Sadness

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 Between the World and Me (2015)

  The host read these words for the audience, and when she finished she turned to the subject of my body, although she did not mention it specifically. But by now I am accustomed to intelligent people asking about the condition of my body without realizing the nature of their request. Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness well up in me. The answer to this question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history. There is nothing extreme in this statement. Americans deify democracy in a way that allows for a dim awareness that they have, from time to time, stood in defiance of their God. But democracy is a forgiving God and America’s heresies—torture, theft, enslavement—are so common among individuals and nations that none can declare themselves immune. In fact, Americans, in a real sense, have never betrayed their God. When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term “people” to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America’s problem is not its betrayal of “government of the people,” but the means by which “the people” acquired their names. This leads us to another equally important ideal, one that Americans implicitly accept but to which they make no conscious claim. Americans believe in the reality of “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Michael Brown did not die as so many of his defenders supposed. And still the questions behind the questions are never asked. Should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner? Is that what we wish civilization to be? And all the time the Dreamers are pillaging Ferguson for municipal governance. And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong. Each time a police officer engages us, death, injury, maiming is possible. It is not enough to say that this is true of anyone or more true of criminals. The moment the officers began their pursuit of Prince Jones, his life was in danger. The Dreamers accept this as the cost of doing business, accept our bodies as currency, because it is their tradition. As slaves we were this country’s first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country’s second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world’s prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. * Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage.III.And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white. JAMES BALDWIN In the years after Prince Jones died, I thought often of those who were left to make their lives in the shadow of his death. I thought of his fiancée and wondered what it meant to see the future upended with no explanation. I wondered what she would tell his daughter, and I wondered how his daughter would imagine her father, when she would miss him, how she would detail the loss. But mostly I wondered about Prince’s mother, and the question I mostly asked myself was always the same: How did she live? I searched for her phone number online. I emailed her. She responded. Then I called and made an appointment to visit. And living she was, just outside of Philadelphia in a small gated community of affluent homes. It was a rainy Tuesday when I arrived. I had taken the train in from New York and then picked up a rental car. I was thinking of Prince a lot in those months before. You, your mother, and I had gone to Homecoming at The Mecca, and so many of my friends were there, and Prince was not.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She got the black teapot, and the tin of tea from the mantelshelf. She rinsed the teapot with hot water, and stood a moment wondering where to empty it. "Thrown it out," he said, aware of her. "It's clean." She went to the door and threw the drop of water down the path. How lovely it was here, so still, so really woodland. The oaks were putting out ochre yellow leaves; in the garden the red daisies were like red plush buttons. She glanced at the big, hollow sandstone slab of the threshold, now crossed by so few feet. "But it's lovely here," she said. "Such a beautiful stillness, everything alive and still." He was eating again, rather slowly and unwillingly, and she could feel he was discouraged. She made the tea in silence, and set the teapot on the hob, as she knew the people did. He pushed his plate aside and went to the back place; she heard a latch click, then he came back with cheese on a plate, and butter. She set the two cups on the table, there were only two. "Will you have a cup of tea?" she said. "If you like. Sugar's in th' cupboard, an' there's a little cream-jug. Milk's in a jug in th' pantry." "Shall I take your plate away?" she asked him. He looked up at her with a faint ironical smile. "Why ... if you like," he said, slowly eating bread and cheese. She went to the back, into the penthouse scullery, where the pump was. On the left was a door, no doubt the pantry door. She unlatched it, and almost smiled at the place he called a pantry; a long narrow whitewashed slip of a cupboard. But it managed to contain a little barrel of beer, as well as a few dishes and bits of food. She took a little milk from the yellow jug. "How do you get your milk?" she asked him, when she came back to the table. "Flints! They leave me a bottle at the warren end. You know, where I met you!" But he was discouraged. She poured out the tea, poising the cream-jug. "No milk," he said; then he seemed to hear a noise, and looked keenly through the doorway. "'Appen we'd better shut," he said. "It seems a pity," she replied. "Nobody will come, will they?" "No unless it's one in a thousand, but you never know." "And even then it's no matter," she said. "It's only a cup of tea. Where are the spoons?" He reached over, and pulled open the table drawer. Connie sat at table in the sunshine of the doorway. "Flossie!" he said to the dog, who was lying on a little mat at the stair foot. "Go an' hark, hark!" He lifted his finger, and his "hark!" was very vivid. The dog trotted out to reconnoitre. "Are you sad today?" she asked him. He turned his blue eyes quickly, and gazed direct on her.

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

  Wherever there was some complication Dr. Dev used to visit each centre on certain fixed days in the week. Quite a number of people availed themselves of this simple relief. This plan of work will not seem strange when it is remembered that the prevailing ailments were few and amenable to simple treatment, by no means requiring expert help. As for the people the arrangement answered excellently. Sanitation was a difficult affair. The people were not prepared to do anything themselves. Even the field labourers were not ready to do their own scavenging. But Dr. Dev was not a man easily to lose heart. He and the volunteers concentrated their energies on making a village ideally clean. They swept the roads and the courtyards, cleaned out the wells, filled up the pools near by, and lovingly persuaded the villagers to raise volunteers from amongest themselves. In some villages they shamed people into taking up the work, and in others the people were so enthusiastic that they even prepared roads to enable my car to go from place to place. These sweet experiences were not unmixed with bitter ones of people’s apathy. I remember some villagers frankly expressing their dislike for this work. It may not be out of place here to narrate an experience that I have described before now at many meetings. Bhitiharva was a small village in which was one of our schools. I happened to visit a smaller village in its vicinity and found some of the women dressed very dirtly. So I told my wife to ask them why they did not wash their clothes. She spoke to them. One of the women took her into her hut and said: ‘Look now, there is no box or cupboard here containing other clothes. The #sari# I am wearing is the only one I have. How am I to wash it? Tell Mahatmaji to get me another #sari#, and I shall then promise to bathe and put on clean clothes every day.’ This cottage was not an exception, but a type to be found in many Indian villages. In countless cottages in India people live without any furniture, and without a change of clothes, merely with a rag to cover their shame. One more experience I will note. In Champaran there is no lack of bamboo and grass. The school hut they had put up at Bhitiharva was made of these materials. Someone possibly some of the neighbouring planters’ men set fire to it one night. It was not thought advisable to build another hut of bamboo and grass. The school was in charge of Sjt. Soman and Kasturbai. Sjt. Soman decided to build a #pukka# house, and thanks to his infectious labour, many co-operated with him, and a brick house was soon made ready. There was no fear now of this building being burnt down.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Presently, after they had risen from table and had abidden with him awhile in cheerful discourse, the lady, thinking it time to tell that wherefor she was come, turned to Federigo and courteously bespoke him, saying, 'Federigo, I doubt not a jot but that, when thou hearest that which is the especial occasion of my coming hither, thou wilt marvel at my presumption, remembering thee of thy past life and of my virtue, which latter belike thou reputedst cruelty and hardness of heart; but, if thou hadst or hadst had children, by whom thou mightest know how potent is the love one beareth them, meseemeth certain that thou wouldst in part hold me excused. But, although thou hast none, I, who have one child, cannot therefore escape the common laws to which other mothers are subject and whose enforcements it behoveth me ensue, need must I, against my will and contrary to all right and seemliness, ask of thee a boon, which I know is supremely dear to thee (and that with good reason, for that thy sorry fortune hath left thee none other delight, none other diversion, none other solace), to wit, thy falcon, whereof my boy is so sore enamoured that, an I carry it not to him, I fear me his present disorder will be so aggravated that there may presently ensue thereof somewhat whereby I shall lose him. Wherefore I conjure thee,--not by the love thou bearest me and whereto thou art nowise beholden, but by thine own nobility, which in doing courtesy hath approved itself greater than in any other,--that it please thee give it to me, so by the gift I may say I have kept my son alive and thus made him for ever thy debtor.'

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Dr. Jones greeted me at the door. She was lovely, polite, brown. She appeared to be somewhere in that range between forty and seventy years, when it becomes difficult to precisely ascertain a black person’s precise age. She was well composed, given the subject of our conversation, and for most of the visit I struggled to separate how she actually felt from what I felt she must be feeling. What I felt, right then, was that she was smiling through pained eyes, that the reason for my visit had spread sadness like a dark quilt over the whole house. I seem to recall music—jazz or gospel—playing in the back, but conflicting with that I also remember a deep quiet overcoming everything. I thought that perhaps she had been crying. I could not tell for sure. She led me into her large living room. There was no one else in the house. It was early January. Her Christmas tree was still standing at the end of the room, and there were stockings bearing the name of her daughter and her lost son, and there was a framed picture of him—Prince Jones—on a display table. She brought me water in a heavy glass. She drank tea. She told me that she was born and raised outside of Opelousas, Louisiana, that her ancestors had been enslaved in that same region, and that as a consequence of that enslavement, a fear echoed down through the ages. “It first became clear when I was four,” she told me. My mother and I were going into the city. We got on the Greyhound bus. I was behind my mother. She wasn’t holding my hand at the time and I plopped down in the first seat I found. A few minutes later my mother was looking for me and she took me to the back of the bus and explained why I couldn’t sit there. We were very poor, and most of the black people around us, who I knew were poor also, and the images I had of white America were from going into the city and seeing who was behind the counter in the stores and seeing who my mother worked for. It became clear there was a distance.

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

  inquiry on behalf of the Congress. Pandit Motilal Nehru, the late Deshbandhu C. R. Das, Sjt. Abbas Tyabji, Sjt. M.R.Jayakar and myself were appointed to this Committee, virtually by Pandit Malaviyaji. We distributed ourselves over various places for purposes of inquiry. The responsibility for organizing the work of the Committee devolved on me, and as the privilege of conducting the inquiry in the largest number of places fell to my lot, I got a rare opportunity of observing at close quarters the people of the Punjab and the Punjab villages. In the course of my inquiry I made acquaintance with the women of the Punjab also. It was as if we had known one another for ages. Wherever I went they came flocking, and laid before me their heaps of yarn. My work in connection with the inquiry brought home to me the fact that the Punjab could become a great field for Khadi work. As I proceeded further and further with my inquiry into the atrocities that had been committed on the people, I came across tales of Government’s tyranny and the arbitrary despotism of its officers such as I was hardly prepared for, and they filled me with deep pain. What surprised me then, and what still continues to fill me with surprise, was the fact that a province that had furnished the largest number of soldiers to the British Government during the war, should have taken all these brutal excesses lying down. The task of drafting the report of this Committee was also entrusted to me. I would recommend a perusal of this report to any one who wants to have an idea of the kind of atrocities that were perpetrated on the Punjab people. All that I wish to say here about it is that there is not a single conscious exaggeration in it anywhere, and every statement made in it is substantiated by evidence. Moreover, the evidence published was only a fraction of what was in the Committee’s possession. Not a single statement, regarding the validity of which there was the report. This report, prepared as it was solely with a view to bringing out the truth and nothing but the truth, will enable the reader to see to what lengths the British Government is capable of going, and what inhumanities and barbarities it is capable of perpetrating in order to maintain its power. So far as I am aware, not a single statement made in this report has ever been disproved. 162.

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

  ARRIVAL IN NATAL When starting for South Africa I did not feel the wrench of separation which I had experienced when leaving for England. My mother was now no more. I had gained some knowledge of the world and of travel abroad, and going from Rajkot to Bombay was no unusual affair. This time I only felt the pang of parting with my wife. Another baby had been born to us since my return from England. Our love could not yet be called free from lust, but it was getting gradually purer. Since my return from Eurpoe, we had lived very little together; and as I had now become her teacher, however indifferent, and helped her to make certain reforms, we both felt the necessity of being more together, if only to continue the reforms. But the attraction of South Africa rendered the separation bearable. ‘We are bound to meet again in a year ,’ I said to her, by way of consolation, and left Rajkot for Bombay. Here I was to get my passage through the agent of Dada Abdulla and Company. But no berth was available on the boat, and if I did not sail then, I should be stranded in Bombay. ‘We have tried our best,’ said the agent, ‘to secure a first class passage, but in vain unless you are prepared to go on deck. Your meals can be arranged for in the saloon.’ Those were the days of my first class traveling, and how could a barrister travel as a deck passenger? So I refused the offer. I suspected the agent’s veracity, for I could not believe that a first class passage was not available. With the agent’s consent I set about securing it myself. I went on board the boat and met the chief officer. He said to me quite frankly, ‘We do not usually have such a rush. But as the Governor-General of Mozambique is going by this boat, all the berths are engaged.’ ‘Could you not possibly squeeze me in?’ I asked. He surveyed me from top to

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Any inequitable system inflicts suffering on the haves as well as the have-nots. That pain is not equal, but it’s still important to understand. It’s not the underclass’s job to comfort or educate the overclass, either. But there is a price to be paid for material comfort and social acceptance that’s enjoyed while (and because) others suffer. It’s an ugly way of life that may look comfortable on the outside, but inside it’s stifling and rife with willful ignorance. The things that the haves do to distance themselves from the have-nots are scarring, even if your peers try to tell you they are beauty marks. So how do FTMs fit into the War between the Sexes? Or the War between Gays and Straights? Some people would tell you there’s no question. We are on the side of the men, and we are on the side of straight people. And some FTMs would agree with you. Unfortunately, I can’t claim that every other transman is a feminist, a fan of queer theory, or interested in social equality and justice—although many of us are. First of all, not every female-to-male transsexual spent a portion of his life identifying as a lesbian. This is one of the biggest myths about FTMs. Many of us tried to live as heterosexual women before we transitioned, and some of us could never get any more mainstream label to fit well enough to shoehorn ourselves into it. And not every FTM is straight. Many of us (like me) are gay or bisexual or queer. You can’t even claim that FTMs were once butch women who got tired of always being hassled and abandoned the struggle to make space for masculine women in our culture. Many of us tried our best to adopt a feminine persona. We believed that if we just tried hard enough to look the way we were told women should look and behave, all that gender weirdness would go away. The ability to “pass” as a “normal” woman doesn’t cure gender difference, although, sadly, it can make it hard for an FTM with this history to get others to take him seriously once he comes out about his need to live in a male identity.

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

  5. CHILD MARRIAGE Much as I wish that I had not to write this chapter, I know that I shall have to swallow many such bitter draughts in the course of this narrative. And I cannot do otherwise, if I claim to be a worshipper of Truth. It is my painful duty to have to record here my marriage at the age of thirteen. As I see the youngsters of the same age about me who are under my care, and think of my own marriage, I am inclined to pity myself and to congratulate them on having escaped my lot. I can see no moral argument in support of such a preposterously early marriage. Let the reader make no mistake. I was married, not betrothed. For in Kathiawad there are two distinct rites, betrothal and marriage. Betrothal is a preliminary promise on the part of the parents of the boy and the girl to join them in marriage, and it is not inviolable. The death of the boy entails no widowhood on the girl. It is an agreement purely between the parents, and the children have no concern with it. Often they are not even informed of it. It appears that I was betrothed thrice, though without my knowledge. I was told that two girls chosen for me had died in turn, and therefore I infer that I was betrothed three times. I have a faint recollection, however, that the third betrothal took place in my seventh year. But I do not recollect having been informed about it. In the present chapter I am talking about my marriage, of which I have the clearest recollection. It will be remembered that we were three brothers. The first was already married. The elders decided to marry my second brother, who was two or three years my senior,a cousin, possibly a year older, and me, all at the same time. In doing so there was no thought of our welfare, much less our wishes. It was purely a question of their own convenience and economy.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Yet he was absolutely dependent on her, he needed her every moment. Big and strong as he was, he was helpless. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a sort of bath-chair with a motor attachment, in which he could puff slowly round the park. But alone he was like a lost thing. He needed Connie to be there, to assure him he existed at all. Still he was ambitious. He had taken to writing stories; curious, very personal stories about people he had known. Clever, rather spiteful, and yet, in some mysterious way, meaningless. The observation was extraordinary and peculiar. But there was no touch, no actual contact. It was as if the whole thing took place in a vacuum. And since the field of life is largely an artificially-lighted stage today, the stories were curiously true to modern life, to the modern psychology, that is. Clifford was almost morbidly sensitive about these stories. He wanted everyone to think them good, of the best, ne plus ultra. They appeared in the most modern magazines, and were praised and blamed as usual. But to Clifford the blame was torture, like knives goading him. It was as if the whole of his being were in his stories. Connie helped him as much as she could. At first she was thrilled. He talked every thing over with her monotonously, insistently, persistently, and she had to respond with all her might. It was as if her whole soul and body and sex had to rouse up and pass into these stories of his. This thrilled her and absorbed her. Of physical life they lived very little. She had to superintend the house. But the housekeeper had served Sir Geoffrey for many years, and the dried-up, elderly, superlatively correct female ... you could hardly call her a parlourmaid, or even a woman ... who waited at table, had been in the house for forty years. Even the very housemaids were no longer young. It was awful! What could you do with such a place, but leave it alone! All these endless rooms that nobody used, all the Midlands routine, the mechanical cleanliness and the mechanical order! Clifford had insisted on a new cook, an experienced woman who had served him in his rooms in London. For the rest the place seemed run by mechanical anarchy. Everything went on in pretty good order, strict cleanliness, and strict punctuality; even pretty strict honesty. And yet, to Connie, it was a methodical anarchy. No warmth of feeling united it organically. The house seemed as dreary as a disused street.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It chanced one day that the lady, whose name was Madam Isabella, being gone, as is our custom in summer-time, to abide at a very goodly estate she had in the country and her husband having ridden somewhither to pass some days abroad, she sent for Leonetto to come and be with her, whereat he was mightily rejoiced and betook himself thither incontinent. Meanwhile Messer Lambertuccio, hearing that her husband was gone abroad, took horse and repairing, all alone, to her house, knocked at the door. The lady's waiting-woman, seeing him, came straight to her mistress, who was closeted with Leonetto, and called to her, saying, 'Madam, Messer Lambertuccio is below, all alone.' The lady, hearing this, was the woefullest woman in the world, but, as she stood in great fear of Messer Lambertuccio, she besought Leonetto not to take it ill to hide himself awhile behind the curtains of her bed till such time as the other should be gone. Accordingly, Leonetto, who feared him no less than did the lady, hid himself there and she bade the maid go open to Messer Lambertuccio, which being done, he lighted down in the courtyard and making his palfrey fast to a staple there, went up into the house. The lady put on a cheerful countenance and coming to the head of the stair, received him with as good a grace as she might and asked him what brought him thither; whereupon he caught her in his arms and clipped her and kissed her, saying, 'My soul, I understood that your husband was abroad and am come accordingly to be with you awhile.' After these words, they entered a bedchamber, where they locked themselves in, and Messer Lambertuccio fell to taking delight of her.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  We are both silent. Isabella gave birth only a few months earlier. She always wanted a big family, and when she learned that she carried BRCA1, the so-called breast cancer gene, she and her husband decided to rush to have another child. Then she would have the surgery that she believed would save her life, a double mastectomy. “Now it’s too late,” Naomi says quietly and immediately adds, “But Isabella is brave. If anyone can make it, she can.” I recognize the way Naomi comforts herself, using her idealization of Isabella. Naomi and Isabella met when they were nine years old and both joined a musical theater group after school in the small town where they grew up. “Isabella was one of those girls you couldn’t miss,” Naomi told me in one of our first sessions. “She was beautiful even as a little girl and behaved as if she knew she was talented and attractive and didn’t need others for reassurance. We all wanted to be close to her, tried to be her friends, wished to be her.” In fourth grade, the musical theater group performed Aladdin, and Isabella got the lead role of Jasmine. “No one was surprised,” Naomi said, amused but also a bit annoyed. “Isabella wasn’t only talented; even as a young girl, she, like Jasmine, was a princess who believed in love and fought against injustices. All of us were envious of her freedom to express her opinions; she wasn’t afraid of adults and didn’t obey authority.” Isabella refused to accept the lead role. She stood up to the director and said it wasn’t fair for her to play Jasmine because she was a new student and the role should go to the kids who had been there longer. “She wasn’t scared,” Naomi said again, and I knew that she couldn’t recognize Isabella’s fear that was hidden in that act of rejecting the lead role. In thinking about her own life, comparing herself to Isabella, Naomi could only see her friend’s boldness. She felt paralyzed, unable to own her life. It is not always clear who gets the lead role in Naomi’s life. Sometimes it feels as though she gave that role to her mother, sometimes to Isabella, as she silently accepts the supporting role. When speaking of her childhood, Naomi describes her parents as a perfect couple and her mother as good, charming, beautiful, and caring. It often feels as though she is left to witness her parents’ love from the outside. She admires her mother and her parents’ relationship. Naomi finds a way to play out that childhood dynamic with Isabella, whom she idealizes.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I’ve met some people in this predicament, and their lives are pretty harsh. Their partners feel confused and rebuffed, they feel miserable in their own skins, their lives get stalled in a variety of ways, and they are rarely enthusiastic about contributing to lesbian culture or politics. Butch women enjoy being butch. They’ve got their own lingo, fashion, style, and moves. I won’t claim that their relationship to being women is a simple one. It can be damn hard to claim your womanhood if a whole culture is telling you to stop “acting like a man.” But there’s a difference between the place of self-acceptance and sexiness that a butch woman gets to when she’s waded through the homophobic twaddle, and the perpetual, deep-seated sense of wrongness that a transman has in his body. We always want to take it too far. Strapping it on isn’t a simple matter of enjoying a sex toy for us. A dildo can be a prosthesis that temporarily makes us feel better, but it’s also a reminder of the gap between our physical and mental realities. As a consequence, many transmen can’t go near dildos or harnesses. It’s just too painful, not a fun sexual fantasy. People who have never needed to question the sex that appears on their birth certificate display some double standards when they invalidate the gender identity of my people. A similar process takes place when we are expected to justify our sexual orientations far past the standard of proof that cisgendered people (genetic men and women) need to feel self-satisfied and secure. These contradictions are especially clear when “radical dyke feminists” are pitted against “sell-out transmen.” Most lesbians and gay men will tell you that they didn’t choose to be homosexual. It’s an intrinsic part of their nature, something they became aware of at an early age, an inherent quality that cannot be changed by fundamentalist Christian “reparative therapy” or other forms of bullying. And most cisgendered men and women never wonder where their gender identity came from. They just take it for granted, like having ten fingers and toes, or a certain skin color. So why should lesbianism become a privileged identity that is somehow superior to other sexual orientations? If you can’t choose whether to become a lesbian or not, why is it a moral failing for others to be something different? The sexual orientations and gender identities of transgendered people come from the same place that other people’s do. The same social and biological processes that shaped you, shape us. If you are the product of genetic predisposition—so are we.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, hearing this, contained her tears, contrary to the nature of woman, though not without great unease, and answered, 'My lord, I ever knew my mean estate to be nowise sortable with your nobility, and for that which I have been with you I have still confessed myself indebted to you and to God, nor have I ever made nor held it mine, as given to me, but have still accounted it but as a loan. It pleaseth you to require it again and it must and doth please me to restore it to you. Here is your ring wherewith you espoused me; take it. You bid me carry away with me that dowry which I brought hither, which to do you will need no paymaster and I neither purse nor packhorse, for I have not forgotten that you had me naked, and if you account it seemly that this my body, wherein I have carried children begotten of you, be seen of all, I will begone naked; but I pray you, in requital of my maidenhead, which I brought hither and bear not hence with me, that it please you I may carry away at the least one sole shift over and above my dowry.' Gualtieri, who had more mind to weep than to otherwhat, natheless kept a stern countenance and said, 'So be it; carry away a shift.' As many as stood around besought him to give her a gown, so that she who had been thirteen years and more his wife should not be seen go forth of his house on such mean and shameful wise as it was to depart in her shift; but their prayers all went for nothing; wherefore the lady, having commended them to God, went forth his house in her shift, barefoot and nothing on her head, and returned to her father, followed by the tears and lamentations of all who saw her. Giannucolo, who had never been able to believe it true that Gualtieri should entertain his daughter to wife and went in daily expectation of this event, had kept her the clothes which she had put off the morning that Gualtieri had married her and now brought them to her; whereupon she donned them and addressed herself, as she had been wont to do, to the little offices of her father's house, enduring the cruel onslaught of hostile fortune with a stout heart.

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

  Active sadness can take many forms; but the one cited by Janet (of the psychasthenic who throws a fit of nerves because she does not want to make her confession) may be characterized as a refusal. It exemplifies above all a negative behaviour intended to deny the urgency of certain problems and to replace them by others. The patient wants to move Janet's feelings. This means that she wants to change his attitude of impassible expectancy into one of affectionate concern. She wants this and she makes use of her body to bring it about. At the same time, by putting herself into such a state that the confession would be impossible, she is renouncing that act as beyond her power. Now, and for as long as she is in tears and shaken with her sobbing, all possibility of speaking is taken from her. Here, then, the potentiality is not eliminated, the confession remains 'to be made'. But it has retreated beyond the reach of the patient, who can no longer will to make it, but only hope to do so one day. The patient has thus freed herself from the painful feeling that the act was in her power, that she was free to do it or not. The emotional crisis here is an abandonment of responsibility, by means of a magical exaggeration of the difficulty of the world. The world retains its differentiated structure, but it appears unjust and hostile, because it is demanding too much of us; that is, more than it is humanly possible to do. In this case, then, the emotion of sadness is a magical play-acting of impotence: the patient is like one of those domestic servants who, having admitted burglars to their master's house, get them to bind them hand and foot, as a clear demonstration that they could not have prevented the theft. Here, however, the patient ties herself up in a number of tenuous bonds. It might be said, perhaps, that the painful sense of liberty of which the patient wants to rid herself is necessarily of a reflective nature. But this we do not believe; and one has only to watch oneself to see what really happens. It is the object which presents itself as demanding to be freely created; the confession which presents itself as the deed which both ought to and can be done.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She got the black teapot, and the tin of tea from the mantelshelf. She rinsed the teapot with hot water, and stood a moment wondering where to empty it. "Thrown it out," he said, aware of her. "It's clean." She went to the door and threw the drop of water down the path. How lovely it was here, so still, so really woodland. The oaks were putting out ochre yellow leaves; in the garden the red daisies were like red plush buttons. She glanced at the big, hollow sandstone slab of the threshold, now crossed by so few feet. "But it's lovely here," she said. "Such a beautiful stillness, everything alive and still." He was eating again, rather slowly and unwillingly, and she could feel he was discouraged. She made the tea in silence, and set the teapot on the hob, as she knew the people did. He pushed his plate aside and went to the back place; she heard a latch click, then he came back with cheese on a plate, and butter. She set the two cups on the table, there were only two. "Will you have a cup of tea?" she said. "If you like. Sugar's in th' cupboard, an' there's a little cream-jug. Milk's in a jug in th' pantry." "Shall I take your plate away?" she asked him. He looked up at her with a faint ironical smile. "Why ... if you like," he said, slowly eating bread and cheese. She went to the back, into the penthouse scullery, where the pump was. On the left was a door, no doubt the pantry door. She unlatched it, and almost smiled at the place he called a pantry; a long narrow whitewashed slip of a cupboard. But it managed to contain a little barrel of beer, as well as a few dishes and bits of food. She took a little milk from the yellow jug. "How do you get your milk?" she asked him, when she came back to the table. "Flints! They leave me a bottle at the warren end. You know, where I met you!" But he was discouraged. She poured out the tea, poising the cream-jug. "No milk," he said; then he seemed to hear a noise, and looked keenly through the doorway. "'Appen we'd better shut," he said. "It seems a pity," she replied. "Nobody will come, will they?" "No unless it's one in a thousand, but you never know." "And even then it's no matter," she said. "It's only a cup of tea. Where are the spoons?" He reached over, and pulled open the table drawer. Connie sat at table in the sunshine of the doorway. "Flossie!" he said to the dog, who was lying on a little mat at the stair foot. "Go an' hark, hark!" He lifted his finger, and his "hark!" was very vivid. The dog trotted out to reconnoitre. "Are you sad today?" she asked him. He turned his blue eyes quickly, and gazed direct on her.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And Stephen, seeing those two together, could picture them as they must once have been, in the halcyon days of their youthful vigour. For she thought that she glimpsed through the dust of the years, a faint flicker of the girl who had lingered in the lanes when the young man Williams and she had been courting. And looking at Williams as he stood before her twitching and bowed, she thought that she glimpsed a faint flicker of the youth, very stalwart and comely, who had bent his head downwards and side- ways as he walked and whispered and kissed in the lanes. And be- cause they were old yet undivided, her heart ached; not for 194 THE WELL OF LONELINESS them but rather for Stephen. Her youth seemed as dross when compared to their honourable age; because they were undivided. She said: ‘ Make him sit down, I don’t want him to stand.’ And she got up and pushed her own chair towards him. But old Mrs. Williams shook her white head slowly: ‘ No, Miss Stephen, ’e wouldn’t sit down in your presence. Beggin’ your pardon, it would ’urt Arth-thur’s feelin’s to be made to sit down; it would make ’im feel as ’is days of service was really over.’ ‘I don’t need to sit down,’ declared Williams. So Stephen wished them both a good night, promising to come again verv soon; and Williams hobbled out to the path which was now quite golden from border to border, for the door of the cottage was standing wide open and the glow from the lamp streamed over the path. Once more she found herself walk- ing on lamplight, while Williams, bareheaded, stood and watched her departure. Then her feet were caught up and entangled in shadows again, as she made her way under the trees. But presently came a familiar fragrance — logs burning on the wide, friendly hearths of Morton. Logs burning — quite soon the lakes would be frozen —‘ and the ice looks like slabs of gold in the sunset, when you and I come and stand here in the winter . and as we walk back we can smell the log fires long before we can see them, and we love that good smell because it means home, and our home is Morton . . . because it means home and our home is Morton. . . .’ Oh, intolerable fragrance of log fires burning! CHAPTER 23 I i NGELA did not return in a week, she had decided to remain another fortnight in Scotland. She was staying now with the Peacocks, it seemed, and would not get back until after her birth- day. Stephen looked at the beautiful ring as it gleamed in its little white velvet box, and her disappointment and chagrin were childish.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And with that Anna had perforce to be content. Very silently Stephen now went about Morton, and her eyes looked bewildered and deeply unhappy. At night she would lie awake thinking of Martin, missing him, mourning him as though he were dead. But she could not accept this death without question, without feeling that she was in some way blameworthy. What was she, what manner of curious creature, to have been so repelled by a lover like Martin? Yet she had been repelled, and even her pity for the man could not wipe out that stronger feeling. She had driven him away because something within her was intolerant of that new aspect of Martin. Oh, but she mourned his good, honest friendship; he had taken that from her, the thing she most needed—but perhaps after all it had never existed except as a cloak for this other emotion. And then, lying there in the thickening darkness, she would shrink from what might be waiting in the future, for all that had just happened might happen again—there were other men in the world beside Martin. Fool, never to have visualized this thing before, never to have faced the possibility of it; now she understood her resentment of men when their voices grew soft and insinuating. Yes, and now she knew to the full the meaning of fear, and Martin it was, who had taught her its meaning—her friend— the man she had utterly trusted had pulled the scales from her eyes and revealed it. Fear, stark fear, and the shame of such fear—that was the legacy left her by Martin. And yet he had made her so happy at first, she had felt so contented, so natural with him; but that was because they had been like two men, companions, sharing each other’s interests. And at this thought her bitterness would all but flow over; it was cruel, it was cowardly of him to have deceived her, when all the time he had only been waiting for the chance to force this other thing on her. But what was she? Her thoughts slipping back to her childhood, would find many things in her past that perplexed her. She had never been quite like the other small children, she had always been lonely and discontented, she had always been trying to be some one else—that was why she had dressed herself up as young Nelson. Remembering those days she would think of her father, and would wonder if now, as then, he could help her. Supposing she should ask him to explain about Martin? Her father was wise, and had infinite patience—yet somehow she instinctively dreaded to ask him. Alone—it was terrible to feel so much alone—to feel oneself different from other people. At one time she had rather enjoyed this distinction—she had rather enjoyed dressing up as young Nelson. Yet had she enjoyed it? Or had it been done as some sort of inadequate, childish protest?

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  In Paris at any rate she felt a bit of sensuality still. But what a weary, tired, worn-out sensuality. Worn-out for lack of tenderness. Oh! Paris was sad. One of the saddest towns: weary of its now-mechanical sensuality, weary of the tension of money, money, money, weary even of resentment and conceit, just weary to death, and still not sufficiently Americanized or Londonized to hide the weariness under a mechanical jig-jig-jig! Ah, these manly he-men, these flaneurs, the oglers, these eaters of good dinners! How weary they were! weary, worn-out for lack of a little tenderness, given and taken. The efficient, sometimes charming women knew a thing or two about the sensual realities: they had that pull over their jigging English sisters. But they knew even less of tenderness. Dry, with the endless dry tension of will, they too were wearing out. The human world was just getting worn-out. Perhaps it would turn fiercely destructive. A sort of anarchy! Clifford and his conservative anarchy! Perhaps it wouldn't be conservative much longer. Perhaps it would develop into a very radical anarchy. Connie found herself shrinking and afraid of the world. Sometimes she was happy for a little while in the Boulevards or in the Bois or the Luxembourg Gardens. But already Paris was full of Americans and English, strange Americans in the oddest uniforms, and the usual dreary English that are so hopeless abroad. She was glad to drive on. It was suddenly hot weather, so Hilda was going through Switzerland and over the Brenner, then through the Dolomites down to Venice. Hilda loved all the managing and the driving and being mistress of the show. Connie was quite content to keep quiet. And the trip was really quite nice. Only Connie kept saying to herself: Why don't I really care! Why am I never really thrilled? How awful, that I don't really care about the landscape any more! But I don't. It's rather awful. I'm like Saint Bernard, who could sail down the lake of Lucerne without ever noticing that there were even mountains and green water. I just don't care for landscape any more. Why should one stare at it? Why should one? I refuse to. No, she found nothing vital in France or Switzerland or the Tyrol or Italy. She just was carted through it all. And it was all less real than Wragby. Less real than the awful Wragby! She felt she didn't care if she never saw France or Switzerland or Italy again. They'd keep. Wragby was more real. As for people! people were all alike, with very little differences. They all wanted to get money out of you: or, if they were travellers, they wanted to get enjoyment, perforce, like squeezing blood out of a stone. Poor mountains! poor landscape! it all had to be squeezed and squeezed again, to provide a thrill, to provide enjoyment. What did people mean, with their simply _determined_ enjoying of themselves?