Anxiety

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 Summer Sisters (1998)

  “A ski instructor,” Caitlin said. “Italian. Very physical. You know the type.” Vix didn’t. “We met on the tram. He was all over me by the time we got to the top of the mountain. We could hardly ski down fast enough.” Vix felt her heart beating faster. “And?” she asked, not certain how much she wanted to know. “It just happened.” “It can’t just happen.” “Well, first we had to get out of our ski clothes if that’s what you mean.” That wasn’t what she meant. “Did it hurt? Did you feel the Power? Was it exciting?” Caitlin laughed. “Exciting? Yeah, I guess so ... for about two minutes. That’s how long it took till he finished.” Vix laughed, too. “Did he use something?” she asked. “Of course. I’m not totally crazy!” “Do you love him?” “Love him? I hardly know him. I’ll probably never see him again. It was mostly ... curiosity. But at least I got it out of the way.” Vix had no intention of doing it just to get it out of the way. Caitlin called her impossibly romantic, swearing that sex and love not only can be separated but should be. “What gets women into trouble is the way they confuse the two,” she said. “Men have always understood the difference. That’s one thing I’ve learned from Phoebe.” And so, as Vix watched Caitlin whooping it up with the guys on the beach, she assumed there would be no holding back this summer. When Caitlin called “Vix ... catch!” and the Frisbee sailed overhead, Vix reached up and grabbed it, then zigzagged along the beach, trying to avoid Bru who was heading straight for her. She managed to get rid of the Frisbee just before she hit the ground. She heard Caitlin shriek, then she was flat on her belly, wrists pinned, with Bru straddling her. “Promise to be good and I’ll let you up,” he said. “I’m not making any promises,” she told him, spitting out sand. “Then you can’t get up.”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  The nurses and doctors kept asking me questions: How did you get burned? Have your parents ever hurt you? Why do you have all these bruises and cuts? My parents never hurt me, I said. I got the cuts and bruises playing outside and the burns from cooking hot dogs. They asked what I was doing cooking hot dogs by myself at the age of three. It was easy, I said. … I'd put a chair next to the sink, climb up and fill a glass, then stand on a chair by the stove and pour the water into the pan. I did that over and over again until the pan held enough water. … "Mom says I'm mature for my age," I told them, "and she lets me cook for myself a lot."

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was a Sunday and the Strand was rather quiet - but I didn’t know it; it might have been the race-track at the Derby to me, so deafening and dizzying was the clatter of the traffic, so swift the passage of the horses. I felt safer in the carriage, and only rather queer, to be so close to a gentleman I did not know, being transported I knew not where, in a city that was vaster and smokier and more alarming than I could have thought possible. There was much, of course, to look at. Mr Bliss had suggested we take in the sights a little before we headed for Brixton, so now we rolled into Trafalgar Square - towards Nelson on his pillar, and the fountains, and the lovely, bone-coloured front of the National Gallery, and the view down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament. ‘My brother,’ I said, as I pressed my face to the window to gaze at it all, ‘said I would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square, if ever I came to London.’ Mr Bliss looked grave. ‘Your brother was very sensible to warn you, Miss Astley - but sadly misinformed. There are no trams in Trafalgar Square - only buses and hansoms, and broughams like our own. Trams are for common people; you should have to go quite as far as Kilburn, I’m afraid, or Camden Town, in order to be struck by a tram.’ I smiled uncertainly. I did not know, quite, what to make of Mr Bliss, to whom my future and my happiness had been so recently, and so unexpectedly, entrusted. While he addressed himself to Kitty, and directed our attention every so often to some scene or character in the street beyond, I studied him. He was a little younger, I saw, than I had taken him to be at first. That night in Kitty’s dressing-room I had thought him almost middle-aged; now I guessed him to be one- or two-and-thirty, at the most.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pero eso solo enojaría a Cole si su padre descubriera que metió la pata esta noche, y tampoco quiero que Pike lo sepa. Es vergonzoso. Somos adultos y nos hemos buscado esto. Me está cuidando lo suficiente y no lo despertaré cuando tiene que trabajar por la mañana. Eso me hace una carga. La única persona a la que podría llamar es Shel, y su casa está al otro lado de la ciudad. No quiero llamar a Cole, porque, por supuesto, no puede conducir, pero tal vez podría enviar a otro amigo. Pero no. No lo llamaré. Estoy muy enojada ahora mismo. Y esta ciudad tampoco tiene taxis. Veo la mesa de billar, los ceniceros que están en los bordes y las marcas de arañazos en todo el asqueroso fieltro. Bueno, maldición. Amanecerá en unas pocas horas. Puedo caminar a casa entonces. Tendré que esperar. No le voy a pedir mierda a nadie. Saltando del taburete, vuelvo a dirigirme detrás de la barra y saco dos montones de toallas blancas limpias y las llevo a la mesa de billar, abriéndolas una por una y cubriendo la superficie sucia. Apagué el aire acondicionado hace horas, por lo que ahora hacen unos cómodos veinticuatro grados, pero saco mi sudadera con capucha de mi bolso en caso que quiera cubrirme más tarde. Agarrando mi teléfono, dejo encendida la luz del pasillo y me subo a la mesa, bajando lo suficiente, para tener espacio para acostarme. Metiendo mi brazo debajo de mi cabeza, bostezo y verifico el volumen y la batería de mi teléfono, asegurándome de tener suficiente energía en caso que algo salga mal mientras estoy sola aquí toda la noche. Algo como Jay regresando. Encuentro mi aplicación que hace sonar un ventilador y la pongo, con la esperanza de poder dormir un poco, pero no soy optimista No me siento segura, así que no puedo relajarme. Cerrando los ojos, siento el peso de la fatiga en mis párpados y la agradable sensación de agotamiento. Es del tipo que sabes que te mereces, porque trabajaste duro ese día. Pero después de veinte minutos, mi mente todavía está corriendo. Mi cuerpo está agotado por hoy, pero mi cerebro no. Cuando suena mi celular, estoy bastante segura que es la señal de que no estoy destinada a dormir esta noche. Lo traigo hasta mis ojos, entrecerrándolos por la luz brillante. Pike. Frunzo el ceño. —¿Hola? —Lo sostengo en mi oído, bostezando de nuevo. —Hola —dice como esperando que no contestara—. Yo… a-acabo de ver que son más de las tres, y no había nadie en casa, así que solo quería ver que todo estaba bien. Asegurarme que todo estaba bien. Me pongo de lado, todavía usando mi brazo inferior como almohada, y sostengo el teléfono junto a mi oreja con la otra mano. —Estoy bien. —Sonrío ante su preocupación y broma—. ¿Tengo un toque de queda o algo así?

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  around her neck and zipped her jacket. She’d been waiting for Bru to ask to see Five Minutes in Heaven. So far, he hadn’t. She would offer to show it to him later, after dinner, then break the news about her job. Suddenly he stopped and blocked her path, his hands on her shoulders. She couldn’t tell from his expression what he was thinking. He took a small jeweler’s box out of his pocket and handed it to her. “We don’t have to get married right away,” he said. Married? “We can wait a year if you want ... but I need to know at the end of my wait you’re going to be there for me. You’re going to be my wife, have my kids ...” She opened the box and choked up as she looked at the tiny diamond set in gold, sparkling on blue velvet. Do you marry someone because the sex is good? Do you marry someone because you know, deep down, he’s a decent person, even if you can’t talk about the same books? She thought about the couples she knew—her parents, Lamb and Abby, even Loren and Tim Castellano. What was it that made them choose one another? How do you ever know it’s right? “Come with me to New York,” she said, urgently. “Why would we go to New York?” “I’ve been offered a job there.” “So tell them no.” “What about Boston?” she asked, grabbing at straws. “I could probably get a job in Boston.” “How many times do I have to tell you,” Bru said, “I hate cities. They make me claustrophobic. I’m an islander ... you know that.” “I just need some time to find out ...” “I put in indoor plumbing. I got a phone!” She looked back at the ring. She sensed if they broke up now it wouldn’t be like last time. “If you can’t say yes to marriage and island life that’s it. I mean it. I’ve waited four fucking years for you. You’re almost twenty-two. What’s your problem?” “I need vitamins?” she asked, trying to lighten it up. She could see the disappointment in his eyes turn to anger. He grabbed the jewelry box out of her hand and for a minute she thought he might hurl it into the river. But no, he shoved it back in his pocket, too

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  He would have given up all the animals, from aardvark to zebra, to dispatch her on a ship of her own. So now what are we going to do? Speed is necessary. This is no time for making speeches. We cannot wait. What you have to do is this. You have to find us three tubs or troughs - you know, the kind in which you knead dough or brew beer - but they have to be large enough to accommodate each one of us. And obviously they have to be able to float. Once you have them, put enough food in each of them for a day. There will be no need for any more. The waters will go down, as swiftly as they came up, at nine o’clock the next morning.’ ‘What about young Robin? And Jill, our maid?’ ‘I am afraid that they cannot be saved. Don’t ask me why. I cannot reveal the secrets of God. It must suffice that you and Alison and I will be rescued from the flood. You would be mad not to do this. So get on with it. Oh. One more thing. When you have found these three tubs, you must hang them high up from the rafters so that no one will know what we are doing. When you have done all this, and have stored all the food and drink, you must get hold of

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  You may begin showing signs of schizophrenia—like you’ll stare at the word schizophrenia so long that it will start to look wrong and you won’t be able to find it in the dictionary and you’ll start to think you made it up, and then you’ll notice a tiny mouth sore, one of those tiny canker sores that your tongue can’t keep away from, that feels like a wound the size of a marble, but when you go to study it in the mirror, you see that it is a white spot roughly as big as a pinhead. Still, the next thing you know—because you are spending too much time alone —you are convinced that you have mouth cancer, just like good old Sigmund, and you know instantly that doctors will have to cut away half of your jaw, trying to save your miserable obsessive-compulsive head from being cannibalized by the cancer, and you’ll have to go around wearing a hood over your entire face, and no one will ever want to kiss you again, not that they ever really did. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this way of thinking, only that it is ultimately not all that productive. So you might as well try to get something done. And it’s better if contact with another human being is involved. One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline—so it’s useful to give yourself a minimum quota of three hundred words a day. But also every single day a kid needs a break. So think of calling around as giving yourself a break. The truth is that there are simply going to be times when you can’t go forward in your work until you find out something about the place you grew up, when it was still a railroad town, or what the early stages of shingles are like, or what your character would actually experience the first week of beauty school. So figure out who would have this information and give that person a call. It’s best if you can think of someone who’s witty and articulate, so you can steal all of his or her material. Also, of course, it’s just more interesting to be on the phone with someone who’s sort of keen. But these qualities are not absolutely necessary, because you may just be looking for one piece of information, or even just one word, and you do not need a whole lot of background or humor to go with it. And it may also turn out that in searching for this one bit of information, something else will turn up that you absolutely could not have known would be out there waiting for you. For instance, when I was writing my second novel, I got to the part where the man comes over for his first date with the woman and brings with him a bottle of champagne. He removes the foil.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  A van had broken down, spilling clothes and furniture all over the road and creating a big backup. The police were trying to clear the highway, but a dog had jumped out of the van and was running up and down the turnpike as a couple of officers chased after him. The announcer got a lot of mileage out of the story, going on about the rubes with their clunker of a vehicle and yapping dog who were making thousands of New York commuters late for work. That night the psychologist told me I had a phone call. “Jeannettie-kins!” It was Mom. “Guess what?” she asked in a voice brimming with excitement. “Your daddy and I have moved to New York!” The first thing I thought about was the van that had broken down on the turnpike that morning. When I asked Mom about it, she admitted that yes, she and Dad had a teensy bit of technical difficulty with the van. It had popped a belt on some big, crowded highway, and Tinkle, who was sick and tired of being cooped up, you know how that goes, had gotten loose. The police had shown up, and Dad got into an argument with them, and they threatened to arrest him, and gosh it was quite the drama. “How did you know?” she asked. “It was on the radio.” “On the radio?” Mom asked. She couldn’t believe it. “With everything going on in the world these days, an old van popping a belt is news?” But there was genuine glee in her voice. “We only just got here, and we’re already famous!” After talking to Mom, I looked around my room. It was the maid’s room off the kitchen, and it was tiny, with one narrow window and a bathroom that doubled as a closet. But it was mine. I had a room now, and I had a life, too, and there was no place in either one for Mom and Dad. Still, the next day I went up to Lori’s apartment to see them. Everyone was there. Mom and Dad hugged me. Dad pulled a pint of whiskey out of a paper bag while Mom described their various adventures on the trip. They had gone sightseeing earlier that day, and taken their first ride on the subway, which Dad called a goddamn hole in the ground. Mom said the art deco murals at Rockefeller Center were disappointing, not nearly as good as some of her own paintings. None of us kids was doing much to help carry the conversation. “So, what’s the plan?” Brian finally asked. “You’re moving here?” “We have moved,” Mom said. “For good?” I asked. “That’s right,” Dad said. “Why?” I asked. The question came out sharply. Dad looked puzzled, as if the answer should have been obvious. “So we could be a family again.” He raised his pint. “To the family,” he said.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  as she jots down the date and time of the wedding. She doodles all around it while Caitlin chats, until the whole page is filled with arrows, crescent moons, and triangles, as if she’s back in sixth grade. “Vix?” Caitlin says. “Are you still there? Do we have a bad connection or what?” “No, it’s okay.” “So you’ll come?” “Yes.” The second she hangs up she makes a mad dash for the women’s room where she pukes her guts out in the stall. She has to call Caitlin back, tell her there’s no way she can do this. What can Caitlin be thinking? What was she thinking when she agreed? Four weeks later Caitlin, her hair flying in the wind, meets Victoria at the tiny Vineyard airport. Victoria is the last one to step out of the commuter from LaGuardia. She’d spotted Caitlin from her window as soon as they’d landed but felt glued to her seat. It’s been more than two years since they’ve seen each other, and three since Victoria graduated from college and got caught up in real life—a job, with just two weeks vacation a year. No money to fly around. Bummer, as Lamb would say when they were kids. “Going on to Nantucket with us?” the flight attendant asks and suddenly Victoria realizes she’s the only passenger still on the plane. Embarrassed, she grabs her bag and hustles down the steps onto the tarmac. Caitlin finds her in the crowd and waves frantically. Victoria heads toward her, shaking her head because Caitlin is wearing a T-shirt that says simplify, simplify, simplify. She’s barefoot as usual and Victoria is betting her feet will be as dirty as they were that first summer. Caitlin holds her at arm’s length for a minute. “God, Vix ...” she says, “you look so ... grownup!” They both laugh, then Caitlin hugs her. She smells of seawater, suntan lotion, and something else. Victoria closes her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent, and for a moment it’s as if they’ve never been apart. They’re still Vixen and Cassandra, summer sisters forever. The rest is a mistake, a crazy joke. PART ONE Dancing Queen 1977–1980

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Riviere’s postulated unity between gender attributes and a naturalized “orientation” appears as an instance of what Wittig refers to as the “imaginary formation” of sex. And yet, Riviere calls into question these naturalized typologies through an appeal to a psychoanalytic account that locates the meaning of mixed gender attributes in the “interplay of conflicts” (35). Significantly, she contrasts this kind of psychoanalytic theory with one that would reduce the presence of ostensibly “masculine” attributes in a woman to a “radical or fundamental tendency.” In other words, the acquisition of such attributes and the accomplishment of a heterosexual or homosexual orientation are produced through the resolution of conflicts that have as their aim the suppression of anxiety. Citing Ferenczi in order to establish an analogy with her own account, Riviere writes: Ferenczi pointed out ... that homosexual men exaggerate their heterosexuality as a “defence” against their homosexuality. I shall attempt to show that women who wish for masculinity may put on a mask of womanliness to avert anxiety and the retribution feared from men. (35) It is unclear what is the “exaggerated” form of heterosexuality the homosexual man is alleged to display, but the phenomenon under notice here might simply be that gay men simply may not look much different from their heterosexual counterparts. This lack of an overt differentiating style or appearance may be diagnosed as a symptomatic “defense” only because the gay man in question does not conform to the idea of the homosexual that the analyst has drawn and sustained from cultural stereotypes. A Lacanian analysis might argue that the supposed “exaggeration” in the homosexual man of whatever attributes count as apparent heterosexuality is the attempt to “have” the Phallus, the subject position that entails an active and heterosexualized desire. Similarly, the “mask” of the “women who wish for masculinity” can be interpreted as an effort to renounce the “having” of the Phallus in order to avert retribution by those from whom it must have been procured through castration. Riviere explains the fear of retribution as the consequence of a woman’s fantasy to take the place of men, more precisely, of the father. In the case that she herself examines, which some consider to be autobiographical, the rivalry with the father is not over the desire of the mother, as one might expect, but over the place of the father in public discourse as speaker, lecturer, writer—that is, as a user of signs rather than a sign-object, an item of exchange. This castrating desire might be understood as the desire to relinquish the status of woman-as-sign in order to appear as a subject within language. Indeed, the analogy that Riviere draws between the homosexual man and the masked woman is not, in her view, an analogy between male and female homosexuality. Femininity is taken on by a woman who “wishes for masculinity,” but fears the retributive consequences of taking on the public appearance of masculinity.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Typical of the fundamentalist mind-set is the belief that there is only one way of interpreting reality. For the new atheists, scientism alone can lead us to truth. But science depends upon faith, intuition, and aesthetic vision as well as on reason. The physicist Paul Dirac has argued that “it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.”45 The mathematician Roger Penrose believes that the creative mind “breaks through” into a Platonic realm of mathematical and aesthetic forms: “Rigorous argument is usually the last step! Before that, one has to make many guesses, and for these aesthetic convictions are enormously important.”46 There are many circumstances in which human beings have to lay aside an objectivist analysis, which seeks in some way to master what it contemplates.47 When confronted with a work of art, we have to open our minds and allow it to carry us away. If we seek to relate intimately to another person, we have to be prepared to make ourselves vulnerable—as Abraham did when he opened his heart and home to the three strangers at Mamre. As Tillich pointed out, men and women continually feel drawn to explore levels of truth that go beyond our normal experience. This imperative has inspired the scientific as well as the religious quest. We seek what Tillich called an “ultimate concern” that shapes our life and gives it meaning. The ultimate concern of Dawkins and Harris appears to be reason; this has seized and taken possession of them. But their idea of reason is very different from the rationality of Socrates, who used his reasoning powers to bring his dialogue partners into a state of unknowing. For Augustine and Aquinas, reason became intellectus, opening naturally to the divine. Today, for many people, reason no longer subverts itself in this way. But the danger of this secularization of reason, which denies the possibility of transcendence, is that reason can become an idol that seeks to destroy all rival claimants. We hear this in the new atheism, which has forgotten that unknowing is a part of the human condition, so much so that, as the social critic Robert N. Bellah has pointed out: “Those who feel they are … most fully objective in their assessment of reality are most in the power of deep, unconscious fantasies.”48

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Abby IT’S HER FIRST TRIP to Santa Fe and she’s anxious about meeting Phoebe at graduation. She wears her taupe Armani, a string of pearls, little heels. She’s going for an elegant, understated look. But she sees right away she’s got it all wrong. The other women gathered in the quad at the Mountain Day School are dressed like cowgirls. “At best, Linda Evans in The Big Valley—at worst, Dale Evans as herself.” She wishes Lamb hadn’t dropped her off while he went to park. The Countess rushes to her side. Precious Girl, she cries, taking her arm, leading her to a striking woman in fringed leather, silver and turquoise jewelry, her hair braided. Darlings ... the Countess coos, you two really must get to know one another. After all, you’ve had the same husband, you share the same children. Her instinct is to run, but her feet won’t move. She can’t swallow. Phoebe breaks the ice first. What a wicked girl you are! she tells the Countess, who laughs heartily, then excuses herself to greet someone else, as if she’s the hostess at a garden party, leaving her alone with Phoebe, who leans close and says, They don’t call her the Cuntess for nothing! She imagines them in bed together, Phoebe and Lamb, then shuts her eyes tight, trying to erase the picture. She hadn’t expected her to be so exotically beautiful, the long hair, the green eyes. Every male standing in the quad, every straight male, anyway, has his eye on her. And Phoebe knows it. Phoebe WELL, WELL, WELL ... isn’t she something! So chic, so East Coast elegant. In Armani, for God’s sake. And all this time she’d been so sure it would be Trisha. She tries to contain her laughter. She hears Caity warning her—Be nice at graduation, Phoeb, okay? How sweet of Caity to feel protective of Lamb’s new wife, though she’s not sure she likes the idea. Shouldn’t Caity be protecting her? She tries to imagine Lamb and his bride in bed together, but she’s bothered by the image of him holding this woman the way he once held her. Does she have regrets? Let’s just say she has fond memories. Maybe if he’d been willing to do the Aspen thing, the Santa Fe thing, but Boston ... God help her! She wasn’t about to wind up a proper Yankee wife. How ordinary, how boring!

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So, when he saw his opportunity, he left the mill very quietly and went down into the yard. He looked about him, and finally found the clerks’ horse tied to a tree behind the mill. The miller goes up to it, unties it, and takes off its bridle. When the horse was loose it started sniffing the air and then with a ‘Weehee’ galloped off towards the fen where the wild mares roam. Well pleased, the miller returned to John and Alan. He said nothing about the horse, of course, but laughed and joked with them as he got on with the job. At last the corn was finely ground, and the meal put in a sack, all above board. Then John went out into the yard. He looked around for the horse. And then - ‘Oh fuck! The horse is gone! Alan, for fuck’s sake get oot here! We’ve lost the master’s horse!’ Alan forgot all about the meal and corn, forgot all about watching the miller, and rushed out of the mill. ‘Which way did it gan?’ he cried out to John. ‘How am I supposed to kna’?’ Then out ran the miller’s wife in a state of great excitement. ‘That horse of yours,’ she said, ‘has gone off to find the mares in the fen. Somebody didn’t tie him up properly. Somebody should have known better.’ ‘Let’s put our swords doon,’ John said, ‘and gan after it. I’m strong enough to tek hold of it. It can’t get away from both of us. Why didn’t you put him in the barn, you clown?’ So the two of them sped off towards the fen. As soon as they had gone the miller took half a bushel of flour from their sack and told his wife to bake a loaf of bread with it. ‘They won’t be back for a while,’ he said. ‘A miller can still outwit a scholar. Well, let them go. Let the children play.’ He started laughing. ‘They’ll have a hard time finding that horse.’ So the two scholars ran up and down the fen, trying to catch hold of their horse. They called out, ‘Stay! Stay!’ and ‘Here, boy! Here!’ And they called out to each other, ‘Wait! Go back a bit!’ and ‘Whistle to him. Gan on.’ However hard they tried, the animal always managed to elude them. He was fast. It was not until nightfall, in fact, that they managed to catch him in a ditch. The horse was exhausted. And so were they. They were weary, and wet from the rain. ‘I divn’t believe it,’ John said. ‘Everyone’ll be laughin’ at us now. Our corn’ll be gone. We’re both ringin’ wet. We’ve both been made to look like cocks. The master’ll rip the shit out of us. So will the scholars. And, as it happens, so will the miller. You just wait and see.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  When Copernicus had presented his ideas in the Vatican, the pope had given his approval; ninety years later, De revolutionibus was placed on the Index. In 1605, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), counselor to King James I of England, had declared that there could be no conflict between science and religion. But that openness was giving way to dogmatism and suspicion. There would soon be no place in the new Europe for the skepticism of Montaigne or the psychological agnosticism of Shakespeare. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the notion of truth had begun to change. Thomas Aquinas would not have recognized his theology in its post-Tridentine guise. His apophatic delight in unknowing was being replaced by a strident lust for certainty and a harsh dogmatic intolerance. The spirituality of silence was giving way to wordy debate; the refusal to define (a word that literally means “to set limits upon”) was being superseded by aggressive definitions of ineffable dogma. Faith was beginning to be identified with “belief” in man-made opinions—and that would, eventually, make faith itself difficult to maintain. The first modern Western atheists, however, were not Christians who had been alienated by the terrible convictions of their clergy but Jews living in the most liberal country in Europe. Their experience tells us a good deal about our current religious predicament. By the early seventeenth century, while the rest of Europe was in the grip of severe economic recession, the Dutch were enjoying a golden age of prosperity and expansion. They did not share the new sectarian dogmatism. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, some of the Marrano Jews had been permitted to leave Portugal and migrated to Venice, Hamburg, London, and, above all, Amsterdam, which became their New Jerusalem. In Holland, Jews were not confined to ghettos, as they were elsewhere in Europe; they became successful businessmen and mingled freely with gentiles. When they arrived in Amsterdam, the Marranos were eager for the opportunity to practice their faith fully.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Upon her head was set a coronet twined from the leaves of the evergreen oak, sacred to Zeus. First she kindled two fires upon the altar, and then performed the ritual as it is outlined in the Thebaid of Statius and other ancient authorities. When the fires were fully lit she kneeled before the statue of Diana, and prayed to her. ‘Oh chaste goddess of the green woods,’ she murmured, ‘to whom all things of heaven and earth are visible, queen of Plato’s dark dominions, goddess of innocent maidens - you have seen into my heart for many years. You know my desire. I hope I never shall incur your wrath and vengeance, as Actaeon did when he was turned into a stag. But you understand, great goddess, that I seek only to remain a virgin. I never wish to be a mistress or a wife. I am a part of your order of maidens, devoted to hunting and not to love. I long to walk in the wild woods, never to marry and never to bear children. I have never wished to lie with any man. So help me now. As goddess of the chase, the moon and the underworld, cast your triune grace upon me. Cure Palamon, and also Arcite, of their passion for me. Restore love and peace between them, and turn their hearts away from me. Let all the flames of burning love and hot desire be quenched. Assuage their violent torment and put out their fire. Or, at the very least, send them other loves. But if you will not vouchsafe this favour to me, and if my destiny will not be as I wish, then I ask you this. If I must have Arcite or Palamon, grant me the one who loves me best. Yet let it not come to that. Behold, goddess of chaste purity, one who kneels before you weeping bitter tears. Since you are maid and preserver of us all, I pray you keep my maidenhead intact. As a virgin, I will serve you all my life.’ The bright flames lit up the altar, while Emily kneeled in prayer. But then to her amazement one of the fires was suddenly extinguished, only to flare up again; after that the other fire went out and, as it died away, there came a great crackling and roaring as of wet branches burning in a heap. From each of the branches of the fire there now dripped blood, drop upon drop falling to the floor of the temple. Emily was confused and terribly alarmed. What was this? In her fear she cried out like a mad woman. She broke down and wept. But at that moment she had a vision of Diana. The apparition of the goddess stood before her, with hunter’s bow in hand, and spoke thus. ‘Daughter, cast off your melancholy.

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  Lecture Seventeen Book IX—The New Man Scope: One center of this book is Augustine’s baptism, which marks the end of the process of his conversion and, thus, the end of the biographical part of the Confessions. But Augustine also has to deal with the very real question of what to do with his life now that he has formally become a Christian. This book deals with his decision to abandon his life as a teacher of rhetoric in favor of a life of leisure and contemplation. In this lecture, we will deal with his new “career choice,” seen both in itself and in terms of his later life as a Christian bishop. We will also follow Augustine as he recounts the deaths of several friends who have become close to him, as well as the death of his son. Given that the pattern of Christian baptism, as a rite of initiation, is seen by Augustine as a pattern of death and rebirth, it seems clear that Augustine wants us to view these deaths, as well as the climactic death of his mother, which also takes place in this book, in terms of the Christian doctrine of resurrection. We will discuss what Augustine says about his son, in what amounts to a kind of eulogy for him, and explore some of the questions that are left unanswered in Augustine’s discussion of his son. Outline I. Augustine’s conversion leads toward his baptism. His official reception into the Christian community through this rite of Christian initiation is, in a real sense, the goal of his lengthy journey, which ends in his turning toward God. A. Baptism as a rite of the Christian Church is extremely rich in significance and symbolism. B. Saint Paul, for example, talks about baptism in terms of a pattern of death and resurrection. 1. Christ’s death and resurrection, according to Paul, is that pattern that all Christians must follow. 2. Our immersion in the waters of baptism recreates precisely that pattern. 52 ©2004 The Teaching Company.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  This becomes politically problematic if that system can be shown to produce gendered subjects along a differential axis of domination or to produce subjects who are presumed to be masculine. In such cases, an uncritical appeal to such a system for the emancipation of “women” will be clearly self-defeating. The question of “the subject” is crucial for politics, and for feminist politics in particular, because juridical subjects are invariably produced through certain exclusionary practices that do not “show” once the juridical structure of politics has been established. In other words, the political construction of the subject proceeds with certain legitimating and exclusionary aims, and these political operations are effectively concealed and naturalized by a political analysis that takes juridical structures as their foundation. Juridical power inevitably “produces” what it claims merely to represent; hence, politics must be concerned with this dual function of power: the juridical and the productive. In effect, the law produces and then conceals the notion of “a subject before the law” 2 in order to invoke that discursive formation as a naturalized foundational premise that subsequently legitimates that law’s own regulatory hegemony. It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of “women,” the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought. Indeed, the question of women as the subject of feminism raises the possibility that there may not be a subject who stands “before” the law, awaiting representation in or by the law. Perhaps the subject, as well as the invocation of a temporal “before,” is constituted by the law as the fictive foundation of its own claim to legitimacy. The prevailing assumption of the ontological integrity of the subject before the law might be understood as the contemporary trace of the state of nature hypothesis, that foundationalist fable constitutive of the juridical structures of classical liberalism. The performative invocation of a nonhistorical “before” becomes the foundational premise that guarantees a presocial ontology of persons who freely consent to be governed and, thereby, constitute the legitimacy of the social contract. Apart from the foundationalist fictions that support the notion of the subject, however, there is the political problem that feminism encounters in the assumption that the term women denotes a common identity. Rather than a stable signifier that commands the assent of those whom it purports to describe and represent, women, even in the plural, has become a troublesome term, a site of contest, a cause for anxiety. As Denise Riley’s title suggests, Am I That Name? is a question produced by the very possibility of the name’s multiple significations.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  was different from the other girls. This difference is a cause for alternating states of anxiety and self-importance through the story, but it is there as tacit knowledge before the law becomes an explicit actor in the story. Although Herculine does not report directly on h/er anatomy in the journals, the medical reports that Foucault publishes along with Herculine’s own text suggest that Herculine might reasonably be said to have what is described as either a small penis or an enlarged clitoris, that where one might expect to find a vagina one finds a “cul-de-sac,” as the doctors put it, and, further, that she doesn’t appear to have identifiably female breasts. There seems also to be some capacity for ejaculation that is not fully accounted for within the medical documents. Herculine never refers to anatomy as such, but relates h/er predicament in terms of a natural mistake, a metaphysical homelessness, a state of insatiable desire, and a radical solitariness that, before h/er suicide, is transformed into a full-blown rage, first directed toward men, but finally toward the world as such. Herculine relates in elliptical terms h/er relations with the girls at school, the “mothers” at the convent, and finally h/er most passionate attachment with Sara who becomes h/er lover. Plagued first with guilt and then with some unspecified genital ailment, Herculine exposes h/er secret to a doctor and then a priest, a set of confessional acts that effectively force h/er separation from Sara. Authorities confer and effect h/er legal transformation into a man whereupon s/he is legally obligated to dress in men’s clothing and to exercise the various rights of men in society. Written in a sentimental and melodramatic tone, the journals report a sense of perpetual crisis that culminates in suicide. One could argue that prior to the legal transformation of Alexina into a man, s/he was free to enjoy those pleasures that are effectively free of the juridical and regulatory pressures of the category of “sex.” Indeed, Foucault appears to think that the journals provide insight into precisely that unregulated field of pleasures prior to the imposition of the law of univocal sex. His reading, however, constitutes a radical misreading of the way in which those pleasures are always already embedded in the pervasive but inarticulate law and, indeed, generated by the very law they are said to defy. The temptation to romanticize Herculine’s sexuality as the utopian play of pleasures prior to the imposition and restrictions of “sex” surely ought to be refused. It still remains possible, however, to ask the alternative Foucaultian question: What social practices and conventions produce sexuality in this form? In pursuing the question, we have, I think, the opportunity to understand something about (a) the productive capacity of power—that is, the way in which regulative strategies produce the subjects they come to subjugate; and (b) the specific mechanism by which power produces sexuality in the context of this autobiographical narrative.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  This fervid piety was not quelled by the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under King Charles II; it simply went underground. The next thirty years were a time of extreme anxiety, since people feared another violent revolution. 39 A flourishing market economy was developing in London and the southeast, but the poor resented the affluence of the new commercial classes, the authority of the recently established Church of England, and the privileges of the landed gentry. In Cambridge, the mathematician and clergyman Isaac Barrow (1630–77) developed a liberal Anglicanism that he hoped would help to build an orderly society, modeled on the cosmos, in which all people kept to their proper orbits and worked together harmoniously for the common good. A regular member of these discussion groups was the young Isaac Newton (1642–1727). 40 Like Descartes, Newton aspired to create a universal science capable of interpreting the whole of human experience. Where Descartes’ quest had been solitary, Newton understood the importance of cooperation in science. He wanted to build on the achievements of his great predecessors, and felt, as he wrote to his friend Robert Hooke, as though he were “standing on the shoulders of giants.” 41 But these giants had left some unanswered questions: What kept the planets in their orbits? Why did terrestrial objects always fall to the ground? In a series of lectures, published in 1687, Newton argued that the universal science was not mathematics, as Descartes had believed, but mechanics, “which accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of measuring.” 42 His Universal Mechanics would start by measuring the motions of the universe and then, on the basis of these findings, go on to explain all other phenomena. 43 Newton achieved a magnificent synthesis that brought together in a single theory Cartesian physics, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, and Galileo’s laws of terrestrial movement. Gravity proved to be the fundamental force that accounted for all celestial and earthly activity. In order to maintain their orbits around the sun at their relative speeds and distances, the planets were pulled toward the sun by an attractive force that decreased inversely as the square of the distance from the sun. The moon and the oceans were drawn toward the earth by the same law. For the first time, all the disparate facts observed in the cosmos had been brought together into a comprehensive theory. At last the solar system had become intelligible. Everything—the annual orbits of the planets, the rotation of the earth, the motions of the moon, the tidal movement of the seas, the precession of the equinoxes, a stone falling to the ground—could now be explained by gravity. Gravity caused all bodies to incline mutually toward one another; it prevented the planets from flying off into space and enabled them to maintain their stable orbits at the relative speeds and distances specified by Kepler.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Tawny WHAT WAS SHE THINKING, packing a lunch for Victoria? It’s not like her to fuss over her children. They have to be prepared for life and life is hard, full of disappointments. She shouldn’t have listened to Ed, shouldn’t have agreed to let Victoria go to an island, of all places, when she can’t even swim. And telling her not to worry. Worry? She’s too tired to worry. She can’t remember what it’s like not to be tired. She closes her eyes and prays to God to protect her daughter. To keep her safe. But it will never be the same. Once Victoria gets a taste of another way of life, once she spends a summer with a girl like Caitlin Somers, she’ll be lost to them, sure as a dog chews a bone. She knows it even if Ed doesn’t. And now the other children are pulling on her, begging for money for the gumball machine. Only Nathan is still thinking of Victoria. She can see it on his face. She’s surprised herself that Victoria just up and left him. She counts on Victoria to help out over the summer. The other two are useless, cut from a different piece of cloth. But Victoria is more like her. She does what needs to be done.