Alice Duer Miller

Name: Manslaughter — Chapter 13
Author: Alice Duer Miller

Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

Summary

“Manslaughter — Chapter 13”, published in 1921, is a work by Alice Duer Miller. It explores elements such as Lydia, Evans and prison.

Quotes from Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (Alice Duer Miller)

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ At every footstep she prepared herself to meet with a defiant stare the eyes of an inspector. The cell was hardly a cell, but a room larger than most hall bedrooms. The bed had a white cover; so had the table; and the window, though barred, was large. But this made no impression on Lydia. She was conscious of being locked in. Only her pride and her hard common sense kept her from beating at the door with her bare hands and making one of those screaming outbreaks so familiar to prison officials. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ Lydia waited for Evans' cordial agreement to what seemed a self-evident assertion. None came. Instead she said gently, as she might have explained to a child, "Oh, miss, they all think that!"
"Think what?"
"That what they did was no real harm—that they were unjustly condemned. There isn't one here who won't tell you that. The worse they are the more they think it."
Lydia had looked up from her contemplation of the gray rag rug. No sermon could have stopped her as short as that—the idea that she was exactly like all the other inmates. She protested, more to herself than to Evans. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ She only was learning and growing in the terrible routine. It soon began to seem to Lydia that this little fool of a maid of hers was a great person. Why?
Locked in her cell from dark to daylight, Lydia spent much of the time in thinking. Like a great many people in this world, she had never thought before. She had particularly arranged her life so she should not think. Most people who think they think really dream. Lydia was no dreamer. She lacked the romantic imagination that makes dreams magical. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ Evans smiled her old, rare, gentle smile.
"But the law says it was a crime."
Horrible! Horrible but true! Lydia was to find that every woman there felt exactly as she did; that she was a special case; that she had done nothing wrong; that her conviction had been brought about by an incompetent lawyer, a vindictive district attorney, a bribed jury, a perjured witness. The first thing each of them wanted to explain was that she—like Lydia—was a special case.
The innocent-looking little girl who had committed bigamy. "Isn't it to laugh?" said she. "Gee, when you think what men do to us! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ Clear-sighted and pessimistic when she looked at life, the reality had seemed hideous, and she looked away as quickly as possible, looked back to the material beauty with which she had surrounded herself and the pleasant activities always within reach. Now, cut off from pleasure and beauty, it seemed to her for the first time as if there were a real adventure in having the courage to examine the whole scheme of life. Its pattern could hardly be more hideous than that of every day.
What was she? What reason had she for living? What use could life be put to? ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ The girl considered. "I think it was right for him to die," she said, but she was sorry about Joseph. In a little while the baby would be taken from her and put into a state institution. She was maternal—primitively maternal—and her real punishment was not imprisonment but separation from her child. Lydia saw this without entirely understanding it.
The girl had said to her: "I suppose you can't imagine killing anyone?"
Lydia assured her that she could—oh, very easily. She went back to her room thinking that she was more a murderess at heart than this girl, who was now nothing but a mother. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ A giant negro highwayman weaving at an immense loom with a heavy, hopeless regularity. Black, airless punishment cells—"never used nowadays," the warden had said lightly, and had been corrected by a low murmur from the keeper; two of them were in use at the moment. The tiers of ordinary cells, not so very much better, with their barred loopholes. And the smells—the terrible prison smells. At their best, disinfectant and stale soap; at worst—Lydia never knew that it was possible to remember a smell as she now remembered that one. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ And there were gay young mulatto girls and bright-eyed Italians, who all said the same thing—"everyone does it; only the other girl squealed on me"—and there were the egotists, who were never going to get into this mess again. Some girls had to steal for a living; they had brains enough to go straight. Even the woman who had attempted to kill her husband felt she had been absolutely within her rights and after hearing her story Lydia was inclined to agree with her.
Only Evans seemed to feel that her sentence had been just. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ Calm brown-eyed women seemed to surround her, but she would not even look at them. Their impersonal kindness seemed to be founded on the insulting knowledge of her utter helplessness. They chatted a little with the guard who had brought her. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Alice Duer Miller, Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (1921)

“ The law compels every prisoner, unless specially exempted, to spend an hour a day in school. Lydia's examination was satisfactory enough to exempt her, but she was set to work in the schoolroom, giving out books, helping with papers, erasing the blackboards, collecting the chalk and erasers. In this way the whole population of the prison—about seventy-five women—passed before her in the different grades. ”

Alice Duer Miller

Summary

Quotes from Manslaughter — Chapter 13 (Alice Duer Miller)

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