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.

Page 70 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “There, that’s enough, that’s enough! You’re wretched too, I know. It can’t be helped. There’s no great harm done. God is merciful ... thanks....” he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room. Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman’s work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince’s outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for what was the chief thing needful—to go to Kitty and console her. “I’d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last time? He told Stiva so.” “Well, what then? I don’t understand....” “So did Kitty perhaps refuse him?... She didn’t tell you so?” “No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she’s too proud. But I know it’s all on account of the other.” “Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn’t have refused him if it hadn’t been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly.” It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her daughter, and she broke out angrily. “Oh, I really don’t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way, and mothers haven’t a word to say in anything, and then....” “Mamma, I’ll go up to her.” “Well, do. Did I tell you not to?” said her mother. Chapter 3 When she went into Kitty’s little room, a pretty, pink little room, full of knick-knacks in _vieux saxe,_ as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as Kitty herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face did not change. “I’m just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won’t be able to come to see me,” said Dolly, sitting down beside her. “I want to talk to you.” “What about?” Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay. “What should it be, but your trouble?” “I have no trouble.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  Thus there need be no fakery in their dealings in that regard, no need to be anything but what they are : two males, most virile, perhaps jealous of each other, perhaps even hating, but never loving each other. Almost inadvertently Nono had told Robert everything. Nono had never tried to seduce Robert, nor had Robert, knowing the rules of the game, ever asked him for· the Madam's favors. In fact, when he first came to the brothel as a client he only noticed Madame Lysiane when she picked him out herself. Noticing what he thought was Robert's indifference to the idea of his brother's sleeping with him, Nono 121 I QUERELLE was more than pleased. In some obscure way he hoped to establish a friendship with Robert and gain his recognition as a Hbrother-in-law." Two days later he made a full confession, but started out with care : "I think I've made it. With your bro, I mean." "No kidding." "Honest to God. But don't mention it, not even to him." "It's none of my business. But are you trying to tell me that you managed to bugger him?" Nono laughed, looking both embarrassed and triumphant. "No kidding, you've done that? It does surprise me, you know." Madame Lysiane was kind and gentle. The tasty gentleness of her pale meat was combined with that kindness of a woman whose most essential function consists in watching over brothel clients, treating them like charming invalids. She told her "girls" to be ministering angels to these gentlemen; to see that the official from Police Headquarters, in love with Carmen, was voluptuously deprived of his candy; to let the old Admiral strut about naked, clucking, with a feather stuck in his anus, pursued round the room by Elyane dressed up as a farmer's wife; to be an angel to Mr. Court Reporter who liked to be rocked to sleep; an angel to the one who was chained to the foot of the bed where he would bark like a dog; to be angels to all those stiff and secretive gentlemen who were stripped bare to their very souls by the warmth of the brothel and Madame Lysiane's ministrations; all of which goes to show that she carried within her the lushness and beauty of a Mediterranean landscape. To herself, \vith a shrug of her shoulders, ivladame Lysiane sometimes used to say: ·wen, my dear girls-it is fortunate that such men exist : it gives the lowly-born a chance to experience love." She was a kind lady. 0 0 us I JEAN GENET Still disbelieving, Robert smiled at Nono. "Well, that's what happened. But you'll keep it to yourself, right?" "Sure thing." As the boss told him all about it, all the details, including Querelle's cheating at dice, Robert began to seem more and more indifferent. Inwardly, he was seething. Shame kept his mouth shut, creased his pale cheeks, and Nono thought he was rather dim-witted and gutless, after all.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Beauty's nipples scraped the carpet as she bent to obey, and with a shock she felt the toe of Lady Juliana's slipper in her pubis. She gave a startled cry and rushed back to the Queen with the rose as all about her it seemed was the muted laughter of the Pages and the Queen's higher laughter. But Lady Juliana had found the tender spot again, forcing that long pointed satin slipper right into Beauty's vagina. Suddenly as Beauty turned and saw yet more roses scattered before her, her sobs went into muffled shrieks and she turned to Lady Juliana even as the paddle spanked her thighs and her calves, and kissed and kissed those pink satin slippers. "What?" Lady Juliana said with genuine outrage. "You dare beg me for mercy before the Queen? Wretched, wretched girl!" She smacked Beauty's buttocks, but she had Beauty by the hair with her left hand and pulled her up, snapping her head back so that Beauty's knees went wide apart to keep her balance. Beauty's open-mouthed sobs were choked and uneven. And she saw the paddle being passed to one of the Pages who offered the Lady a heavy broad leather belt immediately. The belt struck Beauty's buttocks with a resounding wallop. Again it struck her. "Take another rose, another, two, three, four in your mouth at once and give them to your Queen immediately!" Beauty ran to obey, and it seemed for a moment all perception left her. She was frantic to obey, to outdistance Lady Juliana's anger. It was hotter, more frenzied than the Bridle Path at its worst, and as she turned to gather more of the little roses, she felt the Queen catch her face in both hands and hold her still so that Lady Juliana could beat her. It did not matter. She could not please. She deserved to be beaten. She quivered with every blow of the strap, yet, drenched with tears, she even lifted her buttocks to receive the punishment. But the Queen was not satisfied still, and she turned Beauty around, her hand on Beauty's hair to pull her head back, as Lady Juliana now smacked Beauty's breasts and her belly and made the wide leather strap lick at her pubis. The Queen held Beauty's hair fast. "Open your legs!" Lady Juliana commanded. "Oooooh..." Beauty sobbed aloud, but she obeyed, and desperately she thrust her hips forward to receive the angry punishment. She must please Lady Juliana, she must show her that she had tried.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But he had risen and was guiding her to her feet. And she realized as she straightened her legs that that debilitating pleasure had caught hold of her. She felt for a moment that she couldn't stand, but to disobey him was unthinkable. Quickly she stood straight, hands behind her neck, and she struggled to keep her hips from going into some slight humiliating movement. Could he see it? She bit her lip again and felt its soreness. "You've done marvelously well today, you've learned so very much," he said tenderly. His voice could be so soft and yet so firm at the same time. It made her feel almost drowsy; that pleasure was melting inside of her. But then she saw that he was reaching for the paddle behind him. She let out a little gasp before she could stop herself, and she felt his hand on her arm, taking her hands away from the back of her neck, and turning her around. She wanted to cry out, "What have I done?" But his voice came low, crooning in her ear. "And I've learned a very important lesson myself, that pain softens you, makes it easier for you. You are infinitely more malleable from the spanking given you in the Inn than you were before it." She wanted to shake her head, but she didn't dare. The thought of all those who had seen her spanked tormented her. She had been turned so those at the windows could see her buttocks and between her legs, and the soldiers could see her face, and it had been excruciating. Well, it would only be her Prince now. If only she could tell him, for him anything, but those others were such punishment... She knew this was wrong. It was not what he wanted her to think, what he was trying to teach her. But now she couldn't think. He was at her side. He held her chin in his left hand, and he had told her to fold her arms behind her back which was difficult for her. It was worse than clasping her hands behind her neck. This position arched her body, forced her breasts out, and made her breasts and face feel painfully naked. She moaned slightly as he lifted her hair and folded the great mane of it over her right shoulder, away from him. It covered her arm, but he pushed it away from her nipples and pinched both of them hard between his finger and thumb, lifting her breasts and letting them fall naturally as he did so. Her face was positively smarting. But she knew what was to come would be worse. "Spread your legs ever so slightly.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Chapter 15 Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it. On the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him. When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying anything. “I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?” And in answer to this question a burning blush of shame spread over her face. She knew what had kept her from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Finally the Prince himself came out, ready to leave, and seeing the crowd as attentive as before, he himself took the rope down, and holding it like a short leash above Beauty's head, he turned her. He seemed amused by the crowd's grateful nods, and thanks, and bows to him; and very gracious in his generosity. "Lift your chin, Beauty, I shouldn't have to lift it," he reproved her with a little deliberate frown of disappointment. Beauty obeyed, her face so red that her eyebrows and eyelashes gleamed golden in the sun, and the Prince kissed her. "Come here, old man," the Prince said to the old Cobbler. "Have you ever seen such loveliness?" "No, your Majesty," said the old man. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and his legs were slightly bowed. His hair was gray but his green eyes gleamed with a special almost wistful pleasure. "She is truly a magnificent Princess, your Majesty, worth all the deaths of those who tried to claim her." "Yes, I suppose so, and worth all the bravery of the Prince who did claim her," smiled the Prince. Everyone laughed politely. But they couldn't conceal their awe of him. They were staring at his armor, at his sword, and above all at his young face and dark black hair that fell to his shoulders. The Prince drew the Cobbler closer. "Here," he said, "I give you permission if you like just to feel her treasures." The old man smiled at the Prince gratefully and almost innocently. He reached out, and hesitating a moment, felt Beauty's breasts. Beauty shivered, and tried obviously to repress a little cry. The old man touched her sex. Then the Prince drew up her little leash so that she was standing on tiptoe; her body stiffened and seemed to grow more tense and at the same time more lovely, breasts, and buttocks high, her calf muscles lifted, her chin and throat a perfect line down to her swaying bosom. "That's all. You must all go now," said the Prince. Obediently they backed away, but they continued to watch, as the Prince mounted his horse, and instructing Beauty to clasp her hands behind her neck, he ordered her to walk before him. Beauty led the way out of the Inn yard, the Prince walking his horse behind her. The people made way for her. They couldn't take their eyes off her lovely vulnerable body, and they squeezed against the narrow walls of the town to follow the spectacle to the edge of the forest. When they had left the town behind, the Prince told Beauty to come to him. He gathered her up and seated her before him again, and kissed her again, and scolded her: "You found that so hard," he crooned. "Why were you so proud? Did you think yourself too good to be shown to the people?" "I'm sorry, my Prince," she whispered.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Her veiled head was encircled with a gold crown, and the deep sleeves of her green gown were trimmed in pearls and gold embroidery. Beauty was led forward by a quick snap of the Prince's fingers. The Queen had risen, and now she embraced her son as he stood before the dais. "Tribute, Mother, from the land over the Mountains, and the loveliest we have received in a long time if my memory serves me. My first love slave, and I am very proud to have claimed her." "And well you should be," said the Queen in a voice that sounded both young and cold. Beauty dared not look up at her. But it was the Prince's voice which frightened her most. "My first love slave." She remembered his puzzling commiserations with her parents, the mention of their service in this same land, and she felt her pulse quicken. "Exquisite, absolutely exquisite," said the Queen, "but all the Court must have a look at her. Lord Gregory," she said, and made an airy gesture. A great murmur rose from the Court gathered around. And Beauty saw a tall gray-haired man approach, though she could not see him clearly. He wore soft leather sock boots, turned down at the knees to reveal a lining of the finest miniver. "Display the girl..." "But Mother," the Prince protested. "Nonsense, all the common people have seen her. We shall see her," said the Queen. "And should she be gagged, your Highness?" asked this strange tall man with the fur-lined boots. "No, that is not necessary. Though punish her surely if she speaks or cries out." "And the hair, she is shielded by all this hair," said the man, but he was now lifting Beauty and immediately had her wrists clasped over her head. As she stood, she felt herself hopelessly revealed and could not prevent crying. She dreaded a reproof from the Prince, and she could see the Queen all the better though she did not want to see her. Black hair showed beneath the Queen's sheer veil, hanging in ripples over her shoulders, and her eyes were black as the Prince's eyes. "Leave her hair as it is," said the Prince almost jealously. "O, he will defend me!" Beauty thought. But then she heard the Prince himself give the order. "Mount her on the table for all to see." The table was rectangular and stood in the center of the room. It reminded Beauty of an altar. She was forced to kneel on it facing the thrones where the Prince had taken his place beside his mother. And quickly the gray-haired man placed a large block of smooth wood beneath her belly. She could rest her weight on it and she did, as he forced her knees wide apart and then stretched out her legs so her knees didn't touch the table at all, her ankles bound by leather to the edges.

• From Querelle (1953)

  222 I JEAN GENET gether used to his own name. Now Gilbert Turko was a person who would forever be grist to the newspapers' m ill. But · when those articles ceased to be poems, they clearly described a danger that Gil became aware of, even savored, letting himself become totally preoccupied by it, at times; it was then he experienced not only a sharper, almost painful consciousness of being alive, but also a kind of forgetfulness, self-abandon, loss of faith, similar to what he felt when fingering the (no doubt pink) flesh of his hemorrhoids, or when, as a child, he had squatted by the side of the road and written his name in the dust, with his fingers-deriving a curious delight from it, no doubt provoked by the soft feel·of the dust and by the rounded shape of the letters; it was then he had forgotten himself to the point of fainting, feeling his heart tum over, wanting to li e down right there on top of his name and fall asleep, never mind the risk of getting run over by a car: but all he had done then was to erase the letters, demolishing their fragile ramparts of dust , gently sweeping the ground with his ten outstretched fingers. "But anyhow, those judges, they ought to see ... " 4'See what? And what judges? Listen, you're not going to tum yourself in now. That would be one hell o f a stupid thing to do. First of all, you've been hiding from them much too long for them not to think that you're guilty. And secondly, you can see what it says in the paper-that you killed one guy who was queer, and another one, a sailor. Not so easy to explain that away." Gil let himself be won over by Querelle's arguments. He wanted to be won over. No longer did he feel that he was in great danger: on the contrary, he had been saved by having become permanent. Part of him would remain because his name, his printed name would remain, escaping justice, being bound for glory. Yet there was a bitter aftertaste. Gil knew he

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Mark Taper’s charitable foundation donated $1.5 million toward the construction of one of the theaters in the Los Angeles County Music Center. Ben Weingart’s charitable foundation turned the El Rey Hotel on skid row into a shelter and rehabilitation center for the homeless. 303 In 1936, Miriam Clark, the wife of J. Ross Clark, provided the cost of construction for a church in the suburban development her nephew was building. The Montana Land Company provided the site on Arbor Road. She gave the church in memory of her son, Walter Clark, who had died on the Titanic. It was a nondenominational church. 304 Some of the men and women in my neighborhood had lived part of their childhood on the outskirts of cotton towns in tents provided by the federal Farm Security Administration. Some had lived in tarpaper shacks among the oil fields outside of Bakersfield. The shacks didn’t have indoor plumbing. Some had been the first of their family to graduate from high school. Okies who grew up in California learned to hide their border state twang. Sometimes, it would reappear after a few drinks among the couples my parents invited over to watch television or play cards. Some of the couples gave up their Pentecostal religion for milder forms of faith. They never lost their appreciation for the climate, however. It expressed itself in the fruit trees in the backyards in my neighborhood. Plums, apricots, oranges, nectarines, and pomegranates were shared over fences in paper bags saved from the grocery store. 305 When I was growing up, to call another boy an Okie, whether he was one or not, would require him to fight.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I didn’t think so? Why, if I were a man, I could never care for anyone else after knowing you. Only I can’t understand how he could, to please his mother, forget you and make you unhappy; he had no heart.” “Oh, no, he’s a very good man, and I’m not unhappy; quite the contrary, I’m very happy. Well, so we shan’t be singing any more now,” she added, turning towards the house. “How good you are! how good you are!” cried Kitty, and stopping her, she kissed her. “If I could only be even a little like you!” “Why should you be like anyone? You’re nice as you are,” said Varenka, smiling her gentle, weary smile. “No, I’m not nice at all. Come, tell me.... Stop a minute, let’s sit down,” said Kitty, making her sit down again beside her. “Tell me, isn’t it humiliating to think that a man has disdained your love, that he hasn’t cared for it?...” “But he didn’t disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was a dutiful son....” “Yes, but if it hadn’t been on account of his mother, if it had been his own doing?...” said Kitty, feeling she was giving away her secret, and that her face, burning with the flush of shame, had betrayed her already. “In that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have regretted him,” answered Varenka, evidently realizing that they were now talking not of her, but of Kitty. “But the humiliation,” said Kitty, “the humiliation one can never forget, can never forget,” she said, remembering her look at the last ball during the pause in the music. “Where is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?” “Worse than wrong—shameful.” Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty’s hand. “Why, what is there shameful?” she said. “You didn’t tell a man, who didn’t care for you, that you loved him, did you?” “Of course not; I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no, there are looks, there are ways; I can’t forget it, if I live a hundred years.” “Why so? I don’t understand. The whole point is whether you love him now or not,” said Varenka, who called everything by its name. “I hate him; I can’t forgive myself.” “Why, what for?” “The shame, the humiliation!” “Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!” said Varenka. “There isn’t a girl who hasn’t been through the same. And it’s all so unimportant.” “Why, what is important?” said Kitty, looking into her face with inquisitive wonder. “Oh, there’s so much that’s important,” said Varenka, smiling. “Why, what?” “Oh, so much that’s more important,” answered Varenka, not knowing what to say. But at that instant they heard the princess’s voice from the window. “Kitty, it’s cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors.” “It really is time to go in!” said Varenka, getting up. “I have to go on to Madame Berthe’s; she asked me to.”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  There would have been a sultan, his face expressing great agony (belied, as it were, by his molding caress), helping a callypygean slave child to climb a column of onyx. There would have been those luminous globules of gonadal glow that travel up the opalescent sides of juke boxes. There would have been all kinds of camp activities on the part of the intermediate group, Canoeing, Coranting, Combing Curls in the lakeside sun. There would have been poplars, apples, a suburban Sunday. There would have been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child. 31 I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my present boundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion of heaven in that strange, awful, maddening world—nymphet love. The beastly and beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly. Why? The stipulation of the Roman law, according to which a girl may marry at twelve, was adopted by the Church, and is still preserved, rather tacitly, in some of the United States. And fifteen is lawful everywhere. There is nothing wrong, say both hemispheres, when a brute of forty, blessed by the local priest and bloated with drink, sheds his sweat-drenched finery and thrusts himself up to the hilt into his youthful bride. “In such stimulating temperate climates [says an old magazine in this prison library] as St. Louis, Chicago and Cincinnati, girls mature about the end of their twelfth year.” Dolores Haze was born less than three hundred miles from stimulating Cincinnati. I have but followed nature. I am nature’s faithful hound. Why then this horror that I cannot shake off? Did I deprive her of her flower? Sensitive gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover. 32 She told me the way she had been debauched. We ate flavorless mealy bananas, bruised peaches and very palatable potato chips, and die Kleine told me everything. Her voluble but disjointed account was accompanied by many a droll moue . As I think I have already observed, I especially remember one wry face on an “ugh!” basis: jelly-mouth distended sideways and eyes rolled up in a routine blend of comic disgust, resignation and tolerance for young frailty. Her astounding tale started with an introductory mention of her tent-mate of the previous summer, at another camp, a “very select” one as she put it. That tent-mate (“quite a derelict character,” “half-crazy,” but a “swell kid”) instructed her in various manipulations. At first, loyal Lo refused to tell me her name. “Was it Grace Angel?” I asked. She shook her head. No, it wasn’t, it was the daughter of a big shot.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Quilty is so ubiquitous because he formulates Humbert’s entrapment, his criminal passion, his sense of shame and self-hate. Yet Quilty embodies both “the truth and a caricature of it,” for he is at once a projection of Humbert’s guilt and a parody of the psychological Double; “ Lo was playing a double game ,” says Humbert punningly referring to Lolita’s tennis, the Doppelgänger parody, and the function of parody as game. The Double motif figures prominently throughout Nabokov, from the early thirties in Despair and Laughter in the Dark (where the Albinus-Axel Rex pairing rehearses the Humbert-Quilty doubling), to The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and on through Bend Sinister , the story “Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster,” Lolita, Pnin , and Pale Fire , which offers a monumental doubling (or, more properly, tripling). It is probably the most intricate and profound of all Doppelgänger novels, written at precisely the time when it seemed that the Double theme had been exhausted in modern literature, and this achievement was very likely made possible by Nabokov’s elaborate parody of the theme in Lolita , which renewed his sense of the artistic efficacy of another literary “thing which had once been fresh and bright but which was now worn to a thread” ( Sebastian Knight , p. 91). By making Clare Quilty too clearly guilty, 31 Nabokov is assaulting the convention of the good and evil “dual selves” found in the traditional Double tale. Humbert would let some of us believe that when he kills Quilty in Chapter Thirty-five, Part Two, the good poet has exorcised the bad monster, but the two are finally not to be clearly distinguished: when Humbert and Quilty wrestle, “ I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us. ” Although the parody culminates in this “ silent, soft, formless tussle on the part of two literati ”, it is sustained throughout the novel. In traditional Doppelgänger fiction the Double representing the reprehensible self is often described as an ape. In Dostoevsky’s The Possessed (1871), Stavrogin tells Verkhovensky, “you’re my ape”; in Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Hyde plays “apelike tricks,” attacks and kills with “apelike fury” and “apelike spite”; and in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1845), the criminal self is literally an ape. But “good” Humbert undermines the doubling by often calling himself an ape, rather than Quilty, and when the two face one another, Quilty also calls Humbert an ape. This transference is forcefully underscored when Humbert refers to himself as running along like “Mr.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I felt a responsibility to watch and make sure the guy didn’t take advantage of my mother’s fragile state. Apparently the man had known my parents for many years. “You look just like your mother,” he said that night, leering at me. His skin was cardboard colored and matte, his lips weirdly red and gentle. He wore a striped gray suit and smelled of sweet cologne. “My daughter is barely nineteen years old,” my mother scoffed. She wasn’t defending me against his lechery. She was bragging. By then, I was actually twenty. Of course there was no dinner—my mother was incapable of providing that—but there were drinks. I was allowed to drink. After a few, the man sat down on the sofa between us. He spoke of my father’s invaluable contribution to future generations of scientists, how blessed he felt to have worked so closely beside him. “His legacy is in his students, and in his papers. I want to be the one to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. It’s precious material. It must be handled very thoughtfully.” My mother could barely speak then. She allowed a tear to run down her face, leaving a muddled gray stripe through her makeup. The man put one arm around her shoulders. “Oh, you poor thing. A tragic loss. He was a great man. I know how much he loved you.” I guess my mother was too aggrieved, too drunk, or too medicated to see the man’s other arm snake over from his knee to mine at some point during the conversation. I was drunk, too, and I kept still. When my mother got up to use the bathroom, we were left alone on the sofa, and there was a kiss on my forehead, a finger traced down the side of my neck and over my left nipple. I knew what he was doing. I did not resist. “You poor thing.” My nipple was still erect when my mother came back in, tripping over the edge of the carpet. My father had left everything to my mother, including the contents of his study. After she died, I was the one who went in there and packed things up and lugged the boxes to the basement. That colleague of his never saw a single page. What I was bartering for in letting that guy kiss me was still not immediately clear. Maybe my mother’s dignity. Or maybe I just wanted a little affection. Trevor and I had been on the outs for months at the time. I hadn’t called to tell him my father had died. I was saving it to tell him later, so he’d feel terrible. I called a taxi to take me to the train station the morning after that kiss. I didn’t wake my mother to tell her I was going back to school. I didn’t leave a note. A week went by. She didn’t call.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  And she inclined to him obediently at once. But when he went to sling her over his shoulder again, she gave a little desperate whimper. He did not allow this to stop him. And having her firmly in place, her ankles clasped to his hip, he scolded her lovingly, and gave her several hard spanks with his left hand until he heard her crying. "You must never protest," he repeated. "Not with sound, not with gesture. Only your tears may show your Prince what you feel, and never think that he does not wish to know what you feel. Now respectfully, answer me." "Yes, my Prince," Beauty whimpered softly. He thrilled to the sound of it. When they came to the small town in the middle of the forest, there was great excitement, as everyone had already heard of the enchantment being broken. And as the Prince rode into the crooked little street with its high half-timbered houses blocking out the sky, people ran to the narrow windows and doorways. They crowded into the cobblestone alleyways. Behind him, the Prince could hear his men in hushed voices telling the townspeople who he was, that it was their Lord who had broken the enchantment. The girl he carried with him was the Sleeping Beauty. Beauty was sobbing softly, her body struggling with these sobs, but the Prince held her firmly. Finally with a great crowd following him, he arrived at the Inn, and his horse, with loud clops, entered the courtyard. His page quickly helped him down. "We'll stop only for food and drink," said the Prince. "We can go miles before sundown." He stood Beauty on her feet and watched with admiration as her hair fell down around her. And he turned her around twice, pleased to see she kept her hands clasped behind her neck and her eyes down as he looked at her. He kissed her devotedly. "Do you see how they all look at you?" he said. "Do you feel how they admire your beauty? They are adoring you," he said. And opening her lips again, he sucked another kiss out of her, his hand squeezing her sore buttocks. It seemed her lips clung to his as if she were afraid to let him go, and then he kissed her eyelids. "Now everyone is going to want to have a look at Beauty," the Prince said to the Captain of the Guard. "Bind her hands over her head by a rope from the sign over the Inn gate, and let the people have their fill of her. But no one is to touch her. They can look all they like, but you stand guard and see that no one touches her.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  The rag was rough on the soreness, and Beauty realized this time that the Prince had left her with a score of welts. She moaned, and though she loathed this girl with a violent feeling she'd never had for anyone else in her brief life, the cloth nevertheless felt good to her. The moist cloth was cooling her; it was like the gently massaging of an itch. And Beauty grew quiet as the girl continued to bathe her in a gently circular motion. "Dearest Princess," the girl said, "I know how you suffer but he is so very handsome, and he will have his way, there's nothing to be done about it. Please talk to me, please tell me that you don't despise me." "I don't despise you," Beauty said in a small spiritless voice. "How could I blame you or despise you?" "I had to do it. And what a spectacle it was. Princess, I must tell you something. You may be angry with me, but maybe it will be a consolation to you." Beauty closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into the pillow. She did not want to hear it. But she liked the girl's voice, its respect and gentleness. The girl did not mean to hurt her. She could feel that awe in the girl, that humility Beauty had known in all her servants all her life. It was no different, not even with this one who had held her over her knee in a tavern and spanked her in the presence of crude men and villagers. Beauty pictured her as she remembered her from the kitchen door: her dark curly hair in ringlets about her little round face, and those big eyes full of apprehension. How fierce the Prince must have seemed to her! Why she must have been terrified that at any moment, the Prince would order her stripped and humiliated! Beauty smiled to herself, thinking of it. She felt a tenderness for the girl, and for her gentle hands which were now bathing the hot, aching flesh so carefully. "All right," Beauty said, "what is it you want to tell me?" "Only that you were so lovely, dearest Princess, that you have such beauty. Even as you were there, why, how many who seem beautiful could have kept their beauty in such a trial, and you were so beautiful, Princess." Over and over she said this word, better words she did not know. "You were so...so graceful, Princess," she said. "You bore it so well, with such obedience to his Highness, the Prince." Beauty said nothing. She was thinking of it again, of how it must have seemed to the girl. But it gave Beauty such a frightful sense of herself that she stopped thinking of it.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  First-time travelers to Istanbul, Bali, Gambia, Thailand, or Jamaica may be surprised to see thousands of middle-aged women from Europe and the United States who flock to these places in search of no-strings sexual attention. An estimated eighty thousand women fly to Jamaica looking to “Rent a Rasta” every year.20 The number of female Japanese visitors to the Thai island resort Phuket jumped from fewer than four thousand in 1990 to ten times that just four years later, outnumbering male Japanese tourists significantly. Chartered jets carrying nothing but Japanese women land in Bangkok every week, if not daily. In her book Romance on the Road, Jeannette Belliveau catalogs dozens of destinations frequented by such women. That this sort of behavior would seem unbelievable and embarrassing to most of the young American women filling out questionnaires for their psychology professors is both result and cause of a more general scientific and cultural blindness to the true contours of female sexuality. Of course, there are plenty of men looking for sexual variety on the beaches of Thailand as well, but since that just supports the standard narrative, it seems unimportant. Until it becomes very important. That tiger ain’t go crazy; that tiger went tiger! You know when he was really crazy? When he was riding around on a unicycle with a Hitler helmet on! CHRIS ROCK, talking about a circus tiger that attacked a trainer By temperament, which is the real law of God, many men are goats and can’t help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperament, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness. MARK TWAIN, Letters from the Earth A man we know—we’ll call him Phil—could be considered a living icon of male achievement.* In his early forties, handsome, he’s been married to Helen, a gorgeous, accomplished physician, for almost twenty years. They have three brilliant, beautiful daughters. Phil and a friend started a small software business in their late twenties and now, fifteen years later, they’ve both got more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. Until recently, Phil lived in a big, beautiful house on a hill overlooking a wooded valley. But Phil’s life was, as he puts it, “a disaster waiting to happen.” Disaster struck when Helen discovered the affair he’d been having with a work colleague. Unsurprisingly, she felt deeply betrayed and expressed her outrage by locking him out of the house, refusing even to let him see their children until the lawyers had finished their dismal task. Phil’s seemingly perfect life came crashing down around him.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  I'll have your food sent out to you." "Yes, my Lord," said the Captain of the Guard. But as the Prince gently gave Beauty over to him, she leaned forward, her lips out to the Prince, and he received her kiss gratefully. "You're very sweet, my darling," he said. "Now be modest and very very good. I should be very disappointed if all this adulation made my Beauty vain." He kissed her again, and let the Captain have her. Then going inside and ordering his meat and ale, the Price watched through the diamond-paned windows. The Captain of the Guard did not dare touch Beauty, except to put the rope about her wrists. He led her by this to the open gate of the courtyard, and throwing the rope up over the iron rod that held the sign of the Inn, he quickly secured her hands above her head, so that she was almost on tiptoe. Then he motioned for the people to move back, and he stood against the wall with his arms folded as they pressed to look at her. There were buxom women with stained aprons, and coarse men in breeches and heavy leather shoes, and the young well-to-do men of the town in their velvet cloaks with their hands on their hips as they eyed Beauty from a distance, unwilling to elbow in the crowd. And several young women, their elaborate white headdresses freshly done up, who had come out lifting their hems fastidiously as they looked at her. At first everyone was whispering, but now people began to speak more freely. Beauty had turned her face into her arm and let her hair shield her face, but then a soldier came out from the Prince and said: "His Majesty said to turn her and lift her chin so they might have a better look at her." An approving murmur went up from the crowd. "Very very lovely," said one of the young men. "And this is what so many died for," said an old Cobbler. The Captain of the Guard lifted Beauty's chin, and holding the rope above her, said gently: "You must turn around, Princess." "O, please, Captain," she whispered. "Don't make a sound, Princess, I beg you. Our Lord is very strict," he said. "And it's his wish that everyone admire you." Beauty, her cheeks flaming, obeyed, turning so the crowd could see her reddened buttocks and then again to show her breasts and her sex as the Captain kept his finger under her chin lightly. It seemed she breathed deeply as though trying to remain very calm. The young men were calling her beautiful and saying her breasts were magnificent. "But such buttocks," whispered an old woman nearby. "You can see that she's been spanked. I doubt the poor Princess did anything much to deserve it." "Not much," said a young man near her. "Except have the most beautiful and pertly shaped buttocks imaginable." Beauty was trembling.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Thea lost his temper. So did Gil, but he didn't dare hit him, because of the drink he had just consumed at the mason's expense. From then on, in the yards, both while at work and during the breaks, and in the living quarters, at table and even sometimes when he was in· bed, Thea would crack terrible jokes at the expense of Gil who did not know how to retaliate. Little by little, the gang-from laughing, to start with, at Thea's jokes-ended up laughing at Gil who tried to rid himself of those seductive mannerisms he now saw provided each joke with its point, but he could not destroy his natural beauty; the too green, too vivacious shoots, burgeoning within him and scenting him, refused to wilt and die, since they were permeated with, and drew their nourishment from, the very sap of adolescence. Without their being aware of it, all respect for the young man dwindled away in the minds of the others. Step by step, Gil lost his standing; word by word, his dignity. He became a mere pretext for belly laughs. No longer did he receive any exterior confirmation of his own sense of himself. That sense was now sustained within himself only by the presence of shame, its pale flame rising as if fanned by the wind of revolt. He let himself be run into the ground. Roger did not show up. What would he have had to say? 101 I QUERELLE That Paulette had not come out with him? He would not be able to see her. She was no longer working as a waitress at the little bistro, it was qifficult to get to meet her now. And if she had turned up, by a stroke of bad luck, an even more scorching feeling of shame would have set Gil sizzling. He found himself hoping that Paulette \vould not appear. "All this just because I never busted his fucking face." He was being crushed by an ever more oppressive malaise. Had he been smarter, a-nd less macho as well, he would have understood that tears, without making him any softer, would have provided a true relief. But all he knew to do there in the deepening dark was to parade the pallor of young men who have backed out of fights, that crucified countenance of nations who refuse to dp battle. He closed his jaws firmly, gritting his teeth. "Why'n the hell didn't I smash that asshole's face in."

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “It was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn’t notice it before?” Anna asked herself. “Or has she been very much irritated today? It’s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she’s always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.” After Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o’clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Anna, left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting at her son’s dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated on her table. The feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable. She recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. “What was it? Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it would be to attach importance to what has no importance.” She remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband’s subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by jealousy. “So then there’s no reason to speak of it? And indeed, thank God, there’s nothing to speak of,” she told herself. Chapter 33

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him, and towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so justly told him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy; he could not understand the book he was reading; he could not drive away harassing recollections of his relations with her, of the mistake which, as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had received her confession of infidelity on their way home from the races (especially that he had insisted only on the observance of external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he had written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the other man’s child made his heart burn with shame and remorse. And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which, after long wavering, he had made her an offer. “But how have I been to blame?” he said to himself. And this question always excited another question in him—whether they felt differently, did their loving and marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys ... these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was peace and love in his heart. But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did not last long, and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s soul the peace and the elevation by virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember. Chapter 26 “Well, Kapitonitch?” said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-humored from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his overcoat to the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the little person from the height of his long figure. “Well, has the bandaged clerk been here today? Did papa see him?” “He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced him,” said the hall-porter with a good-humored wink. “Here, I’ll take it off.” “Seryozha!” said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner rooms. “Take it off yourself.” But Seryozha, though he heard his tutor’s feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall-porter’s belt, and gazing into his face.