow it.” Five weapons in female hands circled her head, and the sixth went down her throat. “I am glad to see you’re not pretendin’ you don’t know how this is done,” Kay said calmly. “D’you think none of our tricks ever told me what went on every time I stepped out to take a leak or get a beer? You got quite a reputation, girl, for sneakin’ around doin’ something most people think is American as apple pie. Don’t think you’re gonna hide your light under a bushel no more, cocksucker. We just found something socially useful for that nasty mouth of yours to do.” With her hands behind her back, EZ had very little control over the depth of Michael’s penetration. She tried holding her neck stiff, but the prick of steel against her scalp took the starch right out of her. She gave up and let Michael make full use of her. When they hauled her to her feet, her face was covered with tears and less attractive substances, and Kay took the red bandana off her jacket to mop her off. EZ permitted this, but when Kay reached into her jeans again, she bolted. Michael and Joy caught her by the belt-loops and dragged her back, and Kay slapped her backhanded, a serious penalty when she was wearing all of her rings. EZ had to let that hand worm its way into her crotch and bring up a handful of female lubrication, which Kay smeared across her face. “I just gotta make sure you get brought down a notch or two and stay there,” Kay said, “about at the height of my spurs. See, I think you not only believe that the faggots you suck off will forget all about it, I think you also believe that I forgot how we ever got together in the first place. Tyre, go ask Alex if there’s any room on the horse.” “No!” EZ shouted. “Not ever there. Not by her. I won’t! You can’t make me!” “Nonsense, dear,” Anne-Marie said, and they dragged her bodily to where Alex stood, beckoning them to join her, and threw her onto the horse by Roxanne. “This is not consensual!”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a child by him." It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered. "And doesn't Clifford suspect?" she said. "Oh, no! Why should he?" "I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion," said Hilda. "Not at all." "And tonight's business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the man live?" "In the cottage at the other end of the wood." "Is he a bachelor?" "No! His wife left him." "How old?" "I don't know. Older than me." Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it. "I would give up tonight's escapade if I were you," she advised calmly. "I can't! I _must_ stay with him tonight, or I can't go to Venice at all. I just can't." Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere diplomacy. And she consented to drive to Mansfield, both of them, to dinner, to bring Connie back to the lane-end after dark, and to fetch her from the lane-end the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield, only half an hour away, good going. But she was furious. She stored it up against her sister, this baulk in her plans. Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window sill. On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed towards Clifford. After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about! Hilda wanted no more of that sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Connie really had less to put up with than many women, if she did but know it. And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent woman, and would make a man a first-rate helpmeet, if he were going in for politics for example. Yes, she had none of Connie's silliness, Connie was more a child: you had to make excuses for her, because she was not altogether dependable. There was an early cup of tea in the hall, where doors were open to let in the sun. Everybody seemed to be panting a little. "Good-bye, Connie girl! Come back to me safely." "Good-bye, Clifford! Yes, I shan't be long." Connie was almost tender. "Good-bye, Hilda! You will keep an eye on her, won't you?" "I'll even keep two!" said Hilda. "She shan't go very far astray." "It's a promise!" "Good-bye, Mrs. Bolton! I know you'll look after Sir Clifford nobly." "I'll do what I can, your Ladyship." "And write to me if there is any news, and tell me about Sir Clifford, how he is." "Very good, your Ladyship, I will. And have a good time, and come back and cheer us up."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "We will see if Duncan will consent to figure as co-respondent: then we must get Clifford to divorce Connie: and you must go on with your divorce, and you must both keep apart till you are free." "Sounds like a lunatic asylum." "Possibly! And the world would look on you as lunatics: or worse." "What is worse?" "Criminals, I suppose." "Hope I can plunge in the dagger a few more times yet," he said grinning. Then he was silent, and angry. "Well!" he said at last. "I agree to anything. The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best. But you're right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can." He looked in humiliation, anger, weariness and misery at Connie. "Ma lass!" he said. "The world's goin' to put salt on thy tail." "Not if we don't let it," she said. She minded this conniving against the world less than he did. Duncan, when approached, also insisted on seeing the delinquent gamekeeper, so there was a dinner, this time in his flat: the four of them. Duncan was a rather short, broad, dark-skinned, taciturn Hamlet of a fellow with straight black hair and a weird Celtic conceit of himself. His art was all tubes and valves and spirals and strange colours, ultra modern, yet with a certain power, even a certain purity of form and tone: only Mellors thought it cruel and repellent. He did not venture to say so, for Duncan was almost insane on the point of his art; it was a personal cult, a personal religion with him. They were looking at the pictures in the studio, and Duncan kept his smallish brown eyes on the other man. He wanted to hear what the gamekeeper would say. He knew already Connie's and Hilda's opinions. "It is like a pure bit of murder," said Mellors at last; a speech Duncan by no means expected from a gamekeeper. "And who is murdered?" asked Hilda, rather coldly and sneeringly. "Me! It murders all the bowels of compassion in a man." A wave of pure hate came out of the artist. He heard the note of dislike in the other man's voice, and the note of contempt. And he himself loathed the mention of bowels of compassion. Sickly sentiment! Mellors stood rather tall and thin, worn-looking, gazing with flickering detachment that was something like the dancing of a moth on the wing, at the pictures. "Perhaps stupidity is murdered; sentimental stupidity," sneered the artist. "Do you think so? I think all these tubes and corrugated vibrations are stupid enough for anything, and pretty sentimental. They show a lot of self-pity and an awful lot of nervous self-opinion, seems to me." In another wave of hate, the artist's face looked yellow. But with a sort of silent hauteur he turned the pictures to the wall. "I think we may go to the dining-room," he said. And they trailed off, dismally. After coffee, Duncan said:

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "How much do the servants know?" asked Connie, when the woman was out of the room. "Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever." "Mrs. Bolton knows." He changed colour. "Mrs. Bolton is not exactly one of the servants," he said. "Oh, I don't mind." There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to her room. Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn't taking the pathetic line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and looked down at her hands. "I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?" he said at last. "I can't help it," she murmured. "But if you can't, who can?" "I suppose nobody." He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was as it were embedded in his will. How dared she now go back on him, and destroy the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause this derangement of his personality! "And for _what_ do you want to go back on everything?" he insisted. "Love!" she said. It is best to be hackneyed. "Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn't think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say you now love him better than anything else in life?" "One changes," she said. "Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to convince me of the importance of the change. I merely don't believe in your love of Duncan Forbes." "But why _should_ you believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not to believe in my feelings." "And why should I divorce you?" "Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want me." "Pardon me! I don't change. For my part, since you are my wife, I should prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving aside personal feelings, and I assure you, on my part it is leaving aside a great deal, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of life broken up, here in Wragby, and the decent round of daily life smashed, just for some whim of yours." After a time of silence she said: "I can't help it. I've got to go. I expect I shall have a child." He too was silent for a time. "And is it for the child's sake you must go?" he asked at length. She nodded. "And why? Is Duncan Forbes so keen on his spawn?" "Surely keener than you would be," she said.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Better than with its eyes!" he said. "Will you drink?" "Will you?" She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little herself. "So icy!" she said gasping. "Good, isn't it! Did you wish?" "Did you?" "Yes, I wished. But I won't tell." She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the blue. "Clouds!" she said. "White lambs only," he replied. A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out onto the soft yellow earth. "Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him," said Clifford. "Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit," said she. She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him. "New-mown hay!" he said. "Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies of the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!" She was looking at the white clouds. "I wonder if it will rain," she said. "Rain! Why! Do you want it to?" They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells stood in the light. "Now old girl!" said Clifford, putting the chair to it. It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair plugged slowly, in a struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped. "We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come," said Connie. "He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps." "We'll let her breathe," said Clifford. "Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?" Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises. "Let me push!" said Connie, coming up behind. "No! Don't push!" he said angrily. "What's the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!" There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than before. "You _must_ let me push," she said. "Or sound the horn for the keeper." "Wait!" She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good. "Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push," she said. "Hell! Be quiet a moment!" She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little motor. "You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford," she remonstrated; "besides wasting your nervous energy."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  And I need to have her tied up so she can’t get away. You want her to come, don’t you? Well, I suspect that’ll make her come real good.” “Oh? Yeah, you’re probably right. She’s just a slut, but she’s a masochistic slut. Fix her the way you want her.” She was too tired to fight. Mike rolled her onto her stomach and slapped leather restraints on each wrist, then manacled her hands to the iron rails at the head of the bed. He also fastened restraints around each ankle, had her draw her legs up until she was kneeling, then fastened them at the sides of the bed. Then he reached under her and clamped her nipples into gleaming silver jaws. If she didn’t keep her ass in the air and her shoulders arched, she would be lying on the clamps. He knelt behind her and ran his hands over her body once, twice. Then he used his nails. She twisted, but could not get away from him or close her legs. Every time she moved, she brought her slippery, vulnerable folds into contact with his jutting cock. He leaned over her and played with her tits, sending jolts of pain through her nipples, made her tell him how much it hurt and how wet it made her cunt. He slapped her ass with the flat of his hand until it began to glow and burn again. His hand fell with more and more weight. Bottoms, she thought, are so much meaner than tops. They have no sense of pacing. She screamed as much because he was making her angry as because it hurt a lot, but she doubted that he cared as long as he knew he was hurting her. Unlike Joe, he went into her in one vicious thrust, and she screamed. Tears sprang into her eyes. His long, skinny cock was stretching her in a very different way. It was much easier for her cunt to open wider than it was for it to become deeper. He was not waiting for her to open up, and she would be damned if she would ask him. She did not want to come with him. Her vagina was a little sore, but his attitude bothered her more.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I don't know. She sort of kept her will ready against me, always, always: her ghastly female will: her freedom! A woman's ghastly freedom that ends in the most beastly bullying! Oh, she always kept her freedom against me, like vitriol in my face." "But she's not free of you even now. Does she still love you?" "No, no! If she's not free of me, it's because she's got that mad rage, she must try to bully me." "But she must have loved you." "No! Well in specks, she did. She was drawn to me. And I think even that she hated. She loved me in moments. But she always took it back, and started bullying. Her deepest desire was to bully me, and there was no altering her. Her _will_ was wrong, from the first." "But perhaps she felt you didn't really love her, and she wanted to make you." "My God, it was bloody making." "But you didn't really love her, did you? You did her that wrong." "How could I? I began to. I began to love her. But somehow, she always ripped me up. No, don't let's talk of it. It was a doom, that was. And she was a doomed woman. This last time, I'd have shot her like I shoot a stoat, if I'd but been allowed: a raving, doomed thing in the shape of a woman! If only I could have shot her, and ended the whole misery! It ought to be allowed. When a woman gets absolutely possessed by her own will, her own will set against everything, then it's fearful, and she should be shot at last." "And shouldn't men be shot at last, if they get possessed by their own will?" "Ay!--the same! But I must get free of her, or she'll be at me again. I wanted to tell you. I must get a divorce if I possibly can. So we must be careful. We mustn't really be seen together, you and I. I never, _never_ could stand it if she came down on me and you." Connie pondered this. "Then we can't be together?" she said. "Not for six months or so. But I think my divorce will go through in September, then till March." "But the baby will probably be born at the end of February," she said. He was silent. "I could wish the Cliffords and Berthas all dead," he said. "It's not being very tender to them," she said. "Tender to them? Yea, even then the tenderest thing you could do for them, perhaps, would be to give them death. They can't live! They only frustrate life. Their souls are awful inside them. Death ought to be sweet to them. And I ought to be allowed to shoot them." "But you wouldn't do it," she said. "I would though! and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel. It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness. But they are legion. Oh, I'd shoot them."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  EZ fumed. For Anne-Marie, this was the last straw. The ritualistic etiquette of S/M; the titles, forms of salutation, provocation, and response— each varying with one’s level of experience, role, and specialty—were her first love. “That is highly irrelevant, you pipsqueak, you popinjay, you buffoon,” she cried. “Did you ask any of us for our permission before proceeding to insult and harry us? Those unfortunate few who behave as badly as you have given their consent to be taken in hand and punished severely. You are worse than the most loutish male submissive I ever had to put up with before I met Tyre and came to work at the Calyx. For shame, for shame.” Instead of using wrist and ankle cuffs, Joy threw a couple of half hitches around EZ’s waist and the horse, which made it impossible for her to rear up off of it. By now, Anne-Marie had fetched one of her canes and was rolling up her sleeves. Alex heard Roxanne say, “Oh, shit, she’s in real trouble now.” Kay yanked EZ’s Levis down and slammed her fists once into the exposed buttocks before stepping away, shaking her head in disgust, and gesturing that Anne-Marie could do what she would. The cane was a yellow blur. Alex had stopped plying her cat and stood watching in open-mouthed astonishment. Roxanne was screaming in sympathy. There was a reason why she treated Anne-Marie with impeccable courtesy. The British are practically the inventors of imperialism, and it doesn’t do to forget that beneath the grand style of Victoria’s Empire there was brute force and a great appetite for wielding it. EZ screamed for a long time before she made any coherent sound, which was Kay’s name. “Fuck ya,” Kay said stubbornly. “Hope she cuts you in half, you dumbshit, badboy bitch, you.” Apparently, EZ felt this was not an impossibility, because her screams trebled in volume and range. But her ordeal continued until the cane broke. Anne-Marie felt it split and lowered her arm at once. The edges would be sharp as razors. “Let that be a lesson to you,” she advised the distraught victim, and stalked to the bar to throw the ruined and bloody implement away. “Fuck her,” Kay told Michael, uncapping one of the cans of Crisco she had stashed by the horse when the evening was still young. “Why don’t you just shove that big fat cock of yours up her ass, the same place I got my fist up the night I made the mistake of drag gin’ this snot-nosed case of arrested development home to cure a hangover.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The whore in turn gives nothing away, laughs at him while she keeps her secrets and pockets his cash. In this country, machismo is a survival mechanism by which minority men try to preserve their self-esteem and their culture. In the best sense of the word, it describes a person who is outnumbered, misunderstood, and outlawed who nevertheless strives to preserve a sense of pride and honor. Someone who has machismo insists on his right to dignity, and defends himself and what belongs to him even if it is a hopeless cause, even if he will be punished for making the attempt. Women are not supposed to have machismo, to be macho, but then, we’re not supposed to be sluts, either. And without machismo, a slut is just a commodity. In the midst of theoretical discussions, it’s important to remember that the state has power to take action against obscenity, and does not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value; appeals to prurient interests; goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters; and depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, explicit sexual conduct of a specifically defined nature—that book is obscene, and it is contraband. Reading this won’t make you an outlaw (it’s not that easy, sweetheart), but if you enjoy it, you might think about why the law is trying to get in between you and your prurient interests. I’m afraid that the opprobrium of right-wing, pro-censorship feminists is not the worst thing that will confront this book. We are in the middle of a crackdown on porn, especially S/M porn. For my birthday this year, I took a trip to Times Square to watch some loops in the peep show booths at my favorite porn store. This store used to feature a great diversity of material, and was always friendly to women. But all their S/M stuff was gone from the peep shows and the magazine racks. They had moved all their kinky magazines and videos to just one store, to protect the rest of them if that one got busted. If I wanted to look at an S/M movie now, I would have to buy the whole tape. I checked out several other adult bookstores on Times Square. Most of them were not selling any S/M material. I was very upset, but not because this meant I would be cut off from a primary source of arousal. The typical commercial S/M flick or magazine does not turn me on. Most of it is made by people who think S/M is weird and sick, and just want to make some easy money off the leather freaks.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I feel my temper awaken, stretch, and glare at her. I knew I was going to have a bad time when Ms Homespun-and-Wholesome, cheerful as always in the face of other people’s problems, insisted I apply for the janitorial job at a women-only clinic. It had taken me all morning to find someone who knew about the job opening, and it took her another hour to find the application forms and figure out who was supposed to be doing the interviews. They had refused to give me an appointment, promising me that the woman in question would see me as soon as she had a minute (and implying that an unemployed parasite like myself didn’t have anything more important to do than wait on my betters anyway), so I’d waited three hours for this cosy little session of a consciousness-raising. This comes on top of a week in which I’ve been interrogated, harassed, interviewed, shunted from one desk jockey to another, and stood in a dozen rooms in front of people who despised the way I looked, talked, thought, and got my eggs off. I do not like being told that I am not good enough to empty the garbage, make coffee, and straighten up the literature table. I’m not some moron. After my six years of basic education, I didn’t go to a trade school, I made it into college-prep. The fact that I got expelled in disgrace does not make me forget that I could have been somebody, maybe even a doctor. I’m a street person, but I’m not a bag lady or a wino. I am royalty out there, even if this party hack is too dumb to recognize the flora and fauna of the urban wilderness. The women who want to polish my boots and eat my pussy pay highly for the privilege (well, they pay me in cash, anyway). I have no desire whatsoever to take their dirty examination drapes to the laundry, wash off the day’s used speculums, dust the desks, and mop their floors. I have lied, bowed, scraped, apologized, and held my tongue under more abuse than I can stand. Now this upright, tight-assed committee commando is going to stamp my application “under consideration” and sit on it and delay my claim at rehab until I get evicted and starve to death. I just can’t take it any more. As soon as I make this decision, self-possession returns. I feel cold and deadly and righteous. I even run my finger around my necklace and haul out my little gold cross, dangle it so she will have to notice, and drop it into my T-shirt. So many of the Wiccan devout really get off on thinking you’re a secret Christian.