Shame

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 Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Mattie heads to North Carolina, secures a job, and never marries, choosing instead to raise her son alone; and her sexual life is nonexistent by her own choice and inclination. Based on textual inferences, her single sexual encounter with Butch, in which she begets their son, Basil, is her only sexual experience. As a single mother with a child, Mattie's status and subject position are questioned and difficult to negotiate, as is especially evident in her attempts to secure housing. She must confront and navigate her way around interlocking apparatuses: her race, gender, and sexuality concomitantly. Denied housing by white landlords because of her race, she fares no better in the "neatly manicured black neighborhoods," emblematic of a black respectability, in which her gender/sexual status-as an unmarried woman with a child born out of wedlock-marked her as "unacceptable." Moreover, it constitutes an explicit and visible breach of the classical black female script, those culturally prescribed mandates governing "acceptable" black womanhood. As mentioned, it is constituted by black women's expected racial loyalty and solidarity, sexual fidelity to black men, self-abnegation, and the idealization of marriage and motherhood. While she does not violate the script entirely, she does transgress its tenets pertaining to the regulation of black women's sexuality through black men, as well as overstep its mandates governing marriage. Issues of legitimacy, or lack thereof-her being a single mother-take shape in the queries of those she meets, "Where's your husband?" to which her response would invariably incite a disapproving, "`This is a respectable place!"' (30). As a subject with exterior visible evidence, a child, that she has transgressed the behavioral and sociosexual strictures for women, Mattie is denied far more than housing. "Unmarried persons are punished" and are "denied sexual citizenship" by "society for their `transgressions"'; and, "as sexual subjects, rather than sexual citizens, African Americans have historically been punished and victimized for asserting their sexual independence and seeking control over their own bodies."' Mattie, consequently, is unable to secure housing; and she eventually takes up residence in the private home of Eva Turner, a five-time widowed woman who is raising her granddaughter (Louciela, who is Basil's age) after the child's parents ran off. Unlike those who discriminated against Mattie, "Miss Eva" is nonjudgmental regarding Mattie's breach of the "politics of respectability" and mother-out-of-wedlock status, yet, paradoxically, she later scrutinizes Mattie on the basis of her sexual disposition: "'Tain't natural, just 'tain't natural." [...] "What I'm talkin' 'bout is that I ain't hear you mention no man involved in all them exciting goings-on in your life-church and children and work. It ain't natural for a young woman like you to live that way. I can't remember the last time no man come by to take you out." [.. .I "Ain't you ever had no needs in that direction? No young woman wants an empty bed, year in and year out." (36-37)

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Si quieres saber qué está pasando con Cole, pregúntale a él. En cuanto a quién le alquilo una habitación, no es asunto tuyo. Deslizo mis dedos por mi cabello, olvidándome de darle un estilo. Se queda en silencio por un momento, y no la miro mientras saco mi teléfono del cargador y lo guardo en el bolsillo. Se para a mi lado y toma mi barbilla, forzándome a enfrentarla. Me alejo. —¿Qué? —Estás sonrojado. —Hace calor —le respondo. Pero debajo de mi piel, mi sangre se calienta y mi corazón late con más fuerza. Recojo mi café, tomando un sorbo para ocultar mi nerviosismo. La mujer es un tiburón. Puede oler sangre a través de un océano. —Sé cómo luces después de correrte —acusa—. Entonces, la pregunta es... ¿es ese dulce pedazo de culo adolescente que está arriba o alguien nuevo? Bajo mi taza de golpe, mirándola. —Suficiente. Maldita sea. Olvidé lo inteligente que es. Ni siquiera he salido de la casa, y ni siquiera puedo entender lo que siento por la única persona con la que me he encontrado. Increíble. Dirigiéndome a la mesa, me siento, me pongo los calcetines y las botas y recojo todo lo que necesito para el día. —Cole renunció a su trabajo en la planta —dice finalmente—. Hace tres días. Miro hacia arriba, deteniendo lo que estoy haciendo. ¿Tres días? —Déjame darte un consejo. —Se vuelve condesciende—. La crianza de los hijos no se detiene cuando cumplen los dieciocho años y cuando ya no tienes que pagar manutención. Él todavía te necesita. —Perdóname si no tomo lecciones de crianza de una mujer que se embarazó para tener un boleto de comida por el resto de su vida. —Me vuelvo hacia ella, inmovilizándola con mi mirada—. Tal vez renunció para no tener que trabajar por nada ya que lo haces sentir culpable para que te dé la mitad de sus cheques de pago. Me da una bofetada, y mi cabeza se mueve a un lado. Pero solo me río.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  -WOMAN S ERA A relationship between black people, representation, and political subjectivity has always existed and, at times, has been contingent upon representations of black womanhood. Still, this relationship has been more pronounced during particular historical moments. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African Americans, having been negatively stereotyped as uncivilized, ignorant, and licentious within a racially hegemonic society, were relegated to an inferior status and deemed ineligible for full civic and political rights. In an effort to counter ubiquitous negative images and secure sociopolitical equality, some African Americans, largely under the influence of black intellectuals and activists, subscribed to certain codes of conduct-namely, respectability and propriety-to uplift and empower the race through acts of self-definition and determination. Bourgeois behavior and mores, including the espousal of Victorian sexual conduct, served for blacks, then, as a means of racial and sociopolitical advancement.' While such strategies affected the black community collectively, they had their most pronounced effects on black women, who were seen as symbols of their race. Having been characterized as licentious and immoral, as the very antithesis of "ideal" (white) womanhood, black women were perceived as responsible for so-called black deviancy and pathology. In light of this and their sexual violation by white men especially during slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow-with their putative lasciviousness serving as justification for such crimes-black women embraced respectability as both protection and countermyth. Deploying propriety and a rhetoric of moral superiority in various aspects of life and culture, they challenged prevailing images of black women particularly and African Americans generally. Their comportment and public display of "respectable" behavior served as forms of counterrepresentation, as well as racial uplift and advancement. These very female behavioral codes surrounding black womanhood can be seen not only in black women's literature and the black women's club movement, but also in newspapers, journals, and periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as this chapter's opening epigraph illustrates.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I do not understand! Maybe Blue Ribbon would be better off without you!” White turned white. I tried to jump in. I tried to rephrase what Kitami was saying, tried to blame the language barrier, but the meeting was over. White stormed out, and I stared in astonishment at Kitami, who was wearing an expression that said, Job well done. I DROVE KITAMI to our new offices in Tigard and showed him around, introduced him to the gang. I was fighting hard to maintain my composure, to remain pleasant, to block out all thoughts about what had just happened. I was afraid that at any second I might lose it. But when I settled Kitami into a chair across from my desk, it was he who lost it—at me. “Blue Ribbon sales are disappointing!” he said. “You should be doing much better.” Stunned, I said that our sales were doubling every year. Not good enough, he snapped. “Should be triple some people say,” he said. “What people?” I asked. “Never mind,” he said. He took a folder from his briefcase, flipped it open, read it, snapped it shut. He repeated that he didn’t like our numbers, that he didn’t think we were doing enough. He opened the folder again, shut it again, shoved it back into his briefcase. I tried to defend myself, but he waved his hand in disgust. Back and forth we went, for quite a while, civil but tense. After nearly an hour of this he stood and asked to use the men’s room. Down the hall, I said. The moment he was out of sight I jumped from behind my desk. I opened his briefcase and rummaged through and took out what looked like the folder he’d been referring to. I slid it under my desk blotter, then jumped behind my desk and put my elbows on the blotter. Waiting for Kitami to return, I had the strangest thought. I recalled all the times I’d volunteered with the Boy Scouts, all the times I’d sat on Eagle Scout review boards, handing out merit badges for honor and integrity. Two or three weekends a year I’d question pink-cheeked boys about their probity, their honesty, and now I was stealing documents from another man’s briefcase? I was headed down a dark path. No telling where it might lead. Wherever, there was no getting around one immediate consequence of my actions. I’d have to recuse myself from the next review board. How I longed to study the contents of that folder, and photocopy every scrap of paper in it, and go over it all with Woodell. But Kitami was soon back. I let him resume scolding me about sluggish numbers, let him talk himself out, and when he stopped I summed up my position.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Forget about boys swimming up to you in the ocean and graphic designers stabbing at your asshole. The doctor’s name was Dana Ward. She was blond with a severe ponytail and had definitely never made a mess in her life. I imagined that she went to Cornell and had always been self-contained. She had a nice engagement ring—not gigantic—but big enough that she could flash it and make other women feel shitty. She was a left-hand gesturer. I bet she used the word fiancée . “Let’s see here,” she said. “It looks like you think you might have a urinary tract infection?” “Yes, I know for sure that I do. I just need Cipro and Pyridium,” I said. “I’m going to have you leave a urine sample and that will take some time for us to get tested. In the meantime I can start you on those medicines. Do you get them often?” “It’s been years.” “Anything different that might have caused this?” I wanted to say, Well, I tried to have anal on the floor of a hotel bathroom. It was not a bathroom in a hotel room—just a bathroom connected to the hotel bar. Also, the guy was a stranger. Also, I’m in a group-therapy program for sex and love addiction. But clearly it’s not working. “My husband and I have been having a lot more sex. We’re trying to get pregnant. It could just be too much,” I said instead. I seriously had no idea where that came from. “Any chance that he could have been exposed to any sexually transmitted diseases?” Was she implying that my fictitious husband was unfaithful? How dare she! “Absolutely not.” I wanted to ask if there was a chance her fiancé had been unfaithful with her. “You can get the prescriptions filled and start taking the medicines. The Cipro could take up to twenty-four hours to really start working, but the Pyridium should provide you with some relief almost immediately. We will call you with your results later this afternoon. If you don’t test positive for a urinary tract infection I strongly suggest that you come back in and get tested for everything.” “It’s definitely a urinary tract infection,” I said. The CVS pharmacist gave me the Pyridium right away but needed time to fill the Cipro, so I lingered in the magazine aisle. I took the Pyridium with apple juice, which I knew I wasn’t going to pay for. It made me feel powerful to steal the juice, drink it casually right there, then stick the bottle behind the magazines. I began to feel some relief from the Pyridium. But I also felt like I had to pee really badly. I figured it was probably just the infection, the illusion of having to pee. While I waited I shifted from foot to foot, reading a magazine about celebrity baby bumps. The whole magazine was dedicated to these bumps, not the babies themselves, just the bumps.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  Pretending, however, to yield at length to the vehemence of his insistence, in action and words, I sparing disclosed my thighs, so that he could just touch the cloven inlet with the tip of his instrument: but as he fatigued and toiled to get in, a twist of my body, so as to receive it obliquely, not only thwarted his admission, but giving a scream, as if he had pierced me to the heart, I shook him off me, with such violence that he could not with all his might to it, keep the saddle: vexed indeed at this he seemed, but not in the style of displeasure with me for my skittishness; on the contrary, I dare swear he held me the dearer, and hugged himself for the difficulties that even hurt his instant pleasure. Fired, however, now beyond all bearance of delay, he remounts, and begged of me to have patience, stroking and soothing me to it by all the tenderest endearments and protestations of what he would moreover do for me; at which, feigning to be somewhat softened, and abating of the anger that I had shewn at his hurting me so prodigiously, I suffered him to lay my thighs aside, and make way for a new trial; but I watched the directions and management of his point so well, that no sooner was the orifice in the least open to it, but I gave such a timely jerk as seemed to proceed not from the evasion of his entry, but from the pain his efforts at it put me to: a circumstance too that I did not fail to accompany with proper gestures, sighs and cries of complaint, of which, “that he had hurt me... he killed me... I should die...,” were the most frequent interjections. But now, after repeated attempts, in which he had not made the least impression towards gaining his point, at least for that time, the pleasure rose so fast upon him, that he could not check or delay it, and in the vigour and fury which the approaches of the height of it inspired him, he made one fierce-thrust, that had almost put me by my guard, and lodged it so far that I could feel the warm inspersion just within the exterior orifice, which I had the cruelty not to let him finish there, but threw him out again, not without a most piercing loud exclamation, as if the pain had put me beyond all regard of being overheard. It was then easy to observe that he was more satisfied, more highly pleased with the supposed motives of his baulk of consummation, than he would have-been at the full attainment of it. It was on this foot that I solved to myself all the falsity I employed to procure him that blissful pleasure in it, which most certainly he would not have tasted in the truth of things.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Unlike Hannah, Nel's mother, Helene Wright-the apotheosis of motherhood as it is defined by the classical black female script-"rose grandly to the occasion of motherhood" (i8); and, in counterdistinction to Hannah, she raises her daughter in strict accordance with bourgeois propriety and respectability. In fact, "under Helene's hand [Nel] became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasm that little Nel showed was calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground" (i8). Yet, while Nel is raised in accordance with the script-which is, in her case, severely "maternally imposed" and socially mandated-she eventually comes to question her own identity in relation to her maternal female progenitors. Nel's sojourn begins in 1920 while she rides a segregated train to New Orleans with Helene, who is objectified and sexualized by the patriarchal gazes of male passengers. After having witnessed her mother's victimization and silent composure, ten-year-old Nel vows that no man will ever look at her that way. For, she would never let "midnight eyes and marble flesh [...] accost her and turn her into jelly" (22). Nel's experience on the train is far from innocuous, exposing her to the extent to which black womanhood is subjected to (hyper)sexualization (as evidenced in the sexualized metaphor "jelly") that renders black women-even those like her mother who are the quintessence of respectability and decorum-vulnerable to sexual dehumanization, objectification, or violence. While in this instance the sexual violation is not physical, its psychological aspect is no less acute or deleterious. Unprotected as such, Nel, as a black female, cannot necessarily elude and transcend the inevitability of racialized sexual vulnerability, yet what she can and does do, is divest herself of associations with her intergenerational female progenitors who have already encountered varied instantiations of these sexual entanglements. Thus, upon their return to the Bottom, while looking in the mirror, Nel proclaims, "I'm me. Not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me" (28).

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  I did not care what became of my wretched body: and wanting life, spirits, or courage to oppose the least struggle, even that of the modesty of my sex, I suffered, tamely, whatever the gentleman pleased; who proceeding insensibly from freedom to freedom, insinuating his hand between my handkerchief and bosom, which he handled at discretion: finding thus no repulse, and that every thing favoured, beyond expectation, the completion of his desires, he took me in his arms, and bore me, without life or motion, to the bed, on which laying me gently downed, and having me at what advantage he pleased, I did not so much as know what he was about, till recovering from a trance of lifeless insensibility, I found him buried in me, whilst I lay passive and innocent of the least sensations of pleasure: a death-cold corpse could scarce have less life or sense in it. As soon as he had thus pacified a passion which had too little respected the condition I was in, he got off, and after recomposing the disorder of my clothes, employed himself with the utmost tenderness to calm the transports of remorse and madness at myself, with which I was seized, too late, I confess, for having suffered on that bed, the embraces of an utter stranger I tore my hair, wrung my hands, and beat my breast like a mad woman. But when my new master, for in that light I then viewed him, applied himself to appease me, as my whole rage was levelled at myself, no part of which I thought myself permitted to aim at him, I begged of him with more submission than anger, to leave me alone, that I might, at least, enjoy my affliction in quiet. This he positively refused, for fear, as he pretended, I should do myself a mischief. Violent passions seldom last long, and those of women least of any. A dead still calm succeeded this storm, which ended in a profuse shower of tears.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Being a friend to yourself means accepting all those parts of yourself, without judgment or harshness, and without sweeping the unsavory aspects of yourself out of view. When I shared my “frozen khata” experience with an audience at the Environmental Protection Agency some months later, someone voiced “I wish all bosses were like that!” She longed to have a boss who could point out her mistakes while also maintaining full acceptance of her. That is a nice image to uphold, especially when thinking of the times when we are responsible for pointing out someone else’s missteps—whether those of a child or an employee. Yet how does your inner boss treat you? If you find that you boss yourself around with a harsh tone, remind yourself that there’s another, more loving way to treat yourself. As Walt Whitman reminds us, you exist as you are, and that is enough. Erika’s Story I see a powerful reminder of how self-acceptance is foundational for positivity resonance in the stories that my good friend Erika has shared with me about her experiences as an amateur musician. For the past few years, she’s enrolled in a summer camp to expand her musical abilities under the tutelage of some of her favorite professional musicians. She’d learned about this particular camp from a friend who’d attended it himself, a fellow Deadhead she’d jammed with for years. True to his forewarnings, the camp experience was not only immensely rewarding but also immensely challenging. Although she’d played guitar for years, she felt self-conscious in the presence of so many great musicians. She was sure she was among the least skilled students at camp, some of whom were actually career musicians themselves. She reinforced her insecurities by ruminating on certain facts: She’d not been classically trained; she only played a few hours each week; she’d only picked up music theory on her own; and so forth. Although she absorbed the wondrous experiences that the camp offered, she fretted periodically about how she’d be able to solo in front of all those brilliant musicians when she was called to do so. I’m sure you can recognize aspects of the classic imposter syndrome script here. We all read from it when we take up the challenge to push ourselves to the next level. The camp was designed to be a safe haven for musical exploration. Campers were encouraged to place their full trust in others and to create an encouraging and supportive atmosphere for everyone. In light of inner self-judgments, however, this is easier said than done.

• From Educated (2018)

  “You act like someone who is impersonating someone else. And it’s as if you think your life depends on it.” … “It has never occurred to you,” he said, “that you might have as much right to be here as anyone.” … “I would enjoy serving the dinner,” I said, “more than eating it.” … “You must stop yourself from thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said … “You are not fool’s gold … Whomever you become … that is who you always were.” … I wanted to believe him … when I thought of my self, the images that came to mind were of that girl, in the bathroom, in the parking lot.

• From Educated (2018)

  Charles sat quietly while I talked and didn’t say anything for a long time after. Then he said, “Are you angry your parents didn’t put you in school?” “It was an advantage!” I said, half-shouting. My response was instinctive. It was like hearing a phrase from a catchy song: I couldn’t stop myself from reciting the next line. Charles looked at me skeptically, as if asking me to reconcile that with what I’d said only moments before. “Well, I’m angry,” he said. “Even if you aren’t.” I said nothing. I’d never heard anyone criticize my father except Shawn, and I wasn’t able to respond to it. I wanted to tell Charles about the Illuminati, but the words belonged to my father, and even in my mind they sounded awkward, rehearsed. I was ashamed at my inability to take possession of them. I believed then—and part of me will always believe—that my father’s words ought to be my own. —EVERY NIGHT FOR A MONTH, when I came in from the junkyard, I’d spend an hour scrubbing grime from my fingernails and dirt from my ears. I’d brush the tangles from my hair and clumsily apply makeup. I’d rub handfuls of lotion into the pads of my fingers to soften the calluses, just in case that was the night Charles touched them. When he finally did, it was early evening and we were in his jeep, driving to his house to watch a movie. We were just coming parallel to Fivemile Creek when he reached across the gearshift and rested his hand on mine. His hand was warm and I wanted to take it, but instead I jerked away as if I’d been burned. The response was involuntary, and I wished immediately that I could take it back. It happened again when he tried a second time. My body convulsed, yielding to a strange, potent instinct. The instinct passed through me in the form of a word, a bold lyric, strong, declarative. The word was not new. It had been with me for a while now, hushed, motionless, as if asleep, in some remote corner of memory. By touching me Charles had awakened it, and it throbbed with life. I shoved my hands under my knees and leaned into the window. I couldn’t let him near me—not that night, and not any night for months—without shuddering as that word, my word, ripped its way into remembrance. Whore . We arrived at his house. Charles turned on the TV and settled onto the sofa; I perched lightly on one side. The lights dimmed, the opening credits rolled. Charles inched toward me, slowly at first, then more confidently, until his leg brushed mine. In my mind I bolted, I ran a thousand miles in a single heartbeat. In reality I merely flinched. Charles flinched, too—I’d startled him. I repositioned myself, driving my body into the sofa arm, gathering my limbs and pressing them away from him.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And when I was almost conned, he got a job in Hollywood, and, with apologies, split, giving me $5.00 that night—and a smiling! triumphant! goodbye!... And Raub—a bastard—whose frog-shape and inclinations make me remember him as a “fraggot”—the fraggot with the enormous black-velvetdraped bed on Park Avenue: I was swiftly succeeded by, as I had very briefly succeeded, a string of others.... And there was Lenny from New Jersey, whom I saw twice a week, until one night he didn’t show; and I learned later he’d been arrested for selling pornographic pictures. There was, too, Im perversely glad to tell you, a cop met in an extension of the same world of 42nd Street. After midnight walking from the west to the east side, I crossed Central Park, and he was out rousting the bums sleeping in the park—the wagon parked a distance away. When he stopped me, I came on I was square: Just Now Came To The Big City. And he goes through the identification scene. “Well, you havent really seen New York then,” he said. “Maybe I can meet you somewhere on my day off and I’ll show you around.” I saw him a couple of times, but My Pride won out: To be with a cop—even for scoring—humiliated me, and that stopped. Feeling that recurrent guilt which will come on me unexpectedly in that life, I placed an ad in the Sunday paper for a job: “YOUNGMAN desires gainful employment”—and the number of the telephone in the hallway where I lived. “Can you come up now?” the faintly-British-accented male voice on the telephone said. It was Sunday evening. I took down an address on Sutton Place. “Take a cab,” the voice said, “and I’ll reimburse you when you get here.” In a fashionable apartment overlooking the East River, I face an elegant silver-haired man. At the door he had started, looked at me in surprise. “What kind of a job are you looking for?” he asked me after offering me a drink. “Anything that I like and that pays.” “Oh?” he said. “That must cover a lot of territory.... I have an opening,” he said. “What kind of work?” “Oh, thats such a boring subject, isnt it?” he said. “Why not lets just get to know each other first” He sits very close to me. “Youre nervous,” he said. “Maybe it’s the suit youre wearing. You dont seem to be used to it,” he said slyly. “You neednt have worn it, you know. Oh, Im terribly informal myself!”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  We gazed at one another. I looked harder at his face, and saw that he had gained a bit of weight beneath his chin, and that the flesh about his eyes was rather darker than I knew it. Then the Italian called, ‘Bill, will you come?’ And Bill said that he must go. I nodded, and held my hand out to him. As he shook it, he seemed to hesitate again. Then he said, very quickly, ‘You know, we was all really sorry, when you took off like that, from the Brit.’ I shrugged. ‘And Kitty,’ he went on, ‘well, Kitty was sorriest of all of us. She put notices, with Walter, in the Era and the Ref, week after week. Did you never see ’em, Nan, those notices?’ ‘No, Bill, I never did.’ He shook his head. ‘And now, here you are, dressed up like a lord!’ But he gave my suit a dubious glance, and added: ‘You’re sure though, are you, that you’re doing all right?’ I didn’t answer him. I only looked over to Diana again. She was tilting her head to gaze after me; beside her stood Maria, and Satin, and Dickie. Dickie held our tray of drinks, and had placed her monocle at her eye. She said, ‘The wine will warm, Diana,’ in a pettish sort of voice: the lobby was thinned of people, I could hear her very clearly. Diana tilted her head again: ‘What is the boy doing?’ ‘He is talking to the nigger,’ answered Maria, ‘at the cloaks!’ I felt my cheeks flame red, and looked quickly back at Bill. His gaze had followed mine, but now had been caught by a gentleman offering a coat, and he was lifting the garment over the counter, and already turning with it to the row of hooks. ‘Good-bye, Bill,’ I said, and he nodded over his shoulder, and gave me a sad little smile of farewell. I took a step away - but then, very quickly, I returned to the counter and put my hand upon his arm. I said: ‘What’s Kitty’s place, on the bill at the Mo?’ ‘Her place?’ He thought about it, folding another cloak. ‘I’m not sure. Second half, near the start, half-past nine or so ...’ Then Maria’s voice came calling: ‘Is there trouble, Neville, over the tip?’ I knew then that if I lingered near him any longer some terrible sort of scene would ensue. I didn’t look at him again but went back to Diana at once, and said it was nothing, I was sorry. But when she raised a hand to smooth back the hair I had unsettled, I flinched, feeling Bill’s eyes upon me; and when she pulled my arm through hers, and Maria stepped around me to take my other arm, the flesh upon my back seemed to give a kind of shudder, as if there was a pistol pointed at it.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  I had now lived near seven months with Mr. H.... when one day returning to my lodgings, from a visit in the neighbourhood, where I used to stay longer, I found the street door open, and the maid of the house standing at it, talking with some of her acquaintance, so that I came in without knocking and, as I passed by, she told me Mr. H.... was above. I slept up stairs into my own bed-chamber, with no other thought than of pulling off my hat etc., and then to wait upon him in the dining room, into which my bed-chamber had a door, as is common enough. Whilst I was untying my hat strings, I fancied I heard my maid Hannah’s voice and a sort of tustle, which raised my curiosity; I stole softly to the door, where a knot in the wood had been slipped out, and afforded a very commanding peep-hole to the scene then in agitation, the actors of which had been to earnestly employed to hear my opening my own door, from the landing place of the stairs, into my bedchamber. The first sight that struck me was Mr. H.... pulling and hauling this coarse country strammel towards a couch that stood in a corner of the dining-room; to which the girl made only a sort of awkward holdening resistance, crying out so loud, that I, who listened at the door, could scarce hear her: “Pray Sir, don’t.., let me alone... I am not for your turn... You cannot, sure, demean yourself with such a poor body as I... Lord! Sir, my mistress may come home... I must not indeed... I will cry out...” All of which did not hinder her from insensibly suffering herself to be brought to the foot of the couch, upon which a push of no mighty violence served to give her a very easy fall, and my gentleman having got up his hands to the strong hold of her Virtue, she, no doubt, thought it was time to give up the argument, and that all further defense would be vain: and he, throwing her petticoats over her face, which was now as red as scarlet, discovered a pair of stout, plump, substantial thighs, and tolerably white; he mounted them round his haps, and coming out with his drawn weapon, stuck it in the cloven sport, where he seemed to find a less difficult entrance than perhaps he had flattered himself with (for, by the way, this blouse had left her place in the country, for a bastard), and, indeed, all his motions shewed he was lodged pretty much at large. After he had done, his Deare gets up, drops her petticoats down, and smooths her apron and handkerchief. Mr. H.... looked a little silly, and taking out some money, gave it her, with an air indifferent enough, bidding her be a good girl, and say nothing.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Conformity to these principles signified women's loyalty and solidarity, as well as commitment to racial uplift and the black nation; whereas nonconformity to them situated black women outside race work or, essentially, as betrayers of the race. Not only does this call particular attention to black women's positionalities and how they intersect with and predicate upon conformity to particular racialized/gendered dictates largely punctuated by sexuality, but it also interestingly underscores racialized efforts toward self-redefinition and determination, as well as the construction of ideologies of white supremacy and racialized practices that further define and demarcate "whiteness." At the crux of such formulations of whiteness, and its differentiation as privileged and putatively superior, were, in part, constructions of womanhood and white feminine character that are often associated with the "cult of true womanhood."3 "[W]hite America's perceptions of racial difference were founded on the different way they constructed black and white women," notes historian Deborah Gray White, whereby the latter "endured their own race-determined sexism." Constituted by four fundamental tenets-piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity-the cult of true womanhood excluded black women, yet relied on negative stereotypes and mythologies regarding black womanhood and its "illicit" sexuality and character. The cult of true womanhood and larger interlocking discourses on "whiteness," as well as black racialized iterations of racial uplift and nation building, all played a role in the formation of the classical black female script. Put another way, black women's exclusion from "true womanhood," even when they possessed the principal elements constituting it, led overwhelmingly to their public display of the classical black female script, a variation of which constituted the racial and/or communal obligatory roles expected in uplift/nationalist discourse. The tenets of the script, and the very phenomenon of the script itself, emblematize the particular exigencies of the black race, especially as they relate to black women's roles, comportment, and positionalities during this particular historical moment.

• From Educated (2018)

  The hall was lit by candlelight, which was beautiful, but it cheered me for another reason: I wasn’t wearing formal clothing, just a black shirt and black pants, and I thought people might not notice in the dim lighting. My friend Laura arrived late. She explained that her parents had visited and taken her to France. She had only just returned. She was wearing a dress of rich purple with crisp pleats in the skirt. The hemline bounced several inches above her knee, and for a moment I thought the dress was whorish, until she said her father had bought it for her in Paris. A gift from one’s father could not be whorish. A gift from one’s father seemed to me the definitive signal that a woman was not a whore. I struggled with this dissonance—a whorish dress, gifted to a loved daughter—until the meal had been finished and the plates cleared away. At my next supervision, Professor Steinberg said that when I applied for graduate school, he would make sure I was accepted to whatever institution I chose. “Have you visited Harvard?” he said. “Or perhaps you prefer Cambridge?” I imagined myself in Cambridge, a graduate student wearing a long black robe that swished as I strode through ancient corridors. Then I was hunching in a bathroom, my arm behind my back, my head in the toilet. I tried to focus on the student but I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture the girl in the whirling black gown without seeing that other girl. Scholar or whore, both could not be true. One was a lie. “I can’t go,” I said. “I can’t pay the fees.” “Let me worry about the fees,” Professor Steinberg said. —IN LATE AUGUST, on our last night in Cambridge, there was a final dinner in the great hall. The tables were set with more knives, forks and goblets than I’d ever seen; the paintings on the wall seemed ghostly in the candlelight. I felt exposed by the elegance and yet somehow made invisible by it. I stared at the other students as they passed, taking in every silk dress, every heavily lined eye. I obsessed over the beauty of them. At dinner I listened to the cheerful chatter of my friends while longing for the isolation of my room. Professor Steinberg was seated at the high table. Each time I glanced at him, I felt that old instinct at work in me, tensing my muscles, preparing me to take flight. I left the hall the moment dessert was served. It was a relief to escape all that refinement and beauty—to be allowed to be unlovely and not a point of contrast. Dr. Kerry saw me leave and followed. It was dark. The lawn was black, the sky blacker. Pillars of chalky light reached up from the ground and illuminated the chapel, which glowed, moonlike, against the night sky. “You’ve made an impression on Professor Steinberg,” Dr. Kerry said, falling into step beside me.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  At first she answered as I thought an actress should - comfortably, rather teasingly, laughing when I blushed or said a foolish thing. Gradually, however - as if she was stripping the paint from her voice, as well as from her face - her tone grew milder, less pert and pressing. At last - she gave a yawn, and rubbed her knuckles in her eyes - at last her voice was just a girl’s: melodious and strong and clear, but just a Kentish girl’s voice, like my own. Like the freckles, it made her - not unremarkable, as I had feared to find her; but marvellously, achingly real. Hearing it, I understood at last my wildness of the past seven days. I thought, how queer it is! - and yet, how very ordinary: I am in love with you. Soon her face was wiped quite bare, and her cigarette smoked to the filter; and then she rose and put her fingers to her hair. ‘I had better change,’ she said, almost shyly. I took the hint, and said that I should go, and she walked the couple of steps with me to the door. ‘Thank you, Miss Astley,’ she said - she already had my name from Tony - ‘for coming to see me.’ She held out her hand to me, and I lifted my own in response - then remembered my glove - my glove with the lavender bows upon it, to match my pretty hat - and quickly drew it off and offered her my naked fingers. All at once she was the gallant boy of the footlights again. She straightened her back, made me a little bow, and raised my knuckles to her lips. I flushed with pleasure - until I saw her nostrils quiver, and knew, suddenly, what she smelled: those rank sea-scents, of liquor and oyster-flesh, crab-meat and whelks, which had flavoured my fingers and those of my family for so many years we had all ceased, entirely, to notice them. Now I had thrust them beneath Kitty Butler’s nose! I felt ready to die of shame. I made, at once, to pull my hand away; but she held it fast in her own, still pressed to her lips, and laughed at me over the knuckles. There was a look in her eye I could not quite interpret. ‘You smell,’ she began, slowly and wonderingly, ‘like -’ ‘Like a herring!’ I said bitterly. My cheeks were hot now and very red; there were tears, almost, in my eyes. I think she saw my confusion and was sorry for it. ‘Not at all like a herring,’ she said gently. ‘But perhaps, maybe, like a mermaid ...’ And she kissed my fingers properly, and this time I let her; and at last my blush faded, and I smiled.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I told her everything - about my life as an oyster-girl; about Kitty Butler, whom I had left my family for, and who had left me, in her turn, for Walter Bliss. I told her about my madness; my masquerade; my life with Mrs Milne and Grace, in Green Street, where she had seen me first. And finally I told her about Diana, and Felicity Place, and Zena. When I stopped talking it was almost light; the parlour seemed chillier than ever. Through all my long narrative Florence had been silent; she had begun to frown when I had reached the part about the renting, and after that the frown had deepened. Now it was very deep indeed. ‘You wanted to know,’ I said, ‘what secrets I had...’ She looked away. ‘I didn’t think there would be quite so many.’ ‘You said you wouldn’t hate me, over the renting.’ ‘It’s so hard to think you did those things - for fun. And — oh, Nance, for such a cruel kind of fun!’ ‘It was very long ago.’ ‘To think of all the people you have known - and yet you have no friends.’ ‘I left them all behind me.’ ‘Your family. You said when you came here that your family had thrown you over. But it was you threw them over! How they must wonder over you! Do you never think of them?’ ‘Sometimes, sometimes.’ ‘And the lady who was so fond of you, in Green Street. Do you never think to call on her, and her daughter?’ ‘They have moved away; and I tried to find them. And anyway, I was ashamed, because I had neglected them...’ ‘Neglected them, for that - what was her name?’ ‘Diana.’ ‘Diana. Did you care for her, then, so very much?’ ‘Care for her?’ I propped myself upon my elbow. ‘I hated her! She was a kind of devil! I have told you — ’ ‘And yet, you stayed with her, so long...’ I felt suffocated, all at once, by my own story, and by the meanings she was teasing from it. ‘I can’t explain,’ I said. ‘She had a power over me. She was rich. She had - things.’ ‘First you told me it was a gent that threw you out. Then you said it was a lady. I thought, that you had lost some girl... ’ ‘I had lost a girl; but it was Kitty, and it was years before.’ ‘And Diana was rich; and blacked your eye and cut you, and you let her. And then she chucked you out because you - kissed her maid.’ Her voice had grown steadily harder. ‘What happened to her?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’ We lay a while in silence, and the bed seemed suddenly terribly slim. Florence gazed at the lightening square of curtain at the window, and I watched her, miserably.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  For some people, both obstacles are fused together into one mammoth and seemingly insurmountable boulder. The first is self-diminishment, or not believing yourself to be worthy of love or acceptance. At an implicit, unspoken level, you may dismiss your good qualities as insignificant and stay locked in on your shortcomings. You may feel it necessary to fill those gaps in your character before you can fully accept and love yourself. You may think, “If only I were _______.” You can fill in the blank with any of your usual suspects, those ideals against which you judge yourself: “thinner, kinder, wealthier, smarter, more energetic, more productive, more organized, more successful, more thoughtful . . .” Then you wait. You withhold love from yourself until you meet those unspoken preconditions. But the waiting never ends, and the self-love never flows. The second obstacle to self-love presents as self-aggrandizement, or believing oneself to be more special or more deserving than others. Or perhaps you’re not so busy comparing yourself favorably to others, but rather you see yourself as especially capable or triumphant. Your self-esteem is high. This is a devious obstacle to circumnavigate because it masquerades as self-love. Sure as day it’s positive. Even so, a telltale sign that these positive self-descriptions fall short of true self-love is that they are guarded very tightly. As you shield your positive self-views from the light of contradictory evidence, a brittle narcissism emerges. Although narcissism like this is often taken as excessive self-love, in truth it’s something else altogether. In believing yourself to be especially deserving and discerning, or especially wonderful—even at a deep, unspoken or unrecognized level—the slights and shortcomings that all people face as they navigate the social world become magnified out of proportion, viewed as threats or insults to your character. If this is your obstacle, your happiness hinges on whether others treat you in just the right way, or show you the proper form of respect by turning a blind eye to your shortcomings. In truth, self-aggrandizement is often a defense—a protective armor donned to cover up a more negative view of self. It can be self-diminishment in disguise. Both obstacles to the safety and connection necessary for self-love—self-diminishment and self-aggrandizement—deny the wisdom of sameness and oneness. At a core, spiritual level, there is no social topography, no hierarchy that ranks people from more to less deserving. The truth is you are neither beneath nor above others. Brain disorders aside, all people are fundamentally the same when it comes to their ability to think, to feel, and to yearn for love. All are equally deserving of acceptance, respect, and love, even with their many shortcomings. You are no exception. Just like everyone else, you deserve your own love.

• From Educated (2018)

  I thought if I could just laugh loudly enough, the situation might still be saved, that Charles might yet be convinced it was all a joke. Tears streamed from my eyes—my big toe was broken—but I kept cackling. Shawn stood in the doorway looking awkward. “Are you okay?” Charles kept saying. “Of course I am! Shawn is so, so, so—funny .” My voice strangled on the last word as I put weight on my foot and a wave of pain swept through me. Charles tried to carry me but I pushed him off and walked on the break, grinding my teeth to stop myself from crying out, while I slapped playfully at my brother. Charles didn’t stay for supper. He fled to his jeep and I didn’t hear from him for several hours, then he called and asked me to meet him at the church. He wouldn’t come to Buck’s Peak. We sat in his jeep in the dark, empty parking lot. He was crying. “You didn’t see what you thought you saw,” I said. If someone had asked me, I’d have said Charles was the most important thing in the world to me. But he wasn’t. And I would prove it to him. What was important to me wasn’t love or friendship, but my ability to lie convincingly to myself: to believe I was strong. I could never forgive Charles for knowing I wasn’t. I became erratic, demanding, hostile. I devised a bizarre and ever-evolving rubric by which I measured his love for me, and when he failed to meet it, I became paranoid. I surrendered to rages, venting all my savage anger, every fearful resentment I’d ever felt toward Dad or Shawn, at him, this bewildered bystander who’d only ever helped me. When we argued, I screamed that I never wanted to see him again, and I screamed it so many times that one night, when I called to change my mind, like I always did, he wouldn’t let me. We met one final time, in a field off the highway. Buck’s Peak loomed over us. He said he loved me but this was over his head. He couldn’t save me. Only I could. I had no idea what he was talking about. —WINTER COVERED CAMPUS IN thick snow. I stayed indoors, memorizing algebraic equations, trying to live as I had before—to imagine my life at the university as disconnected from my life on Buck’s Peak. The wall separating the two had been impregnable. Charles was a hole in it. The stomach ulcers returned, burning and aching through the night. Once, I awoke to Robin shaking me. She said I’d been shouting in my sleep. I touched my face and it was wet. She wrapped me in her arms so tight I felt cocooned. The next morning, Robin asked me to go with her to a doctor—for the ulcers but also for an X-ray of my foot, because my big toe had turned black.