Shaming

“ I shuddered, too, when I contemplated the shame which awaited me, should some future event, yet hidden in the lap of time, reveal to the world the secret villainy of the man who had borne himself so proudly among his fellows. Yet even these regrets, even the apprehension of fresh difficulties in the concealment of my crime, were insufficient to deter me from the prosecution of my original intention; and blinded by the intemperance of misguided affection, heedless of the shame and misery into which I was about to plunge the woman I adored, I sought and obtained your hand. ”

“ No, your shame is known to all men, and the shame of all who belong to you. Again, what think you of the woman who, because it is the fashion, goes out to balls indecently and improperly dressed—who is not covered as becomes a Christian matron or maiden, but is so clad as to bring the blush of lust to the face of the brazen, and of shame to that of the pure in heart; or of those who go to all sort of plays and spectacles, who encourage the most questionable of dances and ballets, and bring up their children in the same spirit? Is their modesty known to all men? ”

“ You have brought shame upon your parents and shame upon your son, and that shame you can never wipe out. If you had in you a spark of human feeling, if you were not worthless and heartless you would blush to look me in the face or your child in the face. ”

“ If I had but done sooner what Eve asked, this would not have happened. I will bear it.'
'Sir Edric, do not be angry with me, for if I did not say this, then I should be but an ill counsellor. And, firstly, do not use the word shame. The ways of nature are past all explaining; if a woman be frail and easily impressed, and other circumstances concur, then in some few rare cases a thing of this sort does happen. If there be shame, it is not upon you but upon nature—to whom one would not lightly impute shame. ”

“ Shame, man, shame; he is your guest, the guest, too, of a woman whose truth you know—whose whole life is beyond suspicion. You leave her every day to go here or there, and does she ask you where you have been—what you have done? Does she suspect you? Why, Dutch Pugh, you wretched maniac, if she saw you talking to a score of pretty women how would she act? ”

“ Thou art the shame of human nature: [438] thou representest man in the likeness of a beast, and worse; as if he were made but instead of a barrel or a sink: look on a drunkard filthing and spewing, and reeling and bawling, and see if he be not uglier than a brute! Thou art a shame to thy own reason, when thou showest the world, that it cannot so much as shut thy mouth, nor prevail with thee in so small a thing. ”

“ We only represent to you the higher, the adequate objects of those very faculties and affections. Let the man of ambition go on still to consider disgrace as the greatest evil, honour as his chief good. But disgrace in whose estimation? Honour in whose judgment? This is the only question. If shame, and delight in esteem, be spoken of as real, as any settled ground of pain or pleasure, both these must be in proportion to the supposed wisdom, and worth of him by whom we are contemned or esteemed. ”

“ I now perceive the folly of this compassion and these hopes. I need not be assiduous to spare you the shame and mortification of hearing the truth. Shame is as much a stranger to your heart as remorse. Say what I will, disclose what I will, your conduct will be just the same. A show of much reluctance and humility will, no doubt, be made, and the tongue will be busy in imploring favour which the heart disdains. ”

“ It seemed as if she had never felt their full heinousness till now—now that with shame she owned that for a moment she had relented in his favour. With shame—for resentment was a justice she owed to herself. There are some offences which it is an unworthy weakness to forget. ”

“ But it is ridiculous, and seems ungrateful, for people to affect an appearance of indignation against those who provide for them one of the greatest enjoyments of their lives. To chuckle over scandal all the forenoon with every mark of pleasure, and decry it in the evening with affected anger, is as preposterous as it would be in a judge, first to seduce a poor wench to fornication, and then punish her for the sin. ”

“ I said it; martyrdom or shame! It is shame which awaits me.
So spoke the Curé, when Marianne had taken away her young mistress, and his conscience exaggerated the gravity and the consequences of his imprudent rapture.
—Yes, it is shame, it is shame.
—Do not despair in this way, said a jeering voice.
Marcel turned round, terror-struck.
His servant was behind him.
She had approached, noiselessly, and was looking at him with her strange, green eyes.
—Shame lies in scandal, she added sententiously. Reassure yourself; that pretty young lady will hold her tongue. ”

“ You put a shame upon him, hiding who his father and his father’s people were, and you put a shame upon her that lies in the graveyard—as sweet a lass, as good, as ever lived on earth. Ay, a shame and a scandal! For your eyes were shut always to the sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said—‘A good-for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne’er-do-weel, one that had a lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever had seen—a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all they knew! ”

“ Those who are attempting, sir, to deceive others, and whose character is exalted, in their own opinion, in proportion to the success of their endeavours, have surely a sense of shame, though they have none of virtue, and cannot, without pain, find their artifices detected, and themselves made the objects of ridicule, by those stratagems which they employ for the deception of others. ”

“ The knowledge induced a sense of shame which no consciousness of committed crime could have exceeded. She would have been less humiliated had she plotted and schemed to win flattery and homage for herself than she was in discovering that people had been tricked into giving them spontaneously. ”

“ The haggard misery of the one, sign of sleeplessness and late watching—the attenuated feebleness of the other, showing the effects of some practices, no matter of what particular sort, which are undermining his constitution, and rapidly tending to destroy him. If you but look in his eye as I have done, marking its wildness, its wandering, its sensible expression of shame—you can hardly fail to think with me that something is morally wrong. ”

“ I shall believe in what I have said till he whom I have trusted is proved the heinous malefactor you consider him. When that hour comes, I perish, killed by the greatest shame that can overwhelm a woman. ”

“ Shame is the mind's uneasy reflection on having done an indecent thing. And what more indecent than for a woman to quit her rank, renounce the subordination of her sex, or do what in common account had such aspect and appearance? Note, Our spirit and conduct should be suitable to our rank. The natural distinctions God has made, we should observe. Those he has placed in subjection to others should not set themselves on a level, nor affect or assume superiority. ”

“ Shame—shame on them, who have not even the poor pretext of damaged health! They will spend their money and enjoy themselves—ay, and more scandal for them!—will all the time sanctimoniously reprobate what is going on round them, and then return quite happy and as they came. ”

“ You have endeavoured to put a brand of shame upon a man who never, consciously, was guilty of a dishonourable action in his life."
"Well, and how do you feel?"
"Feel! God forgive me, but I feel as though I should like to kill you." ”

“ She would, then, hail with delight the means of quitting the disgraceful life she now, for the first time, views with shame and disgust, for the purpose of entirely devoting herself to the rude, unpolished man whose taste she so entirely partakes of, and who seeks to hide himself from the world, as much from inclination as from a desire of escaping from the universal reprobation in which his family is viewed. ”

“ Lavendar. "Shame is a curious thing, William. It's like some of your medicines. The right amount cures. Too much kills. I've seen that with hard drinkers. Where a drunkard is a poor, uneducated fellow, shame gives him a good boost towards decency. But a man of education, William, a man of opportunity—if he wakes up to what he has been doing, shame gives him such a shove he is apt to go all round the circle, and come up just where he started! Shame is a blessed thing,—when you don't get too much of it. ”

“ Thou hadst a whore's forehead, a brazen face of thy own. Thou refusedst to be ashamed; thou didst enough to shame thee for ever, and yet wouldst not take shame to thyself." Blushing is the colour of virtue, or at least a relic of it; but those that are past shame (we say) are past hope. Those that have an adulterer's heart, if they indulge that, will come at length to have a whore's forehead, void of all shame and modesty. 4. They abounded in all manner of sin. ”

“ You begin with shame and regret. But the sight of your lover’s agonies, his indignation, his anger, madden you and you get the lust of cruelty. You become insane. You make new wounds. You tear open old ones. ”

“ You duety may, and shame too, lay aside;
Disturbe my privacie, and I forsooth
Must be afeard even to be angry at you!
Anton. What shame is't to be mastred by such beautie?
Who but to serve you comes, how wants he dutie?
Or, if it be a shame, the shame is yours;
The fault is onely in your Eies, they drew me:
Cause you were lovely therefore did I love.
O, if to Love you anger you so much,
You should not have such cheekes nor lips to touch,
You should not have your snow nor currall spy'd;—
If you but looke on us in vaine you chide.
We must not see your face, nor heare your speech ”

“ I have found thee, and thee alone, punish my valour sharpliest. But I forbear all vengeance, and am satisfied with the shame within thy heart—if, after all, any shame visits the thankless—as expiation for this wrongdoing towards me. I have a right to surmise that thou art worse than all demons in fury, and all beasts in cruelty, if, after escaping the snares of all these monsters, I have failed to be safe from thine. ”

“ Can there be aught of shame in true love? Or is it that my ass's ears do shame thee, my cock's-comb and garments pied shame the worship of this foolish heart, and I, a Fool, worshipping thee, shame thee by such worship? Then—on, cock's-comb! Ring out, silly bells! Fool's love doth end in folly! Off love—on folly—a Fool can but love and die. ”

“ Conscience, and honor, and plain honesty, which left him when they could not restrain, now come back to sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the prospect of open shame, of his wife’s disgrace, and his children’s beggary, he cows down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide.
Some there be, however, less supple to shame. They meet their fate with cool impudence; defy their employers; brave the court, and too often with success. ”

“ And you are so shameless, so lost to honour, that you dare to urge that ignorance as your excuse. Well, you know it now, and I hope you are punished in the knowledge. I hope that, if any lingering sense of shame abides in you, it will scorch your miserable soul to ashes. Get [Pg 197] up, man,” she bade him, regally contemptuous, splendidly tragic. “Shall grovelling there mend any of your vileness?” ”

“ But then, as things now are with us, like all the rest of the machinery of the soul, shame has gone sadly astray both in its objects and in its operations, till it demands a long, a severe, and a very noble discipline over himself before any man can keep shame in its proper place and directed in upon its proper objects. ”

“ Or could this man, so vex’d in early time, By this strong feeling for his father’s crime; Who to the parent’s sin was barely just, And mix’d with filial fear the man’s disgust— Could he, without some strong delusion, quit 410 The path of duty, and to shame submit? Cast off the virtue he so highly prized, ‘And be the very creature he despised?’ [Pg 331] “A tenant’s wife, half forward, half afraid, Features, it seem’d, of powerful cast displayed, That bore down faith and duty; common fame Speaks of a contract that augments the shame. ”

“ And if you say they do it from shame, methinks that in place of a single virtue you give them two; for if shame is stronger in them than appetite and they for that reason abstain from evil acts, I think that this shame (which in short is nothing else but fear of infamy) is a very rare virtue and one possessed by very few men. And if I could, without infinite disgrace to men, tell how many of them are plunged in shamelessness (which is the vice opposed to this virtue) , I should pollute these chaste ears that hear me. ”

“ These examples suffice to show that the sentiment of shame, which is associated with great discomfort, is a safeguard against immorality and against breaches of custom.
Similar relations exist for the sense of disgust, which is allied to the sense of shame. Shame is felt in the performance of an action disgusting to others, if against one's will one is watched in the process. Defæcation is usually effected in some retired place: in the onlooker, defæcation arouses disgust; whilst by the person defæcating, if he knows that he is being observed, shame is felt. ”

“ And yet, without pity for the laceration of the hearts of those three women, he forces them to gulp down the affront put upon them, to silently swallow their mutual jealousy and resentment, to smother their shame. He forces them to appear in public face to face ”

“ If we reply to your suggestions, shame covers our face. If shame secures silence, in a manner we seem to desert our post, and to leave the ground clear to the raging foe. Yet it is better, as the story goes, to shut our eyes and fight like the [4] blindfold gladiators, than not to repel with the shield of truth the darts aimed at us. ”

“ The same mutual relationships with the ideas of morality are found in connexion with the sense of shame. Beyond question, the sentiments of shame and of disgust are closely connected with the ideas of custom and morality; for shame and disgust arise especially in connexion with matters which conflict with our ideas of morality. ”