Mortification

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 Heptaméron (1559)

  appearing at any festive meeting. The French could ndt see her without praising her beauty and her grace : one among them especially, whom I will not name. It is enough to inform you that there was not a Frenchman in Italy more worthy to be loved, for he was fully en- dowed with all the beauties and graces which a gentle- man could have. Though he saw the widow dressed in black crape, apart from the young people, and withdrawn into a corner with several old ladies, yet, being one who had never known what it was to fear man or woman, he accosted her, took off his mask, and quitted the dance to converse with her. He passed the whole evening with her and the old ladies her companions, and enjoyed him- self more than he could have done with the youngest and sprightliest ladies of the court. So charmed was he with this conversation, that when it was time to retire he hardly believed he had had time to sit down. Though he talked with the widow only upon common topics, suited to the company around her, she failed not to per- ceive that he was anxious to make her acquamtance, which she was so resolute to prevent, that he could never afterwards meet with her in any company, great or small. At last, having made inquiries as to her habits of life, and learned that she went often to the churches and religious houses, he set so many people on the watch that she could not go to any of those places so secretly but that he was there before her, and stayed as long as he could see her. He made such good use of his time, and gazed at her with such hearty good will, that she could not be ignorant of his passion ; and to prevent these encounters she resolved to feign illness for some time, and hear mass at home. This was a bitter morti- fication to the gentleman, for he was thus deprived of i6o THE HEPTAMEROX OF THE i\ovel \b

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 140 < Lecture 21  Constantine’s Interactions with the Church `Examples of those duties included baptisms, giving of the Eucharist, and the ordaining of other clergy members. If someone was baptized by a traditor, for instance, was the baptism valid, or did it have to be performed again? `This ended up being a huge problem. The issue was particularly acute in the very large church of Carthage in North Africa. Some members of the church argued that the sacraments by their very nature are sanctified by God alone, so that they are valid no matter who administers them. `But there were hardliners who believed that true Christians would never willingly compromise their faith in the face of persecution, and they claimed that for a sacrament to be valid, it had to be properly administered by one genuinely sanctified by God—not a traitor to the cause. `The most vocal supporter of this hardline view was a man named Donatus, and so it is called the Donatist controversy. The reason it immediately mattered was that the bishop of Carthage had been ordained by a bishop who later became a traditor. Donatus and his many followers argued that he was not a true bishop and had to be replaced. `Since it was such a huge issue with so many people involved, Constantine felt like he needed to intervene. Constantine originally thought the solution was simple: He would appoint an expert to make the decision. `The biggest and most powerful church in the empire was in Rome, and so he turned the case over to the bishop of Rome, thinking that would settle the issue. It didn’t. The bishop of Rome decided against the Donatists and declared that the Bishop of Carthage was legitimate. `The Donatists refused to accept the ruling and appealed again to the emperor. This time, Constantine took it into his own hands and called for an entire council of bishops to come together and debate. `The council took place in the city of Arles in 314. This was the first time a Roman emperor had called for a council of Christian leaders, but it set the stage for events to come.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  that manner, roared for mercy, and in suppliant humility took off his hood and remained bareheaded. They then perceived that he was not the person they had taken him for, and that their mistress had made fools of them ; which she did more cruelly still when they came back from their chase. " You are proper men," she said, *' to be entrusted with the care of women. You let them talk without knowing to whom, and then believing any- thing they choose to tell you, you go and insult God's servants." After several other pranks as humorous as this, she reached the place of her destination, where her two sis- ters-in-law and the husband of one of them kept her in great subjection. ^ By this time the husband learned that her ring was pledged for fifteen hundred crowns. To save the honour of his wife and recover the ring, he sent her word to redeem it, and that he would pay the money. Caring nothing for the ring since her lover had the money for it, she wrote to him that her husband constrained her to reclaim it, and lest he should suppose that she loved him less than before, she sent him a diamond which her mistress had given her, and which she prized more than all her other jewels. Her lover cheerfully sent her the merchant's obligation, thinking himself well off to have fifteen hundred crowns and a diamond ; but glad above all things at being assured that his mistress loved him still. As long as the husband lived, they remained apart, and could only correspond in writing. Upon the husband's death, the lov^er, supposing that his mistress still retained the same feelings towards him which she had always professed, lost no time in demanding her hand in marriage ; but found that long absence had given him a rival who was preferred t'- him- self. He was so mortified at this, that, shunning aii Second day.\ Q UEEAT OF A" A VA RRK. \ 5 7 intercourse with ladies, he wooed danger, and died at last, after having distinguished himself as much as ever young man did. This tale, ladies, in which our sex is not spared, con- veys this lesson to husbands : that wives of high spirit suffer themselves to be led astray by resentment and vindictiveness, rather than by the charms of love. The heroine of this novel long resisted that sweet passion, but at last gave way to her despair. A good woman should not do like her, for there is no excuse for a bad action. The more one is exposed to do wrong, the more virtue there is in overcoming one's self and doing well, instead of rendering evil for evil ; especially as the ill one thinks to do to another often recoils upon the doer. Happy those women in whom God manifests the virtues of chastity, meekness, and patience.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I had paid for a first-class cabin, and on our way to it we passed through six or seven cars, comfortable and European and aggressively air-conditioned, to find that our own was the sole unmodernized wagon, a rusted relic of socialism. Its claim to first-class status lay in the fact that it was divided into four eight-person cabins, each of which had a glass door that could be shut, though they all stood open now in the hot unmoving air. I was mortified by this, which I felt as my own failure, though I tried to laugh it off; only in Bulgaria, I said, and told my mother that now she would have an authentic Balkan experience. My mother took my lead, dismissing any discomfort as she arranged her things, even as her discomfort was clear, not least in how she eyed the other passengers sharing the small space. My mother has always been mistrustful of strangers, a part of the timidity or fear that at times seemed to dominate her life and that I feared I had inherited, learning from her a hesitancy, a kind of suspicion or doubt of my forces that had kept me, that might still keep me, from finding how far they could run. Anything foreign caused her alarm, as I could see in the way she grasped her purse, even when she delighted in the newness of what she had seen. She was uneasy now, too, though any sign of it was restrained by the politeness that was an imperative almost equal to her fear. I was relieved to see that our cabin wasn’t full; my mother and I were able to claim an entire side of it for ourselves, the three other passengers having arranged themselves to face forward as the train began to move. Of these three, one was traveling alone, a man in his thirties, bearded and overweight, a fat paperback open on his lap. At the opposite end of the bench, by the window, sat an older woman, very large and wrapped in layers of clothing despite the heat, and sprawled upon her, half in her lap and half in the seat beside her, apparently sleeping, there was a boy of perhaps six or seven. His face was turned toward the sun, though the woman held one hand above him so that a shadow fell across his eyes. My mother was immediately charmed by him, he was the same age as my brother’s child, but my own heart sank at the prospect of the noisy hours ahead.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  upon him a wife so wealthy that a great lord might have been satisfied with such a match. As his wife was still very young, the king requested one of the grearesi ladies of the court to take her into her household, which she did with great willingness. The gentleman was so well-bred and so good-looking, that he was greatly esteemed by all the court ladies, especially by one of them, whom the king loved, and who was neither so young nor so handsome as his wife. The gentleman loved this lady so passionately, and made so little account of his wife, that he hardly shared her bed one night in the year ; and to add to the poor creature's mortifica- tion, he never spoke to her, or showed her any token of kindness ; a sort of treatment which she found it very hard to bear. Meanwhile he spent her income for his own gratification, and allowed her so small a share of it, that she had not wherewithal to dress as became her quality. The lady with whom she resided often com- plained of this to the husband. "Your wife," she said, " is handsome, rich, and of a good family, yet you neglect her. Her extreme youth has enabled her hitherto to endure this neglect ; but it is to be feared, that when she comes to maturer years, her mirror, and some one who is no friend to you, will so set before her eyes her beauty which you disdain, that resentment will prompt her to do what she would not have dared to think of if you had treated her better." But the gentleman, whose heart was set elsewhere, made light of these judicious remonstrances, and went on in his old ways. After two or three years, the young wife began to be one of the finest women in France. Her reputation was so great that it was commonly reported at court that she had not her equal. The more sensible she became that she was worthy to be loved, the more poignantly 1^4 ^-^^ HEPTAMERON OF THE \Navd \t,

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Its claim to first-class status lay in the fact that it was divided into four eight-person cabins, each of which had a glass door that could be shut, though they all stood open now in the hot unmoving air. I was mortified by this, which I felt as my own failure, though I tried to laugh it off; only in Bulgaria, I said, and told my mother that now she would have an authentic Balkan experience. My mother took my lead, dismissing any discomfort as she arranged her things, even as her discomfort was clear, not least in how she eyed the other passengers sharing the small space. My mother has always been mistrustful of strangers, a part of the timidity or fear that at times seemed to dominate her life and that I feared I had inherited, learning from her a hesitancy, a kind of suspicion or doubt of my forces that had kept me, that might still keep me, from finding how far they could run. Anything foreign caused her alarm, as I could see in the way she grasped her purse, even when she delighted in the newness of what she had seen. She was uneasy now, too, though any sign of it was restrained by the politeness that was an imperative almost equal to her fear. I was relieved to see that our cabin wasn’t full; my mother and I were able to claim an entire side of it for ourselves, the three other passengers having arranged themselves to face forward as the train began to move. Of these three, one was traveling alone, a man in his thirties, bearded and overweight, a fat paperback open on his lap. At the opposite end of the bench, by the window, sat an older woman, very large and wrapped in layers of clothing despite the heat, and sprawled upon her, half in her lap and half in the seat beside her, apparently sleeping, there was a boy of perhaps six or seven. His face was turned toward the sun, though the woman held one hand above him so that a shadow fell across his eyes. My mother was immediately charmed by him, he was the same age as my brother’s child, but my own heart sank at the prospect of the noisy hours ahead. I wished him a long sleep as I took out my book, I don’t remember now what it was, something in English, and my mother pulled from her bag the stack of magazines she carried with her everywhere we went.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 228: _Mo vedi vu_, Venetian for _Or vedi tu_, now dost thou see? I have rendered it by the equivalent old English form.] The gossip, to whom it seemed a thousand years till she should be whereas she might repeat these things, took her leave of Madam Lisetta and foregathering at an entertainment with a great company of ladies, orderly recounted to them the whole story. They told it again to their husbands and other ladies, and these to yet others, and so in less than two days Venice was all full of it. Among others to whose ears the thing came were Lisetta's brothers-in-law, who, without saying aught to her, bethought themselves to find the angel in question and see if he knew how to fly, and to this end they lay several nights in wait for him. As chance would have it, some inkling of the matter[229] came to the ears of Fra Alberto, who accordingly repaired one night to the lady's house, to reprove her, but hardly had he put off his clothes ere her brothers-in-law, who had seen him come, were at the door of her chamber to open it. [Footnote 229: _i.e._ not of the trap laid for him by the lady's brothers-in-law, but of her indiscretion in discovering the secret.] Fra Alberto, hearing this and guessing what was to do, started up and having no other resource, opened a window, which gave upon the Grand Canal, and cast himself thence into the water. The canal was deep there and he could swim well, so that he did himself no hurt, but made his way to the opposite bank and hastily entering a house that stood open there, besought a poor man, whom he found within, to save his life for the love of God, telling him a tale of his own fashion, to explain how he came there at that hour and naked. The good man was moved to pity and it behoving him to go do his occasions, he put him in his own bed and bade him abide there against his return; then, locking him in, he went about his affairs. Meanwhile, the lady's brothers-in-law entered her chamber and found that the angel Gabriel had flown, leaving his wings there; whereupon, seeing themselves baffled, they gave her all manner hard words and ultimately made off to their own house with the angel's trappings, leaving her disconsolate.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  It was not so much because my slowness in comprehending could only have arisen from stupidity, but rather because the incident had revealed such an obvious difference between his focus of interest and my own. I felt the emptiness of the gulf that separated us, and was filled with mortification at having been surprised by such a belated discovery of something I ought naturally to have foreseen. I had given him the message from Katakura's mother without stopping to consider what his reaction would be, simply knowing unconsciously that here I had a chance to curry favor with him. Now I was appalled by the ugly sight of my callowness, as ugly as the streaks of dried tears on a child's face. On this occasion I was too exhausted to ask myself the question I had asked so many thousands of times before : Why is it wrong for me to stay just the way I am now? I was fed up with myself and, for all my chastity, was ruining my body. I had thought that with "earnestness" (what a touching thought!) I too could escape from my childish state. It was as though I had not yet realized that what I was now disgusted with was my true self, was clearly a part of my true life; it was as though I believed instead that these had been years of dreaming, from which I would now turn to "real life." I was feeling the urge to begin living. To begin living my true life? Even if it was to be pure masquerade and not my life at all, still the time had come when I must make a start, must drag my heavy feet forward. CHAPTER THREE Everyone says that life is a stage. But most people do not seem to become obsessed with the idea, at any rate not as early as I did. By the end of childhood I was already firmly convinced that it was so and that I was to play my part on the stage without once ever revealing my true self. Since my conviction was accompanied by an extremely naïve lack of experience, even though there was a lingering suspicion somewhere in my mind that I might be mistaken, I was still practically certain that all men embarked on life in just this way. I believed optimistically that once the performance was finished the curtain would fall and the audience would never see the actor without his make-up.

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

  The good Parsi felt deeply mortified. ‘But is not my confession before you enough?’ he asked. ‘You have wronged not me but Government. How will the confession made before me avail you?’ I replied gently. ‘Of course I will do just as you advise, but will you not consult with my old counsel Mr.—? He is a friend too,’ said Parsi Rustomji. Inquiry revealed that the smuggling had been going on for a long time, but the actual offence detected involved a trifling sum. We went to his counsel. He perused the papers, and said: ‘The case will be tried by a jury, and a Natal jury will be the last to acquit an Indian. But I will not give up hope.’ I did not know this counsel intimately. Parsi Rustomji intercepted: ‘I thank you, but I should like to be guided by Mr. Gandhi’s advice in this case. He knows me intimately. Of course you will advise him whenever necessary.’ Having thus shelved the counsel’s question, we went to Parsi Rustomji’s shop. And now explaining my view I said to him: ‘I don’t think this case should be taken to court at all. It rests with the Customs Officer to prosecute you or to let you go, and he in turn will have to be guided by the Attorney General. I am prepared to meet both. I propose that you should offer to pay the penalty that fix, and the odds are that they will be agreeable. But if they are not, you must be prepared to go to jail. I am of opinion that the shame lies not so much in going to jail as in committing the offence. The deed of shame has already been done. Imprisonment you should regard as a penance. The real penance lies in resolving never to smuggle again.’ I cannot say that Parsi Rustomji took all this quite well. He was a brave man, but

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Denison’s approach is controversial, so controversial that I had a hard time finding a school that would let me observe her in action. Her philosophy doesn’t exactly jibe with the just-say-no thinking that’s dominated sex ed for the last three decades, but it’s one that is slowly, gradually gaining credence. In 2011 the New York Times Magazine profiled Al Vernacchio, a revolutionary Philadelphia educator who famously compares sex to eating a pizza: Both start with internal desire—with hunger, with appetite. In both cases, you may decide, for any number of reasons, that it’s not the right time to indulge. If you do proceed, there should be some discussion, some negotiation—maybe you like pepperoni and your dining companion doesn’t, so you go halfsies, or agree that one person will get his pick next time, or choose a different topping altogether—and a good-faith effort to satisfy everyone involved. There is no rounding bases in that metaphor, no striking out. The emphases are desire, mutual consent, communication, collaboration, process, and shared enjoyment. Similarly, in 2009 the Population Council published the It’s All One Curriculum, downloadable for free online, created in conjunction with, among others, the United Nations General Assembly, the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and UNESCO. Integrating ideas about human rights and gender sensitivity, these guidelines aim to help educators and others “develop the capacity of young people to enjoy—and advocate for their rights to—dignity, equality and responsible satisfying and healthy sexual lives.” That curriculum, like Denison’s and Vernacchio’s, presents sexual exploration (whether alone or with others) as a normal part of adolescence. Sure, there are hazards, but there are also joys, and our role as caring adults is to help our kids balance the two. I admit that, as a mom, the idea of my child becoming sexually active is only marginally less mortifying than the thought of my parents doing anything beyond the three reproductively necessary acts it took to conceive my brothers and me. But the consequences of parental silence, classroom moralizing, and media distortion are far worse. There has to be a better way. Strange Bedfellows: Sex and Politics

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In the rest of this book, I follow Cooper’s lead by looking for the variety of ways that the other Black women thinkers under examination—women like Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Pauli Murray—invoke notions of embodiment as part of their theoretical production. By looking for the appearance of Black women’s bodies, we can track the variety of ways that race women asserted their own ideas about what it means to be Black women intellectuals despite, and often in light of, the precarities of Black female embodiment. Doing so has important theoretical and methodological implications. Focusing on the ways that Black women discuss embodied experience in their social theorizing reminds us that Black women did not only seek to make Black female bodies respectable. Beyond strategic investments in dissemblance and respectability as practices that allowed for safer movement through public space, the study of race women’s intellectual production suggests that, through the choice to write their bodies into texts and to use Black female embodiment as the zero point of their theorizing, they were interested in other approaches to understanding and ameliorating the precarity of Black women’s lives. Though many Black women practiced a culture of dissemblance in public, in their textual work and on the lecture stage, they frequently pulled back the cloak of Black female pain and frustration, exposing the personal nature of the struggles they experienced, even as they worked to make the world safer for Black women. Ida B. Wells was mortified when she cried the first time she gave an antilynching address. The audacity to talk about how they felt about racism indexes an implicit belief that Black women’s embodied and affective experiences of racism and patriarchy mattered in the project of Black female knowledge production. The audacity, conversely, to discuss in fleeting moments feelings of pleasure, despite daily contention with extreme racial repression, again challenges overdetermined readings of race women being obsessed in every moment with being respectable. Attending to embodiment through the tracking of embodied discourse reminds us that we cannot study Black women’s theoretical production or tell Black women’s intellectual history without knowing something of their lives.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  And, of course, any uncomfortable feelings existing between members of the group were always dealt with in depth. Perhaps there are other ongoing leaderless groups of therapists committed to scrutinizing process as well as the lives and psyches of the members, but none have come to my attention, certainly not one that has survived so long. During these two decades we have experienced the deaths of four members as well as dementia in two members that forced them to retire. We have discussed the death of spouses, remarriage, retirement, family illness, problems with children, and relocation into a retirement community. In every instance we have remained committed to honest scrutiny of ourselves and each other. For me, what has been most remarkable has been the persistence of novel encounters. For over five hundred meetings, I continue to discover something new and different about my co-members and myself every single meeting. Perhaps the most difficult experience for all of us was to have observed in great detail the onset and development of dementia in two beloved members. We faced many dilemmas. How open should we be about what we saw? How should we respond to the grandiosity or denial that accompanies dementia? And, even more pressing, what to do if we felt the member should no longer be seeing patients? Each time this has occurred we responded by strongly pressuring the member to consult with a psychologist and undergo neuropsychological testing, and in each instance the consultant exercised her authority to order the member to stop seeing patients. Like most people in their eighties, I worry about dementia myself, and on three or four occasions have been informed by the group that the incident I had just related was one I had already described earlier. Mortifying though it is, I was grateful for the group’s dedicated honesty. Somewhere in the back of my mind, however, there lurks a dread that one day some group member will insist I get neuropsychological testing. When one of our younger members stunned us by telling us that he had just been diagnosed with untreatable pancreatic cancer, we remained fully present with him as he openly and courageously discussed all his fears and concerns. Toward the end of his life, when he was too ill to travel, we held a meeting at his home. The entire group attended his memorial. Each time a member died, we added a new member to keep our size relatively constant. We all attended the wedding of one member, which was held at the home of another member, and yet a third member conducted the wedding ceremony. The group also attended two other weddings and the Bar Mitzvah of a member’s son. On another occasion the entire group visited the residential center where a member suffering from severe dementia was confined. Many times we discussed adding female members, but since we always added just a single member at a time, most of us thought a woman would feel uncomfortably outnumbered.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Beyond strategic investments in dissemblance and respectability as practices that allowed for safer movement through public space, the study of race women’s intellectual production suggests that, through the choice to write their bodies into texts and to use Black female embodiment as the zero point of their theorizing, they were interested in other approaches to understanding and ameliorating the precarity of Black women’s lives. Though many Black women practiced a culture of dissemblance in public, in their textual work and on the lecture stage, they frequently pulled back the cloak of Black female pain and frustration, exposing the personal nature of the struggles they experienced, even as they worked to make the world safer for Black women. Ida B. Wells was mortified when she cried the first time she gave an antilynching address. The audacity to talk about how they felt about racism indexes an implicit belief that Black women’s embodied and affective experiences of racism and patriarchy mattered in the project of Black female knowledge production. The audacity, conversely, to discuss in fleeting moments feelings of pleasure, despite daily contention with extreme racial repression, again challenges overdetermined readings of race women being obsessed in every moment with being respectable. Attending to embodiment through the tracking of embodied discourse reminds us that we cannot study Black women’s theoretical production or tell Black women’s intellectual history without knowing something of their lives. At the same time, seeing Black female bodies as sites of theory production allows us to move the work of Black women’s intellectual history beyond triage. One of the unfortunate methodological results of triaging Black women’s histories is that when we have recovered a Black woman figure, that is, when we have saved her from being buried and lost to the annals of history, when we know her name and as many details as we can about her life and work, then we treat her as though it is time to move on to the next patient. That we have not yet engaged with the content of what Black women intellectuals actually said, even as we celebrate all that they did, seems to escape notice. This recovery imperative memorializes Black women figures like Cooper and her race women colleagues while obscuring other kinds of critical scholarly utility they have for our conversations in history, politics, literary studies, and feminist theory. Because we are familiar with Cooper, because we can call her name, because there are two books of critical scholarship about her (albeit written two decades apart), we act as though there is nothing new or groundbreaking to say about her. 20 By contrast, we never engage W. E. B. Du Bois in this way. Every year, a new scholarly text is written grappling with his work. Meanwhile, the work of Black women’s intellectual history and Black feminist theory production suffers from lack of access to the rich histories of Black women’s ideas. Thus, this work is not solely a work of recovery.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Finally, if exagoreusis recommends that one examine oneself without respite, this is not so that one might establish oneself in one’s own sovereignty, or even that one might recognize oneself in one’s identity. It is always conducted in relation to the other: in the general form of a direction that submits the subject’s will to that of the other; with the aim of detecting the presence of the Other, the Enemy, deep within oneself; and having as its final end the contemplation of God, in a complete purity of heart. This purity itself should not be understood as a restoration of oneself, or an emancipation of the subject. On the contrary, it is the definitive relinquishment of any will of one’s own: a way not to be oneself, or attached to oneself by any tie. A paradox essential to these practices of Christian spirituality: the veridiction of oneself is fundamentally bound together with self-renunciation. The endless effort to see and tell the truth about oneself is an exercise of mortification. So in exagoreusis one has a complex apparatus in which the duty to constantly dig down into the soul is coupled with the obligation of a continual externalization in a discourse addressed to the other; and in which one’s search for the truth about oneself must constitute a certain way of dying to oneself. Skip Notes * Manuscript: tekhnê tekhnês, but the text by Gregory of Nazianzus has “tô onti gar autê moi phainetai tekhnê tis einai tekhnôn kai epistêmê epistêmôn, to polutropôtaton tôn zôôn kai poikilôtaton.” PART IIBeing VirginThe fact that there is an abundance of fourth-century texts devoted to virginity is well known. Among the Eastern Christians, we have the treatise On the True Purity of Chastity by Basil of Ancyra; the one by Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity; several texts by John Chrysostom—Of Virginity, On Suspect Cohabitations, How to Observe Virginity; the seventh Homily of Esebius of Emesa; and the Exhortation that Evagrius Ponticus addresses to a virgin; to which one can add, among many other texts, a treatise attributed to Athanasius, poems by Gregory of Niazanzus, or another Homily addressed to a paterfamilias, whose author is still unknown.1 Among the Latins, one has to mention Saint Ambrose (De virginibus, De virginitate, De institutione virginis, De exhortatione virginitatis, De lapsu virginis consecratae), Saint Jerome (Adversus Helvidium, Adversus Jovinianum, the letter to Eustochium), and Saint Augustine (De continentia, De sancta virginitate).

• From Little Women (1868)

  Meg was entertaining Sallie Gardiner in the parlor, when the door flew open and a floury, crocky, flushed, and disheveled figure appeared, demanding tartly... "I say, isn't bread 'riz' enough when it runs over the pans?" Sallie began to laugh, but Meg nodded and lifted her eyebrows as high as they would go, which caused the apparition to vanish and put the sour bread into the oven without further delay. Mrs. March went out, after peeping here and there to see how matters went, also saying a word of comfort to Beth, who sat making a winding sheet, while the dear departed lay in state in the domino box. A strange sense of helplessness fell upon the girls as the gray bonnet vanished round the corner, and despair seized them when a few minutes later Miss Crocker appeared, and said she'd come to dinner. Now this lady was a thin, yellow spinster, with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes, who saw everything and gossiped about all she saw. They disliked her, but had been taught to be kind to her, simply because she was old and poor and had few friends. So Meg gave her the easy chair and tried to entertain her, while she asked questions, criticized everything, and told stories of the people whom she knew. Language cannot describe the anxieties, experiences, and exertions which Jo underwent that morning, and the dinner she served up became a standing joke. Fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone, and discovered that something more than energy and good will is necessary to make a cook. She boiled the asparagus for an hour and was grieved to find the heads cooked off and the stalks harder than ever. The bread burned black; for the salad dressing so aggravated her that she could not make it fit to eat. The lobster was a scarlet mystery to her, but she hammered and poked till it was unshelled and its meager proportions concealed in a grove of lettuce leaves. The potatoes had to be hurried, not to keep the asparagus waiting, and were not done at the last. The blanc mange was lumpy, and the strawberries not as ripe as they looked, having been skilfully 'deaconed'. "Well, they can eat beef and bread and butter, if they are hungry, only it's mortifying to have to spend your whole morning for nothing," thought Jo, as she rang the bell half an hour later than usual, and stood, hot, tired, and dispirited, surveying the feast spread before Laurie, accustomed to all sorts of elegance, and Miss Crocker, whose tattling tongue would report them far and wide. Poor Jo would gladly have gone under the table, as one thing after another was tasted and left, while Amy giggled, Meg looked distressed, Miss Crocker pursed her lips, and Laurie talked and laughed with all his might to give a cheerful tone to the festive scene.

• From Little Women (1868)

  It had been tried, but she suffered so much that it was given up, and she did her lessons at home with her father. Even when he went away, and her mother was called to devote her skill and energy to Soldiers' Aid Societies, Beth went faithfully on by herself and did the best she could. She was a housewifely little creature, and helped Hannah keep home neat and comfortable for the workers, never thinking of any reward but to be loved. Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends, and she was by nature a busy bee. There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for Beth was a child still and loved her pets as well as ever. Not one whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till Beth took them in, for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her because Amy would have nothing old or ugly. Beth cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, she read to it, took it out to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face and whispering tenderly, "I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear." Beth had her troubles as well as the others, and not being an angel but a very human little girl, she often 'wept a little weep' as Jo said, because she couldn't take music lessons and have a fine piano. She loved music so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and practiced away so patiently at the jingling old instrument, that it did seem as if someone (not to hint Aunt March) ought to help her. Nobody did, however, and nobody saw Beth wipe the tears off the yellow keys, that wouldn't keep in tune, when she was all alone.

• From Little Women (1868)

  She may tear it tonight, and that will be a good excuse for offering a decent one." Here Meg's partner appeared, to find her looking much flushed and rather agitated. She was proud, and her pride was useful just then, for it helped her hide her mortification, anger, and disgust at what she had just heard. For, innocent and unsuspicious as she was, she could not help understanding the gossip of her friends. She tried to forget it, but could not, and kept repeating to herself, "Mrs. M. has made her plans," "that fib about her mamma," and "dowdy tarlaton," till she was ready to cry and rush home to tell her troubles and ask for advice. As that was impossible, she did her best to seem gay, and being rather excited, she succeeded so well that no one dreamed what an effort she was making. She was very glad when it was all over and she was quiet in her bed, where she could think and wonder and fume till her head ached and her hot cheeks were cooled by a few natural tears. Those foolish, yet well meant words, had opened a new world to Meg, and much disturbed the peace of the old one in which till now she had lived as happily as a child. Her innocent friendship with Laurie was spoiled by the silly speeches she had overheard. Her faith in her mother was a little shaken by the worldly plans attributed to her by Mrs. Moffat, who judged others by herself, and the sensible resolution to be contented with the simple wardrobe which suited a poor man's daughter was weakened by the unnecessary pity of girls who thought a shabby dress one of the greatest calamities under heaven. Poor Meg had a restless night, and got up heavy-eyed, unhappy, half resentful toward her friends, and half ashamed of herself for not speaking out frankly and setting everything right. Everybody dawdled that morning, and it was noon before the girls found energy enough even to take up their worsted work. Something in the manner of her friends struck Meg at once. They treated her with more respect, she thought, took quite a tender interest in what she said, and looked at her with eyes that plainly betrayed curiosity. All this surprised and flattered her, though she did not understand it till Miss Belle looked up from her writing, and said, with a sentimental air... "Daisy, dear, I've sent an invitation to your friend, Mr. Laurence, for Thursday. We should like to know him, and it's only a proper compliment to you." Meg colored, but a mischievous fancy to tease the girls made her reply demurely, "You are very kind, but I'm afraid he won't come." "Why not, Cherie?" asked Miss Belle. "He's too old." "My child, what do you mean? What is his age, I beg to know!" cried Miss Clara.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  “Yes, you are to do as Azeen asks.” Limori sighed, “Ach, that’s what I thought. It’s never easy, is it Papa?” (Papa was her pet name for Azeen or God.) She looked heavenward as she said this, and then rubbed her eyes with the fatigue of the ultimate spiritual warrior. “Alice, what do you see? Am I to do what I think I am to do?” Alice, who had been at this game of tuning in longer than any of us, nodded and smiled with closed lips, “Um hmm.” “I thought so.” Limori sighed again, and then delivered her message from God to Susan. “If you are serious about serving God, if you really mean to strip yourself [she emphasized these two words but we didn’t yet know why] of your ego so that you can fully serve God, then you will not hesitate to do as I ask. Go into your bedroom, the one that is obviously not good enough for you [her tone was cutting and sarcastic], and make a decision. If you choose to serve God you will come back into this room, in front of all of us here, wearing only that birthday suit that God sent you onto this Earth with. If, as you say you do, you actually want to serve God you will stand naked in front of God and declare your commitment to rid yourself of all your ego positions.” I was mortified by this set of instructions, but my reactions to this workshop were a perfect example of how a cult follower’s authentic self is in constant battle with her cult self. In Combatting Cult Mind Control, author and cult survivor Steven Hassan describes the dual identity of a cult member like this: "Given freedom of choice, people will predictably always choose what they believe is best for them. However, the ethical criteria for determining what is “best” should be one’s own, not someone else’s. In a mind-control environment, freedom of choice is the first thing that one loses. The reason for that loss is essentially simple: the cult member is no longer operating as himself. He has a new artificial cult identity structure, which includes new beliefs and a new language. The cult leader’s doctrine becomes the master “map” of reality for the new cult member. A member of a mind control cult is at war with himself. . . he has two identities.”2 My beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad, ethical and unethical had been warped by my gradual immersion in Limori’s doctrine. The longer I stayed in the group, the more I suppressed my old identity and belief system – my authentic self. This real identity, though deeply buried, was still paying attention to what was going on.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Title : How to Be Yourself Author: Hendriksen, Ellen [image "How to Be Yourself" file=image_rsrc2G8.jpg] Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this St. Martin’s Press ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. [image "signup" file=image_rsrc2G9.jpg] Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here. The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. This book is dedicated to (and couldn’t exist without) Nicolas. Prologue Moe could fight injustice like a cornered tiger on one condition: as long as he didn’t have to speak. A lawyer by training, Moe was whip smart and had a reputation for being genuinely respectful. Despite his mild-mannered appearance—diminutive, skinny, and balding, with two perfect circles of wire-rimmed glasses perched above a trim little mustache—his commitment to social causes like the rights of the elderly or the protection of vulnerable women was fierce. His experience spanned the globe—at this point in his career, he had already worked in three different countries on three different continents. As part of his idealistic crusade for justice, however, he often found himself in the most unidealistic of settings: meetings. It was at these meetings, in community centers and church basements with folding chairs and a lingering smell of old coffee, where Moe’s story played out. He told it like this: “The other day I was at a meeting and one of the organizers turned to me and said, ‘You know, Moe, when it’s just you and me you talk totally fine, but you’re so quiet at meetings. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you open your mouth.’” Moe was mortified. He knew, deep down, that his colleague spoke the truth. Moe was always attentive, always pleasant, but it was true—he never said a word. And now it was confirmed to Moe that his silence was obvious—that he couldn’t simply hide in plain sight. “It’s not that I don’t want to say anything; I just don’t know how to say it,” Moe said. “Everyone else seems to feel so comfortable, so confident. But as soon as I work up the courage to speak, the topic has changed. That happens all the time.” Not knowing what to say doesn’t happen only to Moe. It happens to so many of us, particularly in today’s world of cryptic, how-do-I-answer-this text messages and gotta-be-right Instagram captions. If you’re wired or were raised like Moe—more on this distinction shortly—technology and the internet ensure you have a million reasons to second-guess yourself. Plus, you still have to battle the anxieties of in-person social interaction.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  For a second I lay quite frozen; I saw what she must see - the open trunk, the tangle of limbs upon the bed, the pumping, leather-strapped arse (for Zena, alas, had her eyes tight shut, and still thrust and panted even as her outraged mistress gazed on). Then I placed my hands on Zena’s shoulders and gripped them hard. She opened her eyes, saw what I saw, and gave a squeal of fright. Instinctively, she tried to rise, forgetful of the shaft which pinned her sweating hips to mine. For a moment we floundered together inelegantly; she let out a burst of nervous laughter, more jarring than her first thin shriek of fear. At last she gave a wriggle; there was - monstrously distinct in the sudden silence, and horribly incriminating - a kind of sucking sound; then she was free. She stood at the side of the bed, the dildo bobbing before her. One of the ladies at Diana’s side said, ‘She has a prick, after all!’ And Diana answered: ‘That prick is mine. These little sluts have stolen it!’ Her voice was thick - with drunkenness, perhaps; but also, I think, with shock. I looked again at the wide and spilling box, that she was so vain and jealous of, and felt a worm of satisfaction wriggle within me. And I remembered, too, another room, a room I thought that I had carefully forgotten - a room where it was I who stood speechless at the door, while my sweetheart shivered and blushed beside her lover. And the sight of Diana, in my old place, made me smile. It was the smile, I think, which deranged her at last. ‘Maria,’ she said - for Maria was with her, too, along with Dickie and Evelyn: perhaps they had all come to the bedroom to retrieve a dirty book - ‘Maria, get Mrs Hooper. I want Nancy’s things brought here: she is leaving. And a dress for Blake. They are both going back to the gutter, where I got them from.’ Her voice was cold; as she took a step towards me, however, it grew warmer. ‘You little slut!’ she said. ‘You little trollop! You whore, you harlot, you strumpet, you bitch!’ But they were words that she had used on me a thousand times before, in lust or passion; and now, said in hate, they were curiously devoid of any sting. Beside me, however, Zena had begun to shake. As she did so, the dildo bobbed; and when Diana caught the motion she gave a roar: ‘Take that thing from your hips!’ At once, Zena fumbled with the straps; her fingers jumped so that she could barely grasp the buckles, and I stepped to help her.