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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: The manifestation of his sins to the confusion of the sinner is a result of his neglect in omitting to confess them. But that the sins of the saints be revealed cannot be to their confusion or shame, as neither does it bring confusion to Mary Magdalen that her sins are publicly recalled in the Church, because shame is “fear of disgrace,” as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii), and this will be impossible in the blessed. But this manifestation will bring them great glory on account of the penance they did, even as the confessor hails a man who courageously confesses great crimes. Sins are said to be blotted out because God sees them not for the purpose of punishing them. Reply to Objection 4: The sinner’s confusion will not be diminished, but on the contrary increased, through his seeing the sins of others, for in seeing that others are blameworthy he will all the more acknowledge himself to be blamed. For that confusion be diminished by a cause of this kind is owing to the fact that shame regards the esteem of men, who esteem more lightly that which is customary. But then confusion will regard the esteem of God, which weighs every sin according to the truth, whether it be the sin of one man or of many. Whether all merits and demerits, one’s own as well as those of others, will be seen by anyone at a single glance?Objection 1: It would seem that not all merits and demerits, one’s own as well as those of others, will be seen by anyone at a single glance. For things considered singly are not seen at one glance. Now the damned will consider their sins singly and will bewail them, wherefore they say (Wis. 5:8): “What hath pride profited us?” Therefore they will not see them all at a glance. Objection 2: Further, the Philosopher says (Topic. ii) that “we do not arrive at understanding several things at the same time.” Now merits and demerits, both our own and those of others, will not be visible save to the intellect. Therefore it will be impossible for them all to be seen at the same time. Objection 3: Further, the intellect of the damned after the resurrection will not be clearer than the intellect of the blessed and of the angels is now, as to the natural knowledge whereby they know things by innate species. Now by such knowledge the angels do not see several things at the same time. Therefore neither will the damned be able then to see all their deeds at the same time.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  there was no one, great or small, but was bent on taking part in this hunt. The poor friars, seeing such a multi- tude coming after them, hid themselves each on his island, as Adam did from the sight of God when he had eaten the apple. Half dead with shame and the fear of punishment, they were caught and led away prisoners, amid the jeers and hootings of men and women. " These good fathers," said one, " preach chastity to us and want to foul our wives." " They dare not touch money," said the husband, "but they are ready enough to handle women's thighs, which are far more dangerous." " They are sepulchres," said others, " whitened without, but full of rottenness within." " By their fruits you shall know the nature of these trees." In short, all the passages of Scripture against hypocrites were cast in the teeth of the poor prisoners. At, last the warden came to the rescue. They were given up to him at his request, upon his assuring the magistrate that he would punish them more severely than secular justice itself could do, and that, by way of reparation to the offended parties, they should say as many masses and prayers as might be de- sired. As he was a worthy man, they were chaptered in such a manner that they never afterwards passed over the river without crossing themselves, and beseeching God to keep them out of all temptation. If this boatwoman had the wit to trick two such bad men, what should they do who have seen and read of so many fine examples } If women who know nothing, who scarcely hear two good sermons in a year, and have no time to think of anything but earning their bread, do yet carefully guard their chastity, what ought not others of their sex to do who, having their livelihood secured, have nothing to do but to read the Holy Scrip- tures, hear sermons, and exercise themselves in all sorts 46 THE HEPTAMERON OP THE [Hove/ s of virtues ? This is the test by which it is known that the heart is truly virtuous, for the more simple and un- enlightened the individual, the greater are the works of God's spirit. Unhappy the lady who does not carefully preserve the treasure which does her so much honour when well kept, and so much dishonour when she keeps it ill ! " It strikes me, Geburon," said Longarine, " that it does not need much virtue to refuse a Cordelier. On the contrary, I should rather think it impossible to love such people." " Those who are not accustomed to have such lovers as you have," replied Geburon, " do not think so con- temptuously of Cordeliers. They are well-made, strap- ping fellows, can talk like angels, and are for the most part importunate as devils. Accordingly, the grisettes who escape out of their hands may fairly be called virtuous."

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Their animal heat has evaporated; the feelings that accompanied them are so lacking in the recall, or so different from those we now enjoy, that no judgment of identity can be decisively cast. Resemblance among the parts of a continuum of feelings (especially bodily feelings) experienced along with things widely different in all other regards, thus constitutes the real and verifiable 'personal identity' which we feel. There is no other identity than this in the 'stream' of subjective consciousness which we described in the last chapter. Its parts differ, but under all their differences they are knit in these two ways; and if either way of knitting disappears, the sense of unity departs. If a man wakes up some fine day unable to recall any of his past experiences, so that he has to learn his biography afresh, or if he only recalls the facts of it in a cold abstract way as things that he is sure once happened; or if, without this loss of memory, his bodily and spiritual habits all change during the night, each organ giving a different tone, and the act of thought becoming aware of itself in a different way; he feels, and he says, that he is a changed person. He disowns his former me, gives himself a new name, identifies his present life with nothing from out of the older time. Such cases are not rare in mental pathology; but, as we still have some reasoning to do, we had better give no concrete account of them until the end of the chapter. This description of personal identity will be recognized by the instructed reader as the ordinary doctrine professed by the empirical school. Associationists in England and France, Herbartians in Germany, all describe the Self as an aggregate of which each part, as to its being, is a separate fact. So far so good, then; thus much is true whatever farther things may be true; and it is to the imperishable glory of Hume and Herbart and their successors to have taken so much of the meaning of personal identity out of the clouds and made of the Self an empirical and verifiable thing. But in leaving the matter here, and saying that this sum of passing things is all, these writers have neglected certain more subtle aspects of the Unity of Consciousness, to which we next must turn. Our recent simile of the herd of cattle will help us.

• From The Hours (1998)

  He could be a refugee, someone with only rudimentary English, trying desperately to convey a need for which he has not learned the proper phrase. “I love you too, baby,” she replies, and although she’s said the words thousands of times, she can hear the flanneled nervousness lodged now in her throat, the effort she must make to sound natural. She accelerates through the intersection. She drives carefully, with both hands precisely centered on the wheel. It seems the boy will start crying again, as he does so often, so inexplicably, but his eyes remain bright and dry, unblinking. “What’s wrong?” she asks. He continues staring at her. He does not blink. He knows. He must know. The little boy can tell she’s been somewhere illicit; he can tell she’s lying. He watches her constantly, spends almost every waking hour in her presence. He’s seen her with Kitty. He’s watched her make a second cake, and bury the first one under other garbage in the can beside the garbage. He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all. Of course he would know when she’s lying. She says, “Don’t worry, honey. Everything’s fine. We’re going to have a wonderful party for Daddy’s birthday tonight. Do you know how happy he’ll be? We’ve got all these presents for him. We’ve made him such a nice cake.” Richie nods, unblinking. He rocks gently back and forth. Quietly, wishing to be overheard rather than heard, he says, “Yes, we’ve made him such a nice cake.” There is a surprisingly mature hollowness in his voice. He will watch her forever. He will always know when something is wrong. He will always know precisely when and how much she has failed. “I love you, sweetheart,” she says. “You’re my guy.” Briefly, for a moment, the boy changes shape. Briefly he glows, dead white. Laura remains not angry. She remembers to smile. She keeps both hands on the wheel. Mrs. Brown The candles are lit. The song is sung. Dan, blowing the candles out, sprays a few tiny droplets of clear spittle onto the icing’s smooth surface. Laura applauds and, after a moment, Richie does, too. “Happy birthday, darling,” she says. A spasm of fury rises unexpectedly, catches in her throat. He is coarse, gross, stupid; he has sprayed spit onto the cake. She herself is trapped here forever, posing as a wife. She must get through this night, and then tomorrow morning, and then another night here, in these rooms, with nowhere else to go. She must please; she must continue. It might be like walking out into a field of brilliant snow. It could be dreadful and wonderful. We thought her sorrows were ordinary sorrows; we had no idea. The anger passes. It’s all right, she tells herself. It’s all right.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  It is nevertheless possible (though God forbid it!) that they may, as appears by the exposition of St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom, by their bad example lead those whom they influence into sin. Our argument seems to be supported by the words of St. Paul (1 Tim 5:11), “But the younger widows avoid,” an exhortation for which he gives the following reason: “Having damnation, because they have made void their first faith,” whereby, that is, they pledged themselves before God to continence. But, as St. Jerome says in his epistle De monogamia ad Agerunchiam, on account of those who have committed fornication against Christ their Spouse, the Apostle desires them to marry again, preferring a second marriage to fomication. For it is much better to be a wife for a second time, than to have commerce with a debauchee or with many adulterers. But St. Paul does not, on this account, forbid young widows to make a simple vow of continency—In fact, he rather commends such a practice, saying, “it is good for them if they so continue,” i.e. in their widowhood (1 Cor 7:8)—but he forbids widows who are living in wantonness to be assisted by the alms of the Church. “But the younger widow avoid, for when they have grown wanton in Christ they will marry” (1 Tim 5:11). As for the sixth argument, namely that some men who have made vows to go into religion have, nevertheless, remained in the world and beeome good bishops, it is patently contrary to fact. In the decree of Innocent, which treats of vows and their accomplishmeuts, we find the following passage, “You state in your letters to us that you made a solemn vow in the church of Grenoble to assume the religious habit, and that you further promised, in the hands of the Bishop of the same church, to fulfil this vow within the period of two months on your return from the Apostolic See. Nevertheless, heedless that the time for accomplishing your promise has expired, although unfaithful to a vow, you have been called to the government of the Church of Geneva. We counsel you then that if you desire to give peace to your conscience, you should renounce the see, and shouldest pay to the Most High your vows.” Hence it is plain that a man who has vowed to go into religion cannot, with a good conscience, retain a bishopric or an archdeaconate; and should he retain it, he would not be a good bishop or archdeacon, but a traitor to his vow.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Chute explains that Reuben Bean’s immaturity comes from social disadvantages; he “was at a childish level, not in his intelligence but in his emotional development.” See Lesser and Chute, “An Interview with Carolyn Chute,” 169. Chute also said in another interview that the minimum wage produces genuine male rage and that women were better able to endure than men. See “Chute’s Book Is a Real American Classic,” [Norwalk, CT] Hour, February 21, 1985. 14. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina (New York: Plume, 1992), 12, 22–24, 69, 80–81, 91, 98–99, 123. 15. Ibid., 102. Chute also talked about the shame of using food stamps. “But in the little stores they were kind of mean to us. Food stamps, you know, ugh. They come right out with it. I got to the point where I didn’t want to go to the store anymore, I was so embarrassed. I really dreaded going. There was a lot of times when Michael and I were eligible for food stamps that we didn’t go, because I felt so humiliated by it.” See Lesser and Chute, “An Interview with Carolyn Chute,” 169. 16. Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina, 309. 17. For his July Fourth speech, see William Jefferson Clinton, “What Today Means to Me,” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, July 4, 1993. 18. Ibid. On Clinton standing up to his stepfather, see Ron Fournier, “Early Lessons Serve Him Well,” Beaver County [PA] Times, January 20, 1993. On The Man from Hope film, see David M. Timmerman, “1992 Presidential Candidate Films: The Contrasting Narratives of George Bush and Bill Clinton,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 364–73, esp. 367. 19. Mike Feinsilber, “But Others Say, ‘You’re No Thomas Jefferson,’” Prescott [AZ] Courier, January 17, 1993. 20. On describing Clinton as a poor sharecropper, see Todd S. Purdum, “If Kennedy’s Musical Was ‘Camelot,’ What’s Clinton’s?,” New York Times, January 17, 1993. See AP photograph of Clinton with the mule George in Centralia, Illinois, July 21, 1992, in Brian Resnick, “Campaign Flashback: Bill Clinton in Summer ’92,” National Journal; and Josh O’Bryant, “Well-Known Democratic Mule of Walker Dies,” Walker County [GA] Messenger, May 14, 2008. 21. Roy Reed, “Clinton Country: Despite Its Image as a Redneck Dogpatch, Arkansas Has Long Been a Breeding Ground of Progressive Politics,” New York Times Magazine, September 6, 1992; Peter Applebome, “Suddenly Arkansas’s Being Noticed, but a First Glance Can Be Misleading,” New York Times, September 26, 1992; Hank Harvey, “Arkansas Needs Clinton’s Candidacy,” Toledo Blade, October 4, 1992; Molly Ivins, “Clinton Still a Kid from Arkansas,” [Wilmington, NC] Star-News, July 15, 2004; Randall Bennett Woods, J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 280. 22.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  12 Dorothy Allison displayed just as much of an interest in class as Chute. She tells the story of difficult and sometimes violent relationships between men and women. Her female characters are less likely victims, swept up in circumstances, in the manner of Chute’s female Beans; Allison’s women have more material resources and greater support from their family members. But both writers depict emotionally stunted poor white men and recognize that everyday burdens fall more heavily on their women. 13 In Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, young Anne “Bone” Boatwright endures physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s second husband, Daddy Glen Waddell. In the town of Greenville, South Carolina, as it is for the Beans of Egypt, Maine, the Boatwrights are despised. Daddy Glen’s festering hatred of Bone comes from deeply lodged feelings of humiliation. He comes from a middle-class family, and he is the one member who never amounted to anything. He is a manual laborer and longs for a home like those of his brothers, one a dentist, the other a lawyer. “Nothing I do goes right,” he grouses. “I put my hand in the honey jar and it comes out shit.” He is jealous of Earle Boatwright’s prowess with women too. Unlike the Beans, though, the Boatwright men tend to be affectionate and protective of the women and children in their extended family. 14 Allison is fascinated by the thin line that separates the stepfather’s family from the mother’s; they might have more money, but they’re shallow and cruel. Her cousins whisper that their car is like “nigger trash.” Like Chute’s Pomerleaus, they feel compelled to snub those below them. It is shame that keeps the class system in place. 15 By the end of the novel, Bone frees herself from Glen, and in the process loses out to him when her psychically damaged mother decides to abandon the family and take off for California with him. In running away, her mother repeats the strategy of crackers a century earlier: to flee and start over somewhere else. Ruminating on her mother’s life—pregnant at fifteen, wed then widowed at seventeen, and married a second time to Glen by twenty-one—Bone wonders whether she herself is equipped to make more sensible decisions. She won’t condemn her mother, because she doesn’t know for certain that she will be able to avoid some of the same mistakes. 16 The lesson here is that the choices people make are both class- and gender- charged.

• From The Hours (1998)

  She does not move. She finds the window of the old woman, with its three ceramic statuettes (invisible from so far down). The old woman must be at home, she hardly ever goes out. Clarissa has an urge to shout up to her, as if she were some sort of family member; as if she should be informed. Clarissa puts off, at least for another minute or two, the inevitable next act. She remains with Richard, touching his shoulder. She feels (and is astonished at herself ) slightly embarrassed by what has happened. She wonders why she doesn’t weep. She is aware of the sound of her own breathing. She is aware of the slippers still on Richard’s feet, of the sky reflected in the growing puddle of blood. It ends here, then, on a pallet of concrete, under the clotheslines, amid shards of glass. She runs her hand, gently, down from his shoulder along the frail curve of his back. Guiltily, as if she is doing something forbidden, she leans over and rests her forehead against his spine while it is still, in some way, his; while he is still in some way Richard Worthington Brown. She can smell the stale flannel of the robe, the winey sharpness of his unbathed flesh. She would like to speak to him, but can’t. She simply rests her head, lightly, against his back. If she were able to speak she would say something—she can’t tell what, exactly—about how he has had the courage to create, and how, perhaps more important, he has had the courage to love singularly, over the decades, against all reason. She would talk to him about how she herself, Clarissa, loved him in return, loved him enormously, but left him on a street corner over thirty years ago (and, really, what else could she have done?). She would confess to her desire for a relatively ordinary life (neither more nor less than what most people desire), and to how much she wanted him to come to her party and exhibit his devotion in front of her guests. She would ask his forgiveness for shying away, on what would prove to be the day of his death, from kissing him on the lips, and for telling herself she did so only for the sake of his health. Mrs. Brown The candles are lit. The song is sung. Dan, blowing the candles out, sprays a few tiny droplets of clear spittle onto the icing’s smooth surface. Laura applauds and, after a moment, Richie does, too. “Happy birthday, darling,” she says. A spasm of fury rises unexpectedly, catches in her throat. He is coarse, gross, stupid; he has sprayed spit onto the cake. She herself is trapped here forever, posing as a wife. She must get through this night, and then tomorrow morning, and then another night here, in these rooms, with nowhere else to go. She must please; she must continue.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Because you are a noble yourself! Your father is a great gentleman and you are a princess. A chasm separates you from the rest of us, who do not belong to your circle of ruling families...' Yes, Tom, we feel nobility and distance and we should not try to live where we are not known and we are not known know how to assess, for we shall have nothing but humiliations from it, and we shall be found ridiculously proud. Yes, – everyone found me ridiculously haughty. I wasn't told, but I felt it every hour and I suffered from it too. Ha! In a country where cake is eaten with a knife, and where princes speak false German, and where it is conspicuous as a love affair for a gentleman to meet a lady picks up the fan, it's easy to seem arrogant in a country like this, Tom! acclimate? No, with people without dignity, morals, ambition, distinction and rigor, with people who are unruly, rude and sloppy, with people who are at the same time lazy and frivolous, thick-blooded and superficial … with such people I cannot and would not acclimate never can, as surely as I am your sister! Eva Ewers did it... good! But an Ewers isn't a Buddenbrook, and then she'll have her husband who's good for something in life. But how did I have it? Think Thomas, start over and remember! I came from here, from this house, where something matters, where one stirs and has goals, to Permaneder, who retired with my dowry ... ha, it was real, it was truly distinctive, but that was the only good thing about it. What next? A child is to come! How happy I was! It would have paid me for everything! What happens? it dies It's dead. That wasn't Permaneder's fault, beware, no. He had done what he could and even didn't go to the inn for two or three days, forbid! But it was part of it, Thomas. It didn't make me any happier, you can imagine. I endured and did not grumble. I walked around alone and misunderstood and denounced as arrogant and said to myself: You gave him your vows for life. He's a little clumsy and lazy, and has betrayed your hopes; but he means well and his heart is pure. And then I had to experience this and saw him in this disgusting moment. Then I found out: he understands me so well and knows how to respect me so much better than the others that he calls a word after me, a word that none of your storage workers would throw at a dog! And then I saw that nothing was holding me and that it would have been a shame to stay.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  little distance ; and no sooner had be taken his departure than his wife sent for her gallant. They had hardly been half an hour together, when the husband came and knocked loudly at the door. The wife, knowing but too well who it was, told her lover, who was so astounded that he could have wished he was still in his mother's womb. But while he was swearing, and confounding her and the intrigue which had brought him into such a perilous scrape, she told him not to be uneasy, for she would get him off without its costing him anything ; and that all he had to do was to dress himself as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the husband kept knocking, and calling to his wife as loud as he could bawl, but she pretended not to know him. "Why don't you get up," she cried to the people of the house, "and go and silence those who are making such a noise .'' Is this a proper time to come to honest people's houses .-' If my husband were here he would make you know better." The husband hear- ing her voice, shouted louder than ever : " Let me in, wife ; do you mean to keep me at the door till day- light?" At last, when she saw that her lover was ready to slip out, " Oh, is that you, husband } " she said ; " I am so glad you are come ! I was full of a dream I had that gave me the greatest pleasure I ever felt in my life. I thought you had recovered the sight of your eye." Here she opened the door, and catching her husband round the neck, kissed him, clapped one hand on his sound eye, and asked him if he did not see better than usual. Whilst the husband was thus blindfolded the gallant made his escape. The husband guessed how it was, but said, " I will watch you no more, wife. I thought to deceive you, but it is I who have been the dupe, and you have put the cunningest trick upon me that ever First day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 4^ was invented. God mend you ! for it passes the act of man to bring back a wicked woman from her evil ways by any means short of putting her to death. But since the regard I have had for you has not availed to make you behave better, perhaps the contempt with which I shall henceforth look upon you will touch you more, and have a more wholesome effect." Therefore he went away, leaving her in great confusion. At last, however, he was prevailed upon, by the solicitations of relations and friends, and by the tears and excuses of his wife, to cohabit with her again.* "■&'

• From The Hours (1998)

  She crosses the plaza, receives a quick spatter from the fountain, and here comes Walter Hardy, muscular in shorts and a white tank top, performing his jaunty, athletic stride for Washington Square Park. “Hey, Clare,” Walter calls jockishly, and they pass through an awkward moment about how to kiss. Walter aims his lips for Clarissa’s and she instinctively turns her own mouth away, offering her cheek instead. Then she catches herself and turns back a half second too late, so that Walter’s lips touch only the corner of her mouth. I’m so prim, Clarissa thinks; so grandmotherly. I swoon over the beauties of the world but am reluctant, simply as a matter of reflex, to kiss a friend on the mouth. Richard told her, thirty years ago, that under her pirate-girl veneer lay all the makings of a good suburban wife, and she is now revealed to herself as a meager spirit, too conventional, the cause of much suffering. No wonder her daughter resents her. “Nice to see you,” Walter says. Clarissa knows—she can practically see—that Walter is, at this moment, working mentally through a series of intricate calibrations regarding her personal significance. Yes, she’s the woman in the book, the subject of a much-anticipated novel by an almost legendary writer, but the book failed, didn’t it? It was curtly reviewed; it slipped silently beneath the waves. She is, Walter decides, like a deposed aristocrat, interesting without being particularly important. She sees him arrive at his decision. She smiles. “What are you doing in New York on a Saturday?” she asks. “Evan and I are staying in town this weekend,” he says. “He’s feeling so much better on this new cocktail, he says he wants to go dancing tonight.” “Isn’t that a little much?” “I’ll keep an eye on him. I won’t let him overdo it. He just wants to be out in the world again.” “Do you think he’d feel up to coming to our place this evening? We’re having a little party for Richard, in honor of the Carrouthers Prize.” “Oh. Great.” “You do know about it, don’t you?” “Sure.” “It’s not some annual thing. They have no quota to fill, like the Nobel and all those others. They simply award it when they become aware of someone whose career seems undeniably significant.” “That’s great.” “Yes,” she says. She adds, after a moment, “The last recipient was Ashbery. The last before him were Merrill, Rich, and Merwin.” A shadow passes over Walter’s broad, innocent face. Clarissa wonders: Is he puzzling over the names? Or could he, could he possibly, be envious? Does he imagine that he himself might be a contender for an honor like that? “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the party sooner,” she says. “It just never occurred to me you’d be around. You and Evan are never in town on the weekends.”

• From Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (1999)

  And as some women have developed an unhealthy obsession with body fat, some men (and a small number of women) have developed an unhealthy obsession with muscle. Psychiatrist Harrison Pope has done a series of studies of athletes and body builders who attend gyms in Boston and Los Angeles. He finds that about nine percent of them suffer from “a reverse form of anorexia nervosa,” which he has named muscle dysmorphia. The syndrome is characterized by a person’s distorted perception that his body is weak and small when it is in fact large and muscular. Just as the anorexic starves herself because of her fears of getting fat, the patient with muscle dysmorphia may abuse steroids and use food supplements for fear of not being big enough. Half of the people Pope interviewed for his studies used anabolic steroids (drugs that stimulate the production of cellular protein and aid in muscle growth). Pope believes that muscle dysmorphia belongs among the “affective spectrum disorders,” which include anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive, and eating disorders. It may be more prevalent now because of the ease with which people can obtain steroids, and because there is greater social pressure on men to have muscular bodies. Although muscle dysmorphia may be a rare psychiatric disturbance, steroid use and the desire to bulk up are not. Two recent studies of high school students found that six to seven percent of high school boys are using or have previously used steroids. Penis, Threat or Charm? Now, let’s get back to Mr. Bailey’s evidence—O.J.’s glove. On CNN’s “Crossfire” that night, Barry Tarlow accused Marcia Clark of making “jokes about the size of F. Lee Bailey’s penis.” Another commentator perked up, saying, “What, I missed a colloquy on a penis?” Mr. Tarlow answered in a world-weary tone, “Come on … I don’t think you need to be too swift to pick that up. When I was young, condoms were referred to as gloves and I think it’s an obvious sexual reference to the size of his penis.” Americans are obsessed with large sex organs—be they women’s breasts or men’s penises. In the 1930s mannequins were imported from Europe and came in size small, medium, and American according to the size of the genitalia. But Americans aren’t the only ones who like to exaggerate. Phallocrypts, part of the male attire in New Guinea, are sheaths that cover the penis and they run to two feet in length. The penis is considered the reflection of a man’s prowess. In most surveys men seem to feel that theirs are not large enough. Penis size and shape are one source of concern for male patients with body dysmorphic disorder or imagined ugliness. As one patient said, its size made him feel “half a man … my penis doesn’t look ugly but it looks unattractive and unmanly.”

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  He saw something familiar in the tone of the Clinton bashing, and it had to do with his being seen as white trash. Reagan press aide David Gergen and the effusive speechwriter Peggy Noonan saw their President Reagan as a transcendent father figure, partaking of the family feeling inspired by a British king. To Reagan’s admirers, Clinton was unworthy, an impostor whose upbringing besmirched the office: the prince had been replaced by the pauper. 27 To Maxwell’s mind, Clinton’s earthiness, his southernness, was seen as being bred into him from his mother, Virginia. She had published a memoir, and her story was grim: her mother was a drug addict, her childhood was one of deprivation, and she was married four times. Her appearance borrowed from trailer trash: “skunk stripe in her hair, elaborate makeup, colorful outfits and racing form in hand.” (Traces of Tammy Faye hung about her.) In the eyes of his enemies, said Maxwell, Clinton was his mother’s son, a kind of bastard breed that fell short of representing the right “pedigree for a U.S. president.” 28 By the time the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998, Clinton’s enemies were primed to portray the flawed president as a character in a Tennessee Williams play. “Slick Willie” had finally been caught in a tawdry sexual escapade suited to a trailer park—he had befouled the Oval Office. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr claimed that his official investigation was not about sex, but about perjury and the abuse of power, yet his final report mentioned sex five hundred times. Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Jack Hitt claimed that Starr was intent on writing a “dirty book,” recording (and relishing) every trashy detail of a sad soap opera. President Clinton’s legal team countered that Starr’s sole purpose was to embarrass the president. This was white trash outing on the grand national stage. Impeachable offenses demanded the “gravest wrongs” against the Constitution, or “serious assaults on the integrity of the process of government,” if they were to rise to the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” By recording every salacious detail, Starr was trying to equate high crimes with low-class lewdness. 29 Conservatives were apoplectic at the thought that Clinton’s misdeeds could be compared with those of Thomas Jefferson—the DNA of the third president’s male line was tested the same year as the Lewinsky story broke. Science could now determine that the master of Monticello (or at least a Jefferson male with regular access to her—and who else could that be?) fathered the children of the Monticello slave Sally Hemings, the much younger half sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  * The learned Gregory, in his treatise on the Boy Bishop, pre- served in his posthumous works, observes that " it hath been a custom, and yet is elsewhere, to whip up the children upon Inno' cents* Day morning, that the memorie of Herod's murder of the Innocents might stick the closer, and m a moderate proportion to act over the crueltie again in kinde." This custom is mentioned by Haspinian, De Orig. Festor. Christianor. fol. i6o* "Hujus laniense truculentissimae utpueri Christianorum recordentur, et simul discant odium, persecutionem, crucem, exilium, egestatemque statim cum rato Christo incipere, virgis caedi soler t in aurora hujus diei adhuc in lectulis jacentes a parentibus suis." That which was at first a serious parody of the martyrdom of Bethlehem, afterwards degen- erated mto a jocular usage, and persons past the age of childhood, young women especially, were made to play the part of the Inno- cents. It is related that a Seigneur du Rivau, taking leave of some ladies to join a hunting-party at a considerable distance, heard one of them whisper to another, *' We shall sleep at our ease, and pass the Innocents without receiving them." This put Du Rivau on his mettle. He kept his appointment, galloped back twenty leagues by night, arrived at tlie lady's house at dawn on Innogents' •^92 THE HEPTAMERON OF THB: [N<n'el i,s great charity to give them to that lazy jade of yours, but it would not do for her to receive them from your hand, for it is too weak, and your heart is too tender. If I were to put my o.vn hand to the job, we should be bet- ter served by her than we are." The poor woman, sus- pecting nothing, begged that he would perform the op- eration, confessing that she had neither the heart nor the strength to do it. The husband willingly undertook the commission, and as if he intended to flog the wench soundly, he bought the finest rods he could procure ; and to show that he had no mind to spare her, he steeped them in pickle, so that the poor woman felt more com- passion for her servant than suspicion of her husband. Innocents' Day being come, the upholsterer rose be- times, went to the upper room, where the servant lay alone, and gave her the Innocents in a very different manner from that he talked of to his wife. The servant fell a-crying, but her tears were of no avail. For fear, however, that his wife should come up, he began to whip Day, surprised her in bed, and used the privilege of the .season. " Vous savez," says the author of the Escraignes {VeiUees) Dijon- naises, " que Ton a k Dijon cette peute coutume de fouetter les filles le jour des Innocens, la quelle est entretenue par les braves amoureux, pour avoir occasion de donner quelque chose aux estrennes k leurs amoureuses." Clement Marot has the following epigram on this subject ;

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  All this is what your disdain negates and contradicts; this is 'the thing inside of me' whose changed treatment I feel the shame about; this is what was lusty, and now, in consequence of your conduct, is collapsed; and this certainly is an empirical objective thing. Indeed, the thing that is felt modified and changed for the worse during my feeling of shame is often more concrete even than this,—it is simply my bodily person, in which your conduct immediately and without any reflection at all on my part works those muscular, glandular, and vascular changes which together make up the 'expression' of shame. In this instinctive, reflex sort of shame, the body is just as much the entire vehicle of the self-feeling as, in the coarser cases which we first took up, it was the vehicle of the self-seeking. As, in simple 'hoggishness,' a succulent morsel gives rise, by the reflex mechanism, to behavior which the bystanders find 'greedy,' and consider to flow from a certain sort of 'self-regard;' so here your disdain gives rise, by a mechanism quite as reflex and immediate, to another sort of behavior, which the bystanders call 'shame-faced' and which they consider due to another kind of self-regard. But in both cases there may be no particular self regarded at all by the mind; and the name self-regard may be only a descriptive title imposed from without the reflex acts themselves, and the feelings that immediately result from their discharge. After the bodily and social selves come the spiritual. But which of my spiritual selves do I really care for? My Soul-substance? my 'transcendental Ego, or Thinker'? my pronoun I? my subjectivity as such? my nucleus of cephalic adjustments? or my more phenomenal and perishable powers, my loves and hates, willingnesses and sensibilities, and the like? Surely the latter. But they, relatively to the central principle, whatever it may be, are external and objective. They come and go, and it remains—"so shakes the magnet, and so stands the pole." It may indeed have to be there for them to be loved, but being there is not identical with being loved itself. To sum up, then, we see no reason to suppose that self-love' is primarily, or secondarily, or ever, love for one's mere principle of conscious identity. It is always love for something which, as compared with that principle, is superficial, transient, liable to be taken up or dropped at will. And zoological psychology again comes to the aid of our understanding and shows us that this must needs be so. In fact, in answering the question what things it is that a man loves in his self-love, we have implicitly answered the farther question, of why he loves them.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects , that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain. As the author last quoted remarks: "The actual presence of the practical opportunity alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will may multiply its strength, and raise itself aloft. He who has no solid ground to press against will never get beyond the stage of empty gesture-making." No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act , one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have laid down. A 'character,' as J.S. Mill says, 'is a completely fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain 'grows' to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glowing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some actual case, among the squalid 'other particulars' of which that same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form! The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coach-man is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  His so-called self-love is but a name for his insensibility to all but this one set of things. It may be that he needs a pure principle of subjectivity, a soul or pure Ego (he certainly needs a stream of thought) to make him sensible at all to anything, to make him discriminate and love überhaupt ,—how that may be, we shall see ere long; but this pure Ego, which would then be the condition of his loving, need no more be the object of his love than it need be the object of his thought. If his interests were altruistic and all his acts suicidal, still he would need a principle of consciousness just as he does now. Such a principle cannot then be the principle of his bodily selfishness any more than it is the principle of any other tendency he may show. So much for the bodily self-love. But my social self-love, my interest in the images other men have framed of me, is also an interest in a set of objects external to my thought. These thoughts in other men's minds are out of my mind and 'ejective' to me. They come and go, and grow and dwindle, and I am puffed up with pride, or blush with shame, at the result, just as at my success or failure in the pursuit of a material thing. So that here again, just as in the former case, the pure principle seems out of the game as an object of regard, and present only as the general form or condition under which the regard and the thinking go on in me at all. But, it will immediately be objected, this is giving a mutilated account of the facts. Those images of me in the minds of other men are, it is true, things outside of me, whose changes I perceive just as I perceive any other outward change. But the pride and shame which I feel are not concerned merely with those changes. I feel as if something else had changed too, when I perceived my image in your mind to have changed for the worse, something in me to which that image belongs, and which a moment ago I felt inside of me, big and strong and lusty, but now weak, contracted, and collapsed. Is not this latter change the change I feel the shame about? Is not the condition of this thing inside of me the proper object of my egoistic concern, of my self-regard? And is it not, after all, my pure Ego, my bare numerical principle of distinction from other men, and no empirical part of me at all?

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  We so appropriate our clothes and identify ourselves with them that there are few of us who, if asked to choose between having a beautiful body clad in raiment perpetually shabby and unclean, and having an ugly and blemished form always spotlessly attired, would not hesitate a moment before making a decisive reply.[256] Next, our immediate family is a part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If they are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood in their place. Our home comes next. Its scenes are part of our life; its aspects awaken the tenderest feelings of affection; and we do not easily forgive the stranger who, in visiting it, finds fault with its arrangements or treats it with contempt. All these different things are the objects of instinctive preferences coupled with the most important practical interests of life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over our body, to deck it with clothing of an ornamental sort, to cherish parents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home of our own which we may live in and 'improve.' An equally instinctive impulse drives us to collect property; and the collections thus made become, with different degrees of intimacy, parts of our empirical selves. The parts of our wealth most intimately ours are those which are saturated with our labor. There are few men who would not feel personally annihilated if a life-long construction of their hands or brains—say an entomological collection or an extensive work in manuscript—were suddenly swept away. The miser feels similarly towards his gold, and although it is true that a part of our depression at the loss of possessions is due to our feeling that we must now go without certain goods that we expected the possessions to bring in their train, yet in every case there remains, over and above this, a sense of the shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion of ourselves to nothingness, which is a psychological phenomenon by itself. We are all at once assimilated to the tramps and poor devils whom we so despise, and at the same time removed farther than ever away from the happy sons of earth who lord it over land and sea and men in the full-blown lustihood that wealth and power can give, and before whom, stiffen ourselves as we will by appealing to anti-snobbish first principles, we cannot escape an emotion, open or sneaking, of respect and dread. (b ) A man's Social Self is the recognition which he gets from his mates. We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Was this journey here from Munich necessary, together with Erika, so that to less sensible people than me and you it might almost appear as if you never wanted to return to your husband...?" "I don't want that either!... Never...!" exclaimed Frau Permaneder, raising her head with a jerk, looking wildly into her mother's face with tears in her eyes, and then just as suddenly hid her face in the folds of her dress again. The consul ignored this exclamation. "- Well," she began in a raised voice, slowly turning her head from side to side... "but now that you're here, it's good. For now you will be able to ease your heart and tell me everything, and then let us see how, with love, forbearance, and deliberation, the damage can be repaired." "Never!" Tony said again. "Never!" But then she told the story, and although you couldn't understand every word, for she was speaking into the consul's ruffled skirt, and her account was explosive and torn with exclamations of extreme indignation, it was clear that it was quite simply this facts existed. Around midnight between the 24th and 25th of the current month, Madame Permaneder, who had been suffering from disturbances of the stomach nerves during the day and had found rest very late, was awakened from a light slumber. A persistent noise at the head of the stairs had been to blame, a badly suppressed, mysterious noise, in which one could distinguish the creaking of the steps, a coughing giggle, stifled words of defense, and very strange growling and groaning noises . . . one could not for a moment be in doubt about the nature of this noise. Frau Permaneder hadn't caught any of it as soon as her senses were still drowsy, when she had already realized it, when she had already felt the blood drain from her cheeks and flow to her heart, which contracted and with heavy, oppressive blows. For a long, cruel minute she had lain dazed, paralyzed on the pillows; but then, when this shameless noise did not stop, she turned on the light with trembling hands, left the bed full of despair, rage and disgust, opened the door and was in slippers, the light in her hand, near the front hurried up the stairs: that dead-straight "ladder to heaven" that led from the front door straight up to the first floor. And there, on the upper steps of this very ladder to heaven, had I got out of bed in anger and disgust, threw open the door and in my slippers, light in hand, hurried forward to near the stairs: that dead-straight "ladder to heaven" that led from the front door straight up to the first floor.

• From The Hours (1998)

  The transaction at the front desk proves surprisingly easy. The clerk, a man about her own age, with a sweet, reedy voice and ravaged skin, clearly not only suspects nothing but does not entertain the possibility of suspicion. When Laura asks, “Have you got a room available?” he simply, unhesitatingly answers, “Yes, we do. Do you need a single or a double?” “A double,” she says. “For my husband and myself. He’s coming, with our luggage.” The clerk glances behind her, looking for a man struggling with suitcases. Laura’s face burns, but she does not waver. “He’s coming, actually, in an hour or two. He’s been delayed, and he sent me on. To see if there’s a vacancy.” She touches the black granite countertop to steady herself. Her story, it seems, is wholly implausible. If she and her husband are traveling, why do they have two cars? Why didn’t they phone ahead? The clerk, however, does not flinch. “I’m afraid I’ve only got rooms on the lower floors. Is that all right?” “Yes, it’s fine. It’s just for the one night.” “All right, then. Let’s see. Room 19.” Laura signs the registration form with her own name (an invented one would feel too strange, too sordid), pays now (“We may be leaving very early in the morning, we’ll be in a terrible hurry, I’d just as soon have it taken care of ”). She receives the key. Leaving the desk, she can hardly believe she’s done it. She has gotten the key, passed through the portals. The doors to the elevators, at the far end of the lobby, are hammered bronze, each topped by a horizontal line of brilliant red numerals, and to reach them she passes various arrangements of empty sofas and chairs; the cool slumber of miniature potted palms; and, behind glass, the interior grotto of a combination drugstore and coffee shop, where several solitary men in suits sit with newspapers at the counter, where an older woman in a pale pink waitress costume and a red wig seems to be saying something humorous to no one in particular, and where an almost cartoonishly large lemon-meringue pie, with two slices missing, stands on a pedestal under a clear plastic dome.