Sulkiness

“ Now that sulkiness was perversely set there, for all the world to see, to testify against his nature, which is a man’s most secret property, and to be as a witness against him, most opportune to a feline hand in moments of extreme stress, such as befall adventurers; for it is pleasant for a woman to tell a man that he is sulky when he is really angry and she knows it. ”

“ If there is more than one child in the family, it may be that the sulkiness is a symptom of jealousy. The parents should ask themselves in all seriousness whether they have given this particular child any reason to sulk, by showing greater favour, or seeming to show greater favour, to his brothers and sisters. Or, possibly, the sulkiness is indicative, not of jealousy, but of a feeling of inferiority due to the child's fear that he is not quite so bright as other children. ”

“ Here we come to the central fact in the whole problem of sulkiness, for, nine cases out of ten, it is the home environment—the training a child receives, the parents' attitude towards him—that is primarily responsible for his sulking. The healthiest child in the world will sulk if his parents surround him with a sulk-breeding environment. He will sulk because it is child nature to react appropriately to the suggestions received from the environment. ”

“ Many parents, though wholly unappreciative of the fact, inspire sulkiness in their children by setting them an example of sulkiness. A striking instance has lately come under my personal observation, in the experience of a mother who is continually being annoyed by the whining, sulky ways of her four-year-old daughter. She scolds the girl, she spanks her, but all to no good. Not once does it seem to occur to the mother that possibly her own habit of sulking when things do not go right may be blamed for the sulkiness of her child. ”

“ And, on the opposite, when a child thus afflicted does sulk, the correction of the physical trouble is not always followed by a cessation of the sulkiness. For, precisely as in the case of the child who remains mentally backward after the correction of bodily defects responsible for his backwardness, it may be that a habit of sulking [76] has become established. What is much worse, it may also be that the sulky child has a home environment that makes sulking almost inevitable. ”

“ She will, at some time or other, show it towards some one or other of the family; or, perhaps, towards yourself; and you may be quite sure that, in this respect, marriage will not mend her. Sulkiness arises from capricious displeasure, displeasure not founded in reason. The party takes offence unjustifiably; is unable to frame a complaint, and therefore expresses displeasure by silence. The remedy for sulkiness is, to suffer it to take its full swing; but it is better not to have the disease in your house; and to be married to it is little short of madness. ”

“ NOBODY likes a chronically sulky child. Even his own parents are apt to lose patience with him. In common with outsiders, though in less degree, they regard his sulkiness as indicative of an unpleasant disposition, calling for stern disciplinary measures. Seldom do they see it for what it really is—the result of conditions for which the child is not to blame, and a danger-signal giving warning that unless a successful effort is made to ascertain and correct the sulk-producing conditions, the child will enter adult life under a tremendous handicap. ”

“ One of the commonest causes of sulkiness is nothing more or less than indigestion. Everybody knows that if a baby's food disagrees with him the baby is pretty sure to be fretful and irritable. But parents too often forget that, in the case of older children, mental and moral eccentricities may be traced to the same cause. ”

“ To-day, perhaps wholly because no investigation was made and no corrective treatment attempted, this unfortunate man is finding life a heavy burden.
With all the emphasis at my command I would say, When a child frequently sulks, it is always a sure indication of mental or nervous stress. If parents have a child who is sulky, they should neither ignore the sulkiness nor accuse him of wilful naughtiness and try to improve him by scoldings and punishments. ”

“ This factor of example in the causing of sulkiness [80] is something that parents frequently ignore. In a general way they realise that their children are likely to imitate them, but they do not appreciate the subtle force which imitation exercises in forming the mental states and moral attitudes of the young. Time and again we see parents talking and acting as though children had no eyes or ears or memories ”

“ Happily, sulkiness, as an early symptom of chorea, or of other grave nervous and mental disorders, is of comparatively infrequent occurrence. The things the parents of a sulky child need more particularly to inquire into are the amount and character of the food the child eats, the state of his digestion, his habits of exercise, the ventilation of the rooms in which he spends most of his time, the condition of his nose, mouth, and teeth, and his ability to see and hear distinctly. ”

“ And, among parents, comparatively few are sufficiently alert to the danger signals giving warning that such handicaps of perhaps catastrophic significance are being needlessly imposed on their children. Eccentricities of behaviour in children—such as jealousy and sulkiness—are too often ignored as being of no particular account, or are sadly misinterpreted by parents, with perhaps dire consequences to the children's whole careers. ”

“ One such conflict, to which I have already referred [296] when discussing the handicap of sulkiness, is conflict over sex questions. Frequently, to the parents' astonishment, it will be found that the actual cause of timidity, reticence, moodiness, or depression of spirits in a formerly happy child, is a mental conflict due to the child's vain endeavours to work out fully satisfactory answers to delicate questions which the parents have not answered when put to them by the child, or have answered in an evasive fashion. ”

“ When food is not properly digested, there is an impoverishing and poisoning of the blood. This means that the brain is poorly nourished, and a poorly nourished brain means a general weakening [67] of the power to think and to will. It means, too, a heightening of nervous irritability, coupled with a tendency to take a gloomy view of life. Under these circumstances, it is not at all surprising to find sulkiness becoming characteristic of a child of any age, as in a typical case reported by Doctor T. A. Williams, of Washington, a specialist in the treatment of the nervous diseases of children. ”

“ It is possible for an angry man not to be irascible; an irascible man may sometimes not be angry. I shall omit the other varieties of anger, which the Greeks distinguish by various names, because we have no distinctive words for them in our language, although we call men bitter and harsh, and also peevish, frantic, clamorous, surly and fierce: all of which are different forms of irascibility. Among these you may class sulkiness, a refined form of irascibility ”

“ Americans being conspicuously of the so-called nervous temperament—the need for training in emotional control becomes imperative. In the case of persons who have inherited any tendency to nervous ailments, persons burdened with what is technically known as a neuropathic diathesis, absence of this training may be disastrous.
[107]
Parents, accordingly, will make no mistake in regarding any persistent manifestation of jealousy in their children as—like sulkiness—a danger-signal of real urgency and as indicating a special need for careful upbringing. ”

“ He was in that state of highly respectful sulkiness which is peculiar to English servants. ”

“ They lose faith in their parents, and sometimes it happens that their loss of faith manifests itself in a gloomy brooding, a sullen resentment against the parents. The parents, on their side, regard the sulky child as maliciously naughty and evil-minded. Not an inkling do they have of their own share in the making of the condition of which they complain. They blame only the child.
Even the practice, common among parents, of telling their children "white lies" with regard to delicate matters is at times productive of sulkiness as a symptom of nervousness due to inner mental conflict. ”

“ By reason of excess choleric people are quick-tempered and ready to be angry with everything and on every occasion; whence their name. Sulky people are hard to appease, and retain their anger long; for they repress their passion. But it ceases when they retaliate; for revenge relieves them of their anger, producing in them pleasure instead of pain. If this does not happen they retain their burden; for owing to its not being obvious no one even reasons with them, and to digest one's anger in oneself takes time. Such people are most troublesome to themselves and to their dearest friends. ”

“ SULPICIUS.
With impious rites, most strange and horrible.
ORCERES.
If he, my friend, in impious rites hath join'd,
Demons, indeed, have o'er the soul of man
A power to change its nature. Ay, Sulpicius;
And thou and I may, ere a day shall pass,
Be very Nazarenes. We are in ignorance;
We shoot our arrow in the dark, and cry,
"It is to wound a foe." Come, gentle Portia;
Be not so sad; the man thou lovest is virtuous,
And brave, and loves thee well; why then despair? ”

“ What is the use of sulking because everything does not come your way? The more you sulk, the less you get. I do not suppose that the Duke, the King, or even God Himself, has all the desire of his heart; ought I to groan and struggle, because I cannot exceed the limits set for me? Should I even be better off if I could get outside of them? No, no, I have nothing to complain of in this world, and I mean to stay here as long as I possibly can. Suppose that I had never been born? I really cannot bear to think of a world without Breugnon, or what is perhaps even worse, Breugnon without the world! ”

“ I asked him once if there was not a degree of ugliness which might be deemed unfortunate, because a consciousness of it affected the ill-favoured individual so as to excite in him discontent and envy, and other evil feelings. He admitted that in an evil disposition it might have this tendency; but he said a disposition which was injuriously affected by such a cause, would have had other propensities quite as injurious in themselves and in their direction, evolved and brought into full action by an opposite cause. ”

“ Every disease has its cure. Be honest, be brave, be kind, and have always a good conscience, and you cannot be a sneak.
Chapter Nine. The Sulky Boy.
We all know him. He might be a good-looking fellow, perhaps, if it weren’t for the scowl over his eyes and the everlasting pout about his lips. He skulks about with his hands in his pockets, and his head hung down. We all make room for him, and give him a wide berth; no one is anxious to be chosen upon the same side with him at chevy, or to get the desk next his in school. It’s a fact we are all afraid of him, though we all despise him. ”

“ Sulpice, even in his youthful days, had never felt so intoxicating a sensation as that which he enjoyed to-day. It was a complete abandonment of himself, a forgetfulness of everything in the presence of his absolute intoxication. All the realities of life that were ready to take possession of him on leaving this place melted before this dream: the possession of that woman. He forgot the assembly, the foyer, that human crowd that he ruled from the height of the tribune, and Adrienne, who was seated yonder at the window, awaiting him. ”

“ There, Susy, don't you cry," she added, applying a moral lesson to her sister's wounded feelings, like a healing plaster; "he's dreadful wicked, and one of these days he'll get hurt his own self; a horse'll strike him!"
"Yes, a horse'll strike him!" echoed Dotty Dimple.
"But what good will that do Wings?" moaned Susy. "Evil for evil only makes things worse." ”

“ Another variety of compelling your desire is the burning of a cow or an old woman. While, for a woman, the simplest way is the time-honoured custom of sulking. Early Indian domestic architecture provides for this. There was always a sulking-room in the “Inside” (compare boudoir) , and here sat the woman who insisted on her own way; and here no doubt came husband or father with gift of shawl or toe-ring to release her. ...
My wise ones tell me many stories as we sit on the roof in the hour between the Twilights. ”

“ Pausing she looked at him in silence, while her hand pressed into her bosom as if to keep down by physical force the passion which she could no longer control by a mental effort. The violence of temper which in a coarser—a more flesh-and-blood beauty—would have been repelling and almost vulgar, was in her chastened and ennobled by the ethereal quality in her outward form—and the emotion she expressed seemed to belong less to the ordinary human impulses than to some finer rage of spirit which was independent of the gesture or the utterance of flesh. ”

“ And Sulpice felt, at each step that he took, a more profound emotion. Along this russet-tinted wood, stood out here and there the bright trunks of birch-trees, and far above it, the pale blue sky; the abyss of heaven, strewn with milky clouds and throughout the course of this pathway arose like a Cybelean incense, a healthful and fresh odor that filled the lungs and infused a desire to live.
To live! and, thought Sulpice, but a moment ago this lovely, slender girl spoke of dying. ”

“ The ape quivered at the touch, and fear became suffused in dumb compassion. The smell of man and blood rolled up in thick invisible waves, burdened with death and danger, but he fought back his savage instinct with all the power of a new and profound conviction. They were kinsmen, this thing and he. Then, prompted by he knew not what, he turned the man over, marvelling at his lightness, and laid a horny finger on the hole in the torn shoulder. And all the time he knew that the jungle was whispering, watching, and waiting. But the jungle would never get this. ”