Fear

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 The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  and appointed for me to do in wedlock withal. Now was our bed finely and bravely prepared, shining with the tortoise-shell of Ind, rising with bolsters of feathers, and covered with silk and other things neces- sary ; but I, beside the shame to commit publicly this horrible fact and to pollute my body with this wicked harlot, did greatly fear the danger of death; for I thought in myself, that when she and I were together, the savage beast appointed to devour the woman was not so instructed and taught or would so temper his greediness as that he would tear her in pieces at my side and spare me with a regard of mine innocency. Wherefore I was more careful for the safeguard of my life than for the shame that I should abide; and in the mean season, while my master diligently made ready the bed, and all the residue did prepare themselves for the spectacle of hunting and delighted in the pleasantness of the triumph, I began to think and devise for myself; and when I perceived that no man had regard to me, that was so tame and gentle an ass, I stole secretly out of the gate that was next me, and then I ran away with all my force, and came after about six miles very swiftly passed to Cenchreae, which is the most famous town of all the Corinthians, bordering upon the seas called Aegean and Saronic. There is a great and mighty haven frequented with the ships of many a sundry nation, and there because I would avoid the multitude of people, I went to a secret place of the sea-coast, hard by the sprinklings of the waves, where I laid me down upon the bosom of the sand to ease and refresh myself; for now the day was past and the chariot of the sun gone down, and I lying in this sort on the ground did fall in a sweet and sound sleep. 537 LIBER XI 1 Creca primam ferme noctis vigiliam, experrectus pavore subito, video praemicantis lunae candore nimio completum orbem commodum marinis emer- gentem fluctibus, nanctusque opacae noctis silentiosa secreta, certus etiam summatem deam praecipua maiestate pollere resque prorsus humanas ipsius regi providentia, nec tantum pecuina et ferina, verum inanima etiam divino eius luminis numinisque nutu vegetari, ipsa etiam corpora terra caelo marique nunc incrementis consequenter augeri, nunc detri- mentis obsequenter imminui, fato scilicet iam meis tot tantisque cladibus satiato et spem salutis, licet tardam, subministrante, augustum specimen deae praesentis statui deprecari, confestimque discussa pigra quiete alacer exsurgo méque protinus purifi- candi studio marino lavacro trado, septiesque sub- merso fluctibus capite, quod eum numerum prae- cipue religionibus aptissimum divinus ille Pythagoras prodidit, laetus et alacer deam praepotentem lacri- moso vultu sic apprecabar : 538 BOOK X"

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before. “‘Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?’” (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on the word “criminal,” as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) “‘I warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,—’” “and my son,” she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest,—“‘disgrace my name, and’—and more in the same style,” she added. “In general terms, he’ll say in his official manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen. He’s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s angry,” she added, recalling Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself was doing him. “But, Anna,” said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to soothe her, “we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by the line he takes.” “What, run away?” “And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep on like this. And not for my sake—I see that you suffer.” “Yes, run away, and become your mistress,” she said angrily. “Anna,” he said, with reproachful tenderness. “Yes,” she went on, “become your mistress, and complete the ruin of....” Again she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter that word. Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the word—_son_, which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his future attitude to his mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such terror at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question of how it would be with her son. “I beg you, I entreat you,” she said suddenly, taking his hand, and speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, “never speak to me of that!” “But, Anna....”

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  I waited. 'So a little amusement has been arranged,' he continued when I said nothing. 'You shall perform a little circus for her Highness. Surely you have seen the trainers of animals in circuses, who with deft strokes of their whips place their trained cats on stools, and force them through hoops, and other tricks for the amusements of the audience.' "I felt desperate but I did not answer. 'Well, on the morrow, when your handsome buttocks have healed somewhat, such a little spectacle shall be arranged with the Princess Lynette and her strap to drive you through the performance.' "I knew my face was scarlet with rage and indignation, or worse, it showed my frantic despair, but it was too dark for him to see it. I could see only the gleam of his eyes, and how I knew that he smiled I wasn't certain. 'And you shall perform your little tricks quickly and well,' he went on, 'for the Queen is eager to see you hop upon this stool and tat, crouch on all fours, and then jump through the hoops that are just now being prepared for you. Because you are a two-legged pet with hands as well as feet, you can as well swing from a little trapeze that is being prepared for you, with Princess Lynette's paddle ever to spur you on, and entertain all of us as you show your agility.' "It seemed unthinkable to me, performing this. It was not service after all, not the dressing and adorning of my Queen, not the fetching for her to show I accepted her power and worshiped her. Not suffering for her, receiving her blows. But rather a series of willfully executed ignominious positions. I couldn't endure the thought of it. But worst of all, I couldn’t imagine myself managing to do it. I should be dreadfully humiliated when I failed in will, and was then dragged off again to the kitchen surely. "I was beside myself with rage and fear, and this menace, this brutal Lord Gregory whom I hated so was smiling at me. He took hold of my cock and pulled me forward. Of course he had it at the root, not near the tip where it might have given me some pleasure. And as he tugged my hips so that I lost my footing, he said, 'This will be a grand spectacle. The Queen, the Grand Duke and others shall witness it. And Princess Lynette shall be very eager to impress the Court. See to it that she does not outshine you.'" Beauty shook her head then and kissed Prince Alexi.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Through it all there moved a handful of young Princes on their hands and knees polishing boots as quickly as they could, their own buttocks raw, their necks encircled by a little cord of leather to which was attached a sign that Beauty could not read. But now as Leon brought her up standing again and gave some finishing touches to her lips and eyelashes, one of these Princes was now buffing her boots though he was weeping. His buttocks were as red as it could have been. And she saw the sign about his neck said, "I am in Disgrace," in small letters. A Page approached and gave the Prince a sound crack with a belt to hurry him on to another. But Beauty had no time to think of it. Leon had affixed the accursed little brass bells to her nipples. She shuddered almost instinctively but they were firmly attached, and he told her to fold her arms behind her back tightly. "Now forward, only you are to bend your knees slightly and to march, lifting each knee high," he told her. She started, awkwardly, reluctant to obey, but then she saw all about her other Princesses marching in an almost sprightly manner, their breasts bouncing gracefully as they moved into the corridor. She hurried, the heavy boots difficult for her to lift with any decorum, but soon she had fallen into a rhythm and Leon was walking beside her. "Now, darling," he said, "the first time is always difficult. Festival Night is frightening. I had thought some easier duty would be yours this first time, but the Queen has ordered you especially for the Bridle Path, and the Lady Juliana will drive you." "Ah, but what..." "Shah, or I shall have to gag you and that will very much displease the Queen as well as make your mouth quite ugly." All the girls were now in a long room, and through narrow windows on one wall, Beauty could see the garden. Torches flared in the dark trees, throwing an uneven glare on the leafy boughs above them. The line of girls formed right beside these windows, and Beauty was now able to see more of what lay beyond them. There was a great roar as of many people conversing, laughing. And then to her shock Beauty saw slaves all through the garden positioned in various ways for their torment. On high stakes here and there were strapped Princes and Princesses painfully contorted, their ankles bound to the stakes, their shoulders bent over the tops of them. They seemed no more than ornaments, the torchlight causing their twisted limbs to glow, the hair of the Princesses falling free in the air behind them. Surely they could see only the sky above, though all could see their miserable contortions.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She now saw what he meant when he said he had only just begun to yield. "But Alexi," she said gently, almost as if she could save him from his fate, as if it hadn't already happened long ago, "When you were brought by the stable boy to the Queen's presence, when she made you fetch the golden balls for her in the parlor, was this not something of the same thing?" She stopped. "O, how shall I ever do these things!" "But you can do them, all of them, that's the point of my story," he said. "Each new thing seems terrible because it is new, because it is a variation. But at the heart it is all the same ultimately. The paddle, the strap, the exposure, the bending of the will. Only they infinitely vary it. "But you do well to mention this first session with the Queen. It was similar. But remember I was raw and shaken from the kitchen, and thoughtless. I had regained my strength since then, and my strength had to be broken down again. Now perhaps had the little circus been constructed when I was fresh from the kitchen I would have taken to it eagerly then too. But I think not. It encompassed much greater exposure, much greater stamina, much greater surrender of self into positions and attitudes that appeared grotesque and inhuman. "No wonder they need no real cruelty, no fire, no whips, to teach their lessons or amuse themselves," he sighed. "But what happened? Did it come about?" "Yes, of course, though Lord Gregory had no need of telling me beforehand except to rob me of sleep. I spent a painful restless night. I awoke many times thinking others were near, the stable boys, or the kitchen servants, that they had found me helpless and alone and meant to torment me. But no one approached me. "During the night I heard whispers of conversation as Lords and Ladies walked under the stars. Now and then I even hears a slave driven past, crying fitfully under the inevitable smack of the leather. A torch would flicker under the trees, nothing more. "When the morning came, I was bathed, and rubbed with oil, and all this time, my penis was not touched, save when it flagged. Then it was cleverly awakened. "At twilight, the Slaves' Hall was full of talk of the circus. I was told by my groom, Leon, that the circle of performance had been prepared in a spacious hall near the Queen's apartments. There would be four rows of Lords and Ladies surrounding it, and they would bring their slaves, too, to see the amusement. The slaves were in a state of dread, lest they be made to perform.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O I Dante finds himself astray in a dark Wood, where he spends a night of great misery. He says that death is hardly more bitter, than it is to recall what he suffered there; but that he will tell the fearful things he saw, in order that he may also tell how he found guidance, and first began to discern the real causes of all misery. He comes to a Hill; and seeing its summit already bright with the rays of the Sun, he begins to ascend it. The way to it looks quite deserted. He is met by a beautiful Leopard, which keeps distracting his attention from the Hill, and makes him turn back several times. The hour of the morning, the season, and the gay outward aspect of that animal, give him good hopes at first; but he is driven down and terrified by a Lion and a She-wolf. Virgil comes to his aid, and tells him that the Wolf lets none pass her way, but entangles and slays every one that tries to get up the mountain by the road on which she stands. He says a time will come when a swift and strong Greyhound shall clear the earth of her, and chase her into Hell. And he offers to conduct Dante by another road; to show him the eternal roots of misery and of joy, and leave him with a higher guide that will lead him up to Heaven. IN THE middle of the journey of our life 1 I came to myself in a dark wood 2 where the straight way was lost. Ah! how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear! So bitter is it, that scarcely more is death: but to treat of the good that I there found, I will relate the other things that I discerned. I cannot rightly tell how I entered it, so full of sleep was I about the moment that I left the true way. But after I had reached the foot of a Hill 3 there, where that valley ended, which had pierced my heart with fear, I looked up and saw its shoulders already clothed with the rays of the Planet 4 that leads men straight on every road. Then the fear was somewhat calmed, which had continued in the lake of my heart the night that I passed so piteously. And as he, who with panting breath has escaped from the deep sea to the shore, turns to the dangerous water and gazes: so my mind, which still was fleeing, turned back to see the pass that no one ever left alive. After I had rested my wearied body a short while, I took the way again along the desert strand, so that the right foot always was the lower.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And he, knowing well the handmaids of the Queen 4 of everlasting lamentation, said to me: “Mark the fierce Erinnyes! 5 This is Megæra on the left hand; she, that weeps upon the right, is Alecto; Tisiphone is in the middle”; and therewith he was silent. With her claws each was rending her breast; they were smiting themselves with their palms, and crying so loudly, that I pressed close to the Poet for fear. “Let Medusa come, that we may change him into stone,” 6 they all said, looking downwards; “badly did we avenge the assault of Theseus.” 7 “Turn thee backwards, and keep thy eyes closed: for if the Gorgon show herself, and thou shouldst see her, there would be no returning up again.” Thus said the Master, and he himself turned me, and trusted not to my hands, but closed me also with his own. O ye, who have sane intellects, mark the doctrine, which conceals itself beneath the veil of the strange verses! 8 And now there came, upon the turbid waves, a crash of fearful sound, at which the shores both trembled; a sound as of a wind, impetuous for the adverse heats, which smites the forest without any stay; shatters off the boughs, beats down, and sweeps away; dusty in front, it goes superb, and makes the wild beasts and the shepherds flee. He loosed my eyes, and said: “Now turn thy nerve of vision on that ancient foam, there where the smoke is harshest.” As frogs, before their enemy the serpent, run all asunder through the water, till each squats upon the bottom: so I saw more than a thousand ruined spirits flee before one, who passed the Stygian ferry with soles unwet. He waved that gross air from his countenance, often moving his left hand before him; and only of that trouble seemed he weary. Well did I perceive that he was a Messenger of Heaven; and I turned to the Master; and he made a sign that I should stand quiet, and bow down to him. Ah, how full he seemed to me of indignation! He reached the gate, and with a wand opened it: for there was no resistance. “O outcasts of Heaven! race despised!” began he, upon the horrid threshold, “why dwells this insolence in you? Why spurn ye at that Will, whose object never can be frustrated, and which often has increased your pain? What profits it to butt against the Fates? Your Cerberus, if ye remember, still bears his chin and his throat peeled for doing so.” 9 Then he returned by the filthy way, and spake no word to us; but looked like one whom other care urges and incites than that of those who stand before him. And we moved our feet towards the city, secure after the sacred words. We entered into it without any strife; and I, who was desirous to behold the condition which such a fortress encloses,

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She had black hair and round cheeks, and a very tiny waist, and she dressed as many peasant women did, in a low-cut ruffled shirtwaist, and a short broad skirt that revealed her smart little ankles. She had an innocent face. She was watching Beauty in wonder, her big brown eyes moving anxiously to the Prince and then shyly back to Beauty who knelt at the Prince's feet in the firelight. "Now, as I told you," the Prince said softly to Beauty, "all here admire you, and they enjoy you, the sight of you, your plump little rear, your lovely legs, those breasts which I cannot stop myself from kissing. But there is no one here, not the lowliest, who is not better than you, my Princess, if I command you to serve him." Beauty was frightened. She nodded quickly as she answered "Yes, my Prince," and then very impulsively she bent and kissed the Prince's boot, but then she appeared terrified. "No, that is very good, my darling," the Prince stroking her neck, reassured her. "That is very good. If I allow you one gesture to speak your heart unbidden it is that one. You may always show me respect of your own accord in that manner." Again Beauty pressed her lips to the leather. But she was trembling. "These townspeople hunger for you, hunger for more of your loveliness," the Prince continued. "And I think they deserve a little taste of it that will delight them." Beauty kissed the Prince's boot again, and let her lips rest there. "O, don't think I should really let them have their fill of your charms. O, no," the Prince said thoughtfully. "But I should you this opportunity, both to reward their devoted attention and teach you that punishment will come whenever I desire to give it. You need not be disobedient to merit it. I will punish when it pleases me. Sometimes that will be the only reason for it." Beauty couldn't keep herself from whimpering. The Prince smiled and beckoned to the Innkeeper's daughter. But she was so frightened of him that she didn't come forward until her father pushed her. "My dear," said the Prince gently. "In the kitchen, have you a flat wooden instrument, for shoveling the hot pans into the oven?" There was a faint movement throughout the room as the soldiers glanced at one another. The people outside were pressing closer to the windows. The young girl nodded and quickly returned with a wooden paddle, very flat and smooth from years of use, with a good handle. "Excellent," said the Prince. But Beauty was crying helplessly.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  To miss the excitement! But in spite of her fear, Beauty nodded at this as if it were perfectly natural. A calm descended upon her in which she heard her own heart and felt her body as if there were limitless time in which to know it. She felt the sheathing of the leather boots, the click of her horseshoes on the stones, the air on her neck, her belly. And she thought, "Yes, this is what I am, so I should not wish to miss it either. Yet I rebel in my soul; why do I rebel?" "O, I despise that miserable Lord Gerhardt, why must he drive me?" asked the girl before her in a low voice. The groom said something that made her laugh. "But he's so slow," she said, "savoring every moment. And I like to run!" The groom laughed at her. She went on, "and what do I get out of it? -- the most miserable spanking. I could take the spanking if I could only cut loose and run..." "You want everything!" said the groom. "And what do you want? Don't tell me you don't like it when I'm covered with welts and almost blistered!" The groom laughed. He had a cheerful face, and was small of build, keeping his hands clasped behind his back, though his chestnut hair fell down over his eyes slightly. "My dear, I love everything about you," he said. "And so does Lord Gerhardt. Now say something to comfort Leon's little pet, she's so frightened." The girl turned and Beauty saw her pert face, eyes slanting at the ends somewhat like the eyes of the Queen, but they were smaller, with no cruelty. She smiled with full little red lips. "Don't be frightened, Beauty," she said, "but you have no need for comfort from me. You have the Prince. I have only Lord Gerhardt." A great current of laughter passed through the garden. The musicians were playing loudly, with much strumming of their lutes and tapping of the tambourines, and then Beauty quite distinctly heard the thunder of hooves approaching. A rider shot past the windows, his cape flying out behind him, his horse bridled in silver and gold which made a streak of light as he rushed forward. "O, at last, at last," said the girl in front of Beauty. Other riders were coming, and they were making a line all along the wall that almost blocked Beauty's view of the garden. She could not bear to look up at them, but she did and saw they were splendid Ladies and Lords, and each held the reins of the horse in his or her left hand, and in the right a long rectangular black paddle.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “You see, I’ve come to you,” said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for one second taking his eyes off his brother’s face. “I’ve been meaning to a long while, but I’ve been unwell all the time. Now I’m ever so much better,” he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands. “Yes, yes!” answered Levin. And he felt still more frightened when, kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother’s skin and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light. A few weeks before, Konstantin Levin had written to his brother that through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him as his share. Nikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what was more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Levin led him into his study. His brother dressed with particular care—a thing he never used to do—combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs. He was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Levin often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey Ivanovitch without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes with her and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he regained his serenity immediately. “Of course he was quite old,” he said, and changed the subject. “Well, I’ll spend a month or two with you, and then I’m off to Moscow. Do you know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I’m going into the service. Now I’m going to arrange my life quite differently,” he went on. “You know I got rid of that woman.” “Marya Nikolaevna? Why, what for?” “Oh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.” But he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had cast off Marya Nikolaevna because the tea was weak, and, above all, because she would look after him, as though he were an invalid. “Besides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I’ve done silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money’s the last consideration; I don’t regret it. So long as there’s health, and my health, thank God, is quite restored.”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Meanwhile a militarized wall has gone up along much of the Mexican border, ironically making it harder for seasonal undocumented workers to go home, as many once did, and turning this country into what some call the Golden Prison. Arizona school officials become so xenophobic that they outlaw Mexican American studies programs in high schools, lest they foster “ethnic solidarity.” Some students chain themselves to their desks in protest. Also, a growing number of children born in America are going to school in fear that their families won’t be there when they get home. Since half of all undocumented immigrants are women, and 80 percent of them have children who are citizens, this is a lot of fear. As I write this, anti-immigrant politicians are promising to build even higher walls. On the other hand, I begin to meet high school students and teachers in California and Texas who ask for Mexican American studies programs in their schools for the first time, precisely because of all the publicity generated by students protesting in Arizona. Also, Hispanic American voters are such a fast-growing part of the electorate that some politicians hostile to undocumented immigrants are being defeated. Polls show that most Americans don’t believe our economy could get along without the nearly twelve million undocumented workers here, or that deporting all of them is even possible. Also, our aging population is predicted to need millions more immigrant home care and health care workers. Even consumers who want local and organic meat and produce are beginning to link this principled stand to fair pay and fair treatment for people who harvest and serve our food. In other words, the future is blowing in the wind. I’m sure of only one thing. Within driving distance of where you are reading this right now, there are secret worlds of migrant farmworkers far from home, and immigrants who fear the loss of home. Coast to coast, these are our secrets next door. II.World War II newsreels gave me nightmares as a child, antiwar demonstrations inspired me as an adult, and now I’m at least in training to be a pacifist. Yet on a summer day in 1993 I find myself in downtown Manhattan, marching behind uniformed men and women carrying guns. Why? The answer is Tom Stoddard. I met him almost a decade earlier at a benefit in a Manhattan law firm, home to wingtip shoes, hunting prints, and Reagan supporters. He was heading the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and had somehow persuaded this conservative firm to support his organization that defends the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, and anybody with HIV/AIDS. This was the 1980s. Religious leaders were still calling HIV/AIDS “God’s punishment for sin,” and obituaries were still concealing it as a cause of death, even when the dying were impossibly young. Homophobia was still so powerful that even The New York Times had yet to use the word homophobia .

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The “illness” that led frustrated women to the offices of vibrator-wielding doctors a century ago often led someplace far worse in medieval Europe. As historian Reay Tannahill explains, “The Malleus Maleficarum (1486), the first great handbook of the witch inquisitors, had no more difficulty than a modern psycho-analyst in accepting that [a certain] type of woman might readily believe she had had intercourse with the Devil himself, a huge, black, monstrous being with an enormous penis and seminal fluid as cold as ice water.”8 But it wasn’t only sexual dreams that attracted the brutal attentions of erotophobic authorities. If a witch-hunter in the 1600s discovered a woman or girl with an unusually large clitoris, this “devil’s teat” was sufficient to condemn her to death.9 Medieval Europe suffered periodic plagues of incubi and succubi, male and female demons thought to be invading the dreams, beds, and bodies of living people. Thomas Aquinas and others believed that these demons impregnated women on their nocturnal visits by first posing as a succubus (a female spirit who has sex with a sleeping man in order to obtain his sperm), and then depositing the sperm in an unsuspecting woman in the form of an incubus (a male spirit ravishing a sleeping woman). Women thus thought to have been impregnated by malevolent spirits flitting about like nocturnal honeybees were at special risk of being exposed as witches and dealt with accordingly. Any stories these women might have told regarding the true origins of their pregnancy conveniently died with them. Though now considered one of the finest novels ever written, Madame Bovary was denounced as immoral when it was first published in late 1856. Public prosecutors in Paris were upset that Gustave Flaubert portrayed a headstrong peasant girl who flaunted the rules of established propriety by taking lovers. They felt her character met with insufficient punishment. Flaubert’s defense was that the work was “eminently moral” on those terms. After all, Emma Bovary dies by her own hand in misery, poverty, shame, and desperation. Insufficient punishment? The case against the book, in other words, turned on whether Emma Bovary’s punishment was agonizing and horrible enough, not on whether she deserved such suffering at all or had any right to pursue sexual fulfillment in the first place. But even Flaubert and his misogynistic prosecutors could never have dreamed up the punishments said to befall immodest women among the Tzotzil Maya of Central America. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy explains that “the h’ik’al, a super-sexed demon with a several-foot-long penis,” seizes women who have misbehaved, “carrying them off to his cave, where he rapes them.” Little girls are told that any woman unlucky enough to become pregnant by the h’ik’al “swells up and then gives birth night after night, until she dies.”10

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I think I sensed that I should go right away, yet somehow the accident seemed like a normal part of my father’s life on the road, nothing to be too alarmed about. Also I felt a cold stab of fear that if I went to California, I would become my father’s caretaker, as I had been my mother’s—and never come back to my own life. A few days before I was to leave, the doctor called my sister to say that our father had taken a turn for the worse due to internal bleeding. I got on the first flight to Los Angeles, but when I changed planes in Chicago, I heard myself being paged. It was my sister. The doctor had called again. There had been a massive internal hemorrhage—our father had died. When I arrived at that hospital, I found only a manila envelope with my father’s few belongings, and a doctor who seemed barely able to control his anger that no family member had been present. My father had succumbed to gushing traumatic ulcers, he said, more lethal than his crash wounds. I don’t know whether I was listening with a daughter’s ears or hearing a fact, but I thought he was saying that this fatal bleeding had been caused not by the crash itself, but by trauma, stress, despair. It was something I could never find the courage to tell my sister. It was something I would never forget.

• From Querelle (1953)

  st I QUERELLE 4•But it's such a drag when you're like that. And anyway, how do you know for sure that that Tony's rea11y out to get you " Mario made an irritated gesture. His mouth hardened. uYou don't think I'm getting cold feet, do you?" HI didn't say that." Dede sounded angry . .. 1 didn't say th at." He was standing in front of Mario. His voice was hoarse, a little vulgar, deep, with a slight country accent. It was the kind of voice that knows how to talk to horses. l\1ario turned his head. He looked at Dede for a couple of seconds. AU he would proceed to say during the ensuing scene would be tight-lipped and stem, as if trying to put the fu11 force of his will into his expression, so that the youngster would realize, once and for a11, that he, l\fario Lambert, inspector of the mobile squad, as signed to the Commissariat of Brest, went fn no fear for his future. For a year now he had been working with Dede who provided him with information on the secret life of the docks and told him about the thefts, the pilfering of coffee, minerals, other goods. The men on the waterfront paid little attention to the kid . .. Get going." Planted in front of him, feet apart and looking stockier than before, Dede gazed at the policeman, somewhat sulkily. Then he swiveled round on one foot, keeping his legs extended like a compass, and, in reaching over to the window where his coat was hanging on the hasp, moved his shoulders and chest with surprising speed and strength, displacing the weight of an in visible vault of heaven. For the first time Mario realized that Dede was strong, that he had grown up into a young man. He felt ashamed about having given in to fear in his presence, but then very quickly retreated into the she]] of The Police, which justifies every kind of behavior. The window opened on to a narrow lane. Facing it, on the other side, was the gray wall of a garage. Dede put on his coat. When he turned around again,

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  276 When it rains lightly and steadily, the replenishment district’s system of dams and spreading grounds collects the runoff from the San Gabriel River. On parts of the Los Angeles River, the runoff gathers behind rubber dams, inflated only when it rains. When it rains harder, the dams and gravel basins designed to capture runoff become part of a flood control system intended to move the water as quickly as possible. Along most city streets, storm drains open into feeder channels that empty directly into the rivers. When it rains very hard—an inch of rain an hour—the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers quickly fill nearly to the top of the concrete levees the Army Corps of Engineers built to contain flood water. The Corps of Engineers built the levees, beginning in 1938, to prevent the two rivers from cutting new channels through nearly 300 square miles of suburban development. When the two rivers flow at capacity, millions of gallons of flood water move through them in just a few hours. To prevent the flood water from topping the levees, the Corps designed flap gates that close the feeder channels until the crest passes. When the flap gates close, the excess water has to be stored somewhere. The flood control system stores the water on the level streets of the cities on the Los Angeles plain. 277 Until the Corps of Engineers built the county’s flood control system, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel were called “tramp” rivers because they found a new bed almost every winter. In the 1880s, the bed of the San Gabriel River would routinely shift more than a mile west after a heavy rain. The Los Angeles River once entered the Pacific Ocean near the city of Santa Monica and then at San Pedro, eighteen miles away. Once, the Los Angeles River was completely captured by the San Gabriel River. In 1915, levees began to limit the wandering of the two rivers, although they sometimes overflowed their new, artificial banks. A series of disastrous floods in

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Many lesbians had survived everything from family exile to Freudian theory, from remaining closeted in order to keep their jobs to coming out and losing custody of their own children. Besides enduring violence directed at females in general, they faced the added danger of being raped as a punishment, or as a “conversion” to heterosexuality. No lesbian was completely safe, but for those without traditional families, secret communities could mean more safety and a chosen family. On the road, I met couples traveling in RVs and discovered that a national roving group called RV Women provided campgrounds and community. Other gatherings were massive and seasonal—most famously, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. From 1976 to 2015, thousands of women and girls, lesbians and otherwise, came for part or all of the month of August to camp on acres of man-free Michigan forest and experience music groups, visual arts, and sports in safety and freedom. Other secrets were small but permanent, like lesbian retirement communities in Florida, or the Last Perch, a creation of a California couple whose vision went from aging to hospice. In 2001 I discovered an all-female trailer park near Tucson, Arizona. After being let through a double gate with a safety code that changed daily, I found myself on streets named for admired women in history. Suddenly I could imagine living on the corner of Emma Goldman and Gertrude Stein, or following Dorothy Height to Eleanor Roosevelt. At the center of all the neat rows of trailers was a clubhouse where women could gather for everything from book clubs to gambling. Now secrecy has become less necessary for safety, and, at least in some parts of the country, lesbian couples and their children are treated like other families. On the Web there are LGBTQ resort and retirement places for a larger community of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people. Yet whether we are born women or become women, many of us still find more safety in each other’s company than in the company of men, and more safety than men find in one another’s company. As long as there is danger, there will be secrets. But most of all, I owe my discovery of the power of secrets to migrant farmworkers. Without them, I would still believe that what I saw of America from my father’s car—or see now from my own wandering path—is all there is to see. I.It is the very end of the 1960s. Scared and in over my head, I am a volunteer flying to California at the request of Cesar Chavez, a man I don’t know. His fledgling union is trying to raise wages for all farmworkers, but the growers have refused even to talk, and Cesar has enlisted public support by calling for a consumer boycott of grapes. In retaliation, agribusiness is using migrants from Mexico to break the strike, and Cesar has organized protest marches from both sides of the border.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  See the beast from which I turned back; help me from her, thou famous sage; for she makes my veins and pulses tremble.” “Thou must take another road,” he answered, when he saw me weeping, “if thou desirest to escape from this wild place: because this beast, for which thou criest, lets not men pass her way; but so entangles that she slays them; and has a nature so perverse and vicious, that she never satiates her craving appetite; and after feeding, she is hungrier than before. The animals to which she weds herself are many; 13 and will yet be more, until the Greyhound 14 comes, that will make her die with pain. He will not feed on land or pelf, but on wisdom, and love, and manfulness; and his nation shall be between Feltro and Feltro. He shall be the salvation of that low 15 Italy, for which Camilla the virgin, Euryalus, and Turnus, and Nisus, died of wounds; 16 he shall chase her through every city, till he have put her into Hell again; from which envy first set her loose Wherefore I think and discern this for thy best, that thou follow me; and I will be thy guide, and lead thee hence through an eternal place, 17

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Finally it was time to go up. And driving Beauty before him, he gave her a few gentle but brisk spanks to hurry her up the stairs to the bedchamber. BEAUTY BEAUTY STOOD at the foot of the bed, her hands clasped to her neck, her buttocks throbbing with a warm pain that felt so much better now than the spanking she had lately received that it was almost pleasure. She had for the moment stopped crying. She had only just pulled down the covers for the Prince, with her teeth, her hands clasped behind her back, and then with her teeth had taken his boots to the edge of the room. And now she waited for further commands, trying to watch him, though her eyes were cast down, without his realizing it. He had bolted the door, and he was sitting on the side of the bed. And his black hair, loose and curling at his shoulders gleamed in the light of the tallow candle. His face was very beautiful to her, perhaps because in spite of the size of the features, they were all rather delicately molded. She did not know for certain. Even his hands enthralled her. The fingers were so long, so white, so delicate. She was terribly relieved to be alone with him. The moments below in the Inn had been such an agony to her, and even though he had brought the wooden paddle with him and might spank her much harder with it than that dreadful girl, she was so glad to be alone with him that she could not be afraid of it. She was afraid, however, that she hadn't pleased him. She searched her mind for faults. She had obeyed all his commands, and he understood how difficult it was for her. He knew completely what it meant for her to be stripped naked and revealed to everyone, to be helpless and made public and that this surrender of which he spoke could come in acts and gestures long before it could come from her mind. But no matter how hard she tried to excuse herself, she could not help but wondering if she could have tried harder. Did he want her to cry out more when she was spanked? She was uncertain. Just thinking of that girl spanking her in front of everyone made her cry again, and she knew that the Prince would see her tears, and he might wonder why now, when she'd been told to stand still at the foot of the bed, she was crying. This is my life, she told herself, trying to calm herself. He has awakened me and claimed me.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Entering the old penitentiary Quere11e was elated by fear and by the responsibility he was about to assume. Silently walking along beside Roger he felt a budding within himself-soon they would open, those buds, all over his body, and perfume it with their corollae : the budding of a violent adventure. Danger was what he needed in order to bloom. Danger and fear made him high. \Vhat would he find in the depths of the abandoned prison? He held on to himself. The least sense of excitement would have been enough to make him fear the place. With a tightness in his chest he thought of all those massive walls converging to crush him, and so he fought against them, fought them off, strained against them as he strained against his own anger, with the same effort, almost the same motions as those of the sergeant of the guard when he closes, using both his hands and all the weight of his body, the giant gates of the citadel. In some shadowy sense he was walking back to meet a former and blessed existence. Not that he seriously thought he had ever been a galley slave, nor did his imagination get involved in such fantasies, but he experienced a wonderful sense of well-being, a presentiment of rest, at the idea of entering, a free man, sovereign, the dark interior of these thick walls, which had throughout the ages contained so much shackled pain, so much physical and moral suffering, so many bodies contorted by torture, worn out by disease, knowing no other joys but the memory of marvelous crimes that stood like a pillar of smoke in the light, or pierced the dark in which they had been committed, with a blazing shaft of light. 'What could remain of these murders under the stones of this prison, or in its corners, or suspended in the humid air? Even though, for Querelle, these reflections were no clear thoughts, at lea�t the same thing that brings them so easily to pen and paper gave him a heavy, confused feeling of pain and bothered his brain with a smidgen of anguish. What's more, Q�erelle was on his way, for the first time in his life, to meet another criminal, a brother. He had already entertained vague dreams of meeting a murderer of his own stature, with 165 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in her direction. But he knew by the direction of people’s eyes where she was. He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting the worst, his eyes sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening. “How little of the military man there is left in you!” Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. “A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one would say.” “Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,” answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera-glass. “Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put on this,” he touched his epaulets, “I regret my freedom.” Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s career, but he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him. “What a pity you were not in time for the first act!” Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera-glass from the stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera-glass, Vronsky suddenly caught sight of Anna’s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from him. She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying something to Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky felt that she had seen him already. When Vronsky turned the opera-glass again in that direction, he noticed that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept laughing unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna, folding her fan and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box. Yashvin’s face wore the expression which was common when he was losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache further and further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box.