Black Beauty 2

RDB Black Beauty #2

This morning I woke up and ate Raisin Bran, immediately thinking of the bran mash that Black Beauty receives as a treat throughout the novel. I can’t say as I see it as much of a treat, but when you eat bland grains all the time, I guess it could be exciting. Oh wait…I eat bland grains (white rice and vegetables) all the time too…hmm…

I’ve never seen a movie adaptation of Black Beauty, but I imagine it to be somewhat like the film Milo and Otis.

Milo and Otis[1]

I remember watching this in elementary school. We were rounded up like cattle into the “multipurpose room” and seated in front of a small TV on a cart, lying on the white linoleum which was dusted with the day’s lunch crumbs. I don’t even think I saw the end of the movie that day, and the parting of Milo and Otis must have made me feel much like I did after reading about Black Beauty’s final conversation with Ginger and his glimpse of her presumed corpse. Black Beauty expressed knowledge that we can’t see animals express (and this often gives us grounds for further torment, i.e. “Animals don’t have feelings”): it is sometimes better to die a painful death than to suffer through life. He thinks to himself, “Oh! If men were more merciful, they would shoot us before we came to such misery”[2] (Black Beauty, chapter 40). This expression of emotion and sentiment argues against the idea that animals are slaves to their instincts and incapable of feeling deep pain or loss.

Too often though, we are portrayed as being slaves to our instincts.

Hey, it's just instincts![3]

Our behavior is predicted on the basis of science as well as stereotypes. This comes into play a few times in the novel, particularly when Black Beauty is being driven by Jakes in chapter 46, “One day, I was loaded more than usual, and part of the road was a steep uphill: I used all my strength, but I could not get on, and was obliged continually to stop…The pain of that great cart whip was sharp, but my mind was hurt quite as much as my poor sides. To be punished and abused when I was doing my very best was so hard it took the heart out of me”.[4] Jakes believed that Black Beauty was being “lazy” and shirking his work because he just didn’t want to do it, as he would presume to be “instinctual” in horses or animals, which don’t possess the same “work ethic” as humans. Oftentimes, we are misunderstood in quite the same way. In some of my classes, I feel like my efforts don’t matter; I will continue to do poorly despite all of the time and strain I put into doing my best just because I’m a college student who is presumed to be just like “everyone else”: someone who parties all night long, gets wasted, and then writes an assignment on an hour of sleep.

College Dance Party[5]

Like Marshall said, anyone who knows anything about literature knows that this book isn’t about horses, it is about people. Maybe we are more similar to animals than we think, or maybe we’re deceiving ourselves. Either way, our sympathetic imagination helps us to see this horse’s story as something we can apply to ourselves, proving that despite being called a different name, our Raisin Bran isn’t really all that different from bran mash.

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[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-KiinB5Ib8

[2] Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994), 170.

[3] http://newmedia.funnyjunk.com/pictures/natural-instincts.jpg

[4] Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994), 197-198.

[5] http://www.roncounts.com/party-dance1.jpg

Black Beauty 1

Black Beauty RDB

In light of my last post, you may think that I will be condemning this seemingly childish account of a horse’s life and circumstances.

(I thought it was a little bit Mister Ed-ish at first…[1] )

But I think this novel contains a loose metaphor upholding the basic tenets of Christianity. This can be seen in the dialog between human characters, but more subtly in the lives of the horses themselves.

Black Beauty’s mother can be seen as any mother can to her young child, one who is concerned for their welfare, especially as they go out into the world. The first master that Black Beauty is born under can be seen as the Heavenly Father figure, and Black Beauty’s mother tells him before he is sent to Squire Gordon to beware of the dangerous men who will be authority over him, “ ‘…there are a great many kinds of men; there are good, thoughtful men like our master, that any horse may be proud to serve; but there are bad, cruel men, who never ought to have a horse or dog to call their own’”[2] (Black Beauty, chapter 3). Black Beauty has to learn that even though his “Father” is just and kind, others won’t be so, and that he must live and, “ ‘do [his] best, wherever it is, and keep [his] good name’”[3] (Black Beauty, chapter 3).

Black Beauty lucks out in the beginning; he stays with Squire Gordon and serves him well, “doing his best” and generally leading a good life as a good Christian, as we might say. He has wholesome friends who love him and care about his happiness. Ginger serves as another voice of reason and warning in Black Beauty’s life as a youngster, telling her story about the dangers she has faced and what she has endured as a result of mistreatment. As a result, Black Beauty hears about the “sins” of those who fall under the reign of poor masters: throwing children (like Merrylegs) and objecting to punishment (whipping). This is not to say that the horses deserve whipping, but merely that their masters see their intolerance of it as defiance and rebellion. His innocence is obvious when he is incredulous at Merrylegs’ actions towards the children playing with him, “ ‘What?’ said I, ‘you threw the children off? I thought you did know better than that!’”[4] (Black Beauty, chapter 9).

I would also argue that some of the masters that Black Beauty has are angels in disguise; good masters who have been sent to the horses as encouragement in spite of the pain found in the world as a result of misunderstanding and lack of sympathy for the animals involved. This can be seen in the Squire and Farmer Grey’s persistence in doing away with bearing reins, “The Squire and Farmer Grey had worked together, as they said, for more than twenty years, to get bearing reins on the cart horses done away with, and in our parts you seldom saw them; but sometimes if mistress met a heavily laden horse…she would stop the carriage and get out, and reason with the driver in her sweet, serious voice”[5] (Black Beauty, chapter 11). This is further emphasized by the fact that the master was, “just as free to speak to gentlemen of his own rank as to those below him”[6] (Black Beauty, chapter 11); meaning that he didn’t feel the pressures of class in his society as strongly, like an angel would on earth. His class meant nothing to him, and his good name was something he upheld, even if it meant being different. This representation of angels by men is seen by many of the masters that Black Beauty encounters throughout the book, and the other masters he falls under that don’t fit this character are quite opposite.

Reuben Smith met an untimely death as a result of his folly and mistreatment of Black Beauty, despite the warning of the ostler at the White Lion and Black Beauty’s silent but unheeded warning of impending danger as a result of his loose, and soon lost, shoe.

(One of the few pictures I could find of a thrown rider[7])

An uncanny similarity exists between this scenario and a verse found in Ezekiel 3:19, “But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself.”[8] Black Beauty does not come out of this experience without damage, but now knows what it is like to be managed by a truly “wicked” master.

The metaphor isn’t perfect, but, like Jude the Obscure, the prevalence of religious themes throughout the book cannot be ignored. As a reader, I feel sympathy for Black Beauty, not as a horse or fellow animal, but as a creature of the same God who has been subjected to terrors unknown to humans most of the time,

(Sick and emaciated horse being helped[9])

but to some who have suffered and still do suffer under instances of being treated like animals, like the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Mistreatment of animals and people is quite obviously wrong, and is a product of the Fall, but to quote Isaiah 4:11 in speaking of the branch of the Lord, “but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked”[10].

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[1] http://www.995thewolf.com/Jocks/Mister%20Ed342.jpg

[2] Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994), 13.

[3] Ibid, 14.

[4] Ibid, 33.

[5] Ibid, 42.

[6] Ibid, 43.

[7]http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3401621.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=BD2794AE0B3E23AD31D3EFFAE9C799AFA55A1E4F32AD3138

[8] Ezekiel 3:19, NIV

[9] http://www.vet.uga.edu/vpp/fad/Horse/Cb15a.jpg

[10] Isaiah 4:11, NIV

Sympathy, Compassion, Sympathetic Imagination

With this I will take a moment to mention something more pressing than the abuse of animals like a few other posts have been about. It’s the abuse of people.

I watch commercials on TV all the time of how I should donate to PETA or the ASPCA or what have you, and every time, I think about how many more abused people there are in the world than animals. Whenever we see commercials about sponsoring World Vision

World Vision[i]

or other service organizations devoted to ending world hunger or war, we just blow them off and treat them as though they are excessive, or that we can’t do anything to help. But the minute a cute little puppy dog in a clean, sterile vet’s office

Puppy[ii]

comes up, we immediately assume that this animal was abused and needs our help (which we can easily give), because he is so much more accessible than those people in Africa.

Jude’s sympathy for animals is quite sincere, even to the point of losing his job, “He sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heard grew sympathetic with the birds’ thwarted desires”[iii]. Jude’s concern is touching, and he later shows sympathy for Sue to the utmost extreme, but this isn’t even helpful to anyone, much less him. He’s just walked on all the time and highly under appreciated.

Vegans have all sorts of reasons for not eating meat. For one thing, it saves money most of the time. I hardly ever eat meat, and it isn’t by choice: it’s a result of expense. But some vegans just do it for the social benefits.

Vegan...sorta[iv]

What if those vegans gave their “extra” money to people in our country’s ghettos? That’s a bit extreme, I’d say, but honestly. We should promote help for humans more than animals on TV.

Hopkins writes in "Inversnaid","What would the world be, once bereft / Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, / O let them be left, wildness and wet; / Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.""Inversnaid" (1881). We can save the plants and animals and "wildness" all we want, but this doesn't do anything for the people that live off of this "wildness". If we save it of our own volition and no other reason, we have no regard for the humans that are already suffering from its disappearance right now. This should be something that is actively going on right now as we speak, not something we pine for without action.

Compassion is defined in our reading as, “Suffering together with another, participation in suffering; fellow-feeling, sympathy”[v], but do we really want to suffer with someone else? When we think of compassion for those less fortunate, we usually just want to send them money and be done with it. But what if we went there and actually did something about it? What if we lived as they did instead of staying at home in our comfy armchairs sipping mixed drinks?

Likewise, sympathy is defined in our reading as, “A relation between two bodily organs or parts (or between two persons) such that disorder, or any condition, of the one induces a corresponding condition in the other….”[vi] I don’t think we’d like AIDS to infect all of our relatives or kill our parents as it does to many of the children living in Zambia. But for many people, this is a reality.

But why should we care if other people are suffering? They’re so far away, right?

And puppies are just cuter.

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[i] http://www.everyhorizon.com/images/conco.jpg

[ii] http://www.petsupplies4less.com/images/vet_puppy.jpg

[iii] Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 14.

[iv] http://www.nataliedee.com/091306/visi-vegan.jpg

[v] http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/compassion.html

[vi] http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/sympathy.html

Pattern of Conversion

Pilgrimages

We make many pilgrimages in life. For some, their pilgrimage is to a holy city.

Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca[i]

For others, it is just a long commute to the office. To Tennyson, a pilgrimage is a metaphor for life, “life was a sea journey over troubled waters, a pilgrimage which demanded fortitude of spirit and steadfast defiance of the laws that seemed to condition man’s ineluctable free will”[ii].

I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever been on a pilgrimage. The word seems to connote that the destination is desired; that it is hard to get there, and that once you get there, everything is right in the world. The closest I’ve come so far to making this kind of journey will be this spring break: I’m taking a greyhound bus to Denver to see my boyfriend. I’ve never been there before, and 22 hours is a long bus ride, but I know that when I get there, I will have a good time meeting the people I’ve heard him talk about for the last 3 years.

Faith

Faith is a dangerous thing. It’s a buzzword in our culture and always has been. Many college students use this time away from parents and obligations to find faith, be it rekindling an old one or beginning a new one. But faith is more than just religious belief; it is also a strong force in the making and breaking of relationships, government, and also, college in general. I have to have faith that the grading done by the professors in any of my classes is accurate, especially if they have no rubric or point break-down in their syllabus. Buckley speaks of religious faith in the Victorian era, “All conversion thus depended ultimately upon some faith in the immanence of spirit, whether the fullness of realization lay in ‘one far-off divine event’ or in ‘the imperishable dignity of man.’”[iii] In a time where religious stability had been shaken, this statement clearly identifies both sides of the fence: those who believed in the power of God and those who believed in the power of self or mankind. Carlyle uses a “Friend” to explain that, “ ‘…Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, Worldlings

Three Worldlings (Original Caption)[iv]

puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury’”[v] Faith is the necessary ingredient for a religion that does not consist of tangible things, but instead holds fast to the intangible, making a fortress of something that is beyond the world we see. Yesterday during the church service I attended, the speaker used the word “crutch” to describe how Christians are to rely on God. People will argue that this is wrong, but ultimately, the belief is held that without God, people are weak and helpless, unable to fend for themselves. Religious faith is for the weak, as Carlyle says.

Happiness

Happiness is something I have trouble with at times. The more I learn about people in Africa who are dying of AIDS or even the poverty-stricken members of our own society, the more I find myself at a crossroads: should I be happy because I have so much, or should I be sad for the people that have so little while I sit and do nothing?

Victorian depiction of a Ghetto[vi]

The previous seems so much more selfish than the latter. But an even greater debate is also at hand: can money buy happiness? It could be these people would be happy for a time with greater wealth, but would they later become sad and selfish like much of our society? Carlyle says that, “Man’s Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite…”[vii]. I must say as I agree with this. It seems the ultimate irony that so many million and billionaires are so sad, often committing suicide. We equate materialism with happiness, but it ultimately brings our demise. These are all noble causes, but we seem to have this drive for what will kill us most: dangerous sports, unhealthy food, and loads of money. But what WILL bring us happiness? Carlyle says it is God, and Mill says that, "Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end" (Mill 694), but what else could it be? And is happiness even necessary, or is it just privilege? I haven’t the answer to that yet. Maybe contentedness should be our goal.

To Sum Up…

Carlyle says, “…all that we do springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force”[viii], but what is this invisible force? Is it the religious god you worship, the drives and instincts within you, or the societal pressures that are ingrained in us from birth? We mustn’t forget the Mystery, as the little boy says[ix], but can we forget (or at least ignore) the “invisible Force” if it causes nothing but trouble? Maybe our own “Pattern of Conversion” will come from this change in our thinking.

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[i] http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44310000/jpg/_44310676_prayers_afp_416.jpg

[ii] Buckley, The Pattern of Conversion, 593 (all page numbers reference the course anthology unless otherwise noted).

[iii] Buckley, 603.

[iv] http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~medieval/www/pls/mk95a.jpg

[v] Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Chapter VII. The Everlasting No, 606.

[vi] Ettore Roesler Franz (Roma, 1845 - 1907),Ghetto: Piazza delle Azimelle http://www.museodiroma.comune.roma.it/images/ghetto.jpg

[vii] Carlyle, 608.

[viii] Carlyle, 607.

[ix] Unknown, The Mystery, 167.

Through the Looking Glass

“ ‘I can’t stand this any longer!’ she cried, as she jumped up and seized the table cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor”[1](Through the Looking Glass, chapter 9).

Tonight, I feel just like Alice did during her last moments in Looking Glass House. I’ve got piles of homework, a massive headache, and troubles at home and 900 miles away. I’ll admit it, and I almost never do: I’m stressed.

But this is what college is about, right? We’re supposed to be pulling all-nighters

Hittin' the books[2]

and pulling out our hair. Maybe it isn’t.

I’ve recently heard in the news and in newspapers (no specific quotes in particular) that we (as in adolescents and college students) aren’t getting near as much sleep as we’re supposed to, and that we spend too much time awake for our bodies to function to full capacity (I’m sure Bump will agree with me on this). I like getting a full night of sleep, but sometimes there is just too much homework and too many expectations for me to fulfill. I suppose Alice felt like this as well when she was being quizzed by the queens and throughout her time in Looking-glass House; she didn’t know the rules there, but yet she was expected to follow them and especially understand them to a T.

Sometimes, I think I’ve got the college thing figured out, and I can accurately predict how things will turn out, or how I will do on an assignment, much like Alice’s correct interpretation of the meaning of “wabe”, “It’s called ‘wabe’ you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it” “And a long way beyond it on each side,” Alice added”[3] (Through the Looking Glass, chapter 6). But then other times I find I am sadly mistaken, and then I blame myself for being so stupid as to think that I’m a good student. My luck only goes so far.

The average college student is pretty good at justifying ourselves. We’ve all had time to practice for years in high school and middle school, so when something comes up that we are afraid of or were wrong about; we know just what to say to make ourselves look better. For example, I constantly made up reasons for not being very good at sports when I was a kid, such as having “really poor hand-eye coordination”, having non-athletic parents,

I should've had this shirt a while ago…[4]

and being too big to run around with my much shorter friends (though that was a really weak argument). I’ve been afraid to do things though, just like Tweedle-dum’s complaint of having a headache and thus lowered bravery when he is suiting up to fight Tweedle-dee[5]. (And, like him, I also get frequent headaches as a result of Austin allergies. It is a reasonable excuse at times.)

However, I think one of the worst problems that college students have is being ungrateful. Alice is accused by the Red Queen in chapter 2 of being ungrateful, but we have a much worse problem of ungratefulness. Most of us don’t stop and think about how much food we waste in a given day, where our trash ends up, or how lucky we are to have so many nice, new computers and friendly lab staff in almost every building. I sometimes take for granted the money that my parents earned to get me here to UT, and it makes me sad that so many people just waste their parents’ money by skipping class

Everybody's doin' it![6]

for no reason, using facebook all through class on their laptops, or not doing the assignments to go out underage drinking.

I think we can learn comical things from the Alice books, but we should also use them as a way to discover the faults we have as students and how we can best take advantage of what we have here, whether it is the friendly staff or the food prepared just for us in Jester.

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[1] Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice, ed. Martin Gardner (New York, NY: The World Publishing Company, 1972), 336.

[2] http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2059476/all-nighter-main_Full.jpg

[3] Carroll, 272.

[4] http://www.baronbob.com/tshirt-unathleticdeptlarge.jpg

[5] Carroll, 242.

[6] http://www.slapupsidethehead.com/wp-content/media/2006/09/skipping_school.jpg

Alice in Wonderland

ODB #3: Alice as a parody of U.T. Freshman Life

“For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible”[1](Alice, Chapter 1).

Alice in Wonderland- Gothic Style[2]

I would have to say that this has been my mantra for the last year and a half. When I came to U.T., I thought I knew who I was and who my friends were. I expected to mature, but not to change. I wanted to believe that my current way of doing things would suffice for the rest of my life. But I think God had other plans for me.

Last fall, I made many revelations about myself, in addition to learning things about other people around me. I’m a suppressed extrovert and external thinker, and my energy really comes from being around other people, not from sitting alone in my room and pondering

Pondering in a field of daisies... [3]

life’s greatest mysteries (like my roommate does). I’ve completely lost my identity, and trying to figure out where I’m at is nearly impossible at times.

The strongest parallel between the Alice books and college life is the need to roll with the punches. A professor told my friend after she turned a paper in late as a result of it “not being good enough to turn in yet” that she thought too much about it and that “sometimes you just have to get your shit done.” It’s true. As mentioned in our course anthology, “A perfectionist worker may spend so much time agonizing over some non-critical detail that a critical project misses its deadline”[4]. You can’t waste time in college like you did in high school, and being nitpicky about an easy assignment isn’t worth the effort. College isn’t about grade competition and being in the top ten percent. It’s about getting a degree, and sometimes you have to take the “C” if that means that you learn more. (This is NOT the same thing as just not doing your work in order to party and expand your “social skills.”).

But this definitely causes frustration at times. In meeting new people and learning new things, you’re bound to have your views challenged, “Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in all her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper”[5](Alice, Chapter 5). Sometimes this is good for you, sometimes it just sucks. In living with my ex-roommate, I really began to realize that through contradictions and conflict you really find out what you’re made of and what you value. This is something that just begins in college, but continues throughout your life, gaining new birth again at middle age, if you’re lucky. (Or you just have a crisis and get over it, but that’s not as helpful).

Another important part of the college experience is learning new interests. This isn’t the same as forcing yourself to like something, but it is about acquiring the taste for something new and mature. My anthropology professor mentioned today the idea of liminality, a phase in rites of passage as described by the Turnerian view of symbols and ritual. Liminality is the idea of being between old and new; limen literally meaning in the Latin, “between”.

Youth and Maturity[6]

Part of being in this in-between phase as a college student is growing to enjoy different things, much like Alice grew to enjoy the new experiences and creatures she met in Wonderland. After she emerges from the Pool of Tears, Alice meets the other creatures that the Mouse is acquainted with and, “after a few minutes it seemed quite natural to Alice to find herself talking familiarly with them, as if she had known them all her life”[7].

Alice’s adventures are a symbol for not only college life, but also coming-of-age in general. Aside from the metaphor, we can learn from the story that it’s ok to be adventurous, creative, and willing to see things from another perspective, even if it requires you to make a fool of yourself.

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[1] Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice, ed. Martin Gardner (New York, NY: The World Publishing Company, 1972), 30.

[2] http://images.epilogue.net/users/blondeblythe/ToniBoozer_AliceInWonderlandGothic.jpg

[3] http://www.banayatfineart.com/images/photos/pondering.jpg

[4] The Counseling and Mental Health Center, Perfectionism: It Cuts Both Ways, The University of Texas, 4.

[5] Carroll, 72.

[6]http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1498550/2/istockphoto_1498550_youth_and_maturity.jpg

[7] Carroll, 45.

Jude Part 2

To counter all of the attacks that have come against Jude in the previous discussion boards, I would like to mention the character of Sue.

Sue epitomizes the current and ever-growing view of marriage in our society. At the time of Jude’s publication, being unsure of marriage was an uncommon and largely unheard-of thing. But these days, men and women (women in particular) are getting married at older and older ages, and their marriages are less and less permanent. Divorce is common, and civil unions are coming into existence in Europe to cope with the changes in the institution of marriage. Sue is constantly changing her mind about marrying Jude, despite his desperate attempts to wed her. After her first resolution to marry him, Hardy writes a dialog between Sue and Jude, “…Jude, do you think that when you must have me with you by law, we shall be so happy as we are now? ...Don’t you think it is destructive to a passion whose essence is its gratuitousness?’ ‘Upon my word, love, you are beginning to frighten me, too, with all this foreboding! Well, let’s go back and think it over.’ Her face brightened. ‘Yes—so we will!’” (Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure Norton Critical Edition p.213-214).

The book also illustrates another common way to deal with bridal fear: elopement (Or at least theoretical elopement). Jude and Sue travel to London to keep appearances and play that they are married and have it all together, when they are really still doomed to relationship failure. “The result was that shortly after the attempt at the registrar’s the pair went off—to London it was believed—for several days, hiring somebody to look to the boy. When they came back they let it be understood indirectly, and with indifference and weariness of mien, that they were legally married at last. Sue, who had previously been called Mrs. Bridehead, now openly adopted the name of Mrs. Fawley. Her dull, cowed, and listless manner for days seemed to substantiate all this” (Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure Norton Critical Edition p.234-235).

But Sue’s insecurity is just one part of the insecurity epidemic that has befallen our culture. We have so many options and choices that we don’t ever need to make choices. We can just go back on our word and re-choose everything if we change our minds. Commitment is the new challenge for Americans, and it spans everything we do. So few decisions are permanent these days that I wonder how much longer it will be before everything we hold as permanent falls away due to lack of commitment? Will wedding vows change, swearings-in, oaths of office?

I guess I would consider myself a bit more old-fashioned in this sense; I keep my word and stick by my decisions, whether they are good or not. Maybe I picked the wrong major, the wrong university, the wrong church, the wrong friends, the wrong set of beliefs. But sticking to your guns is more important than being right. To me, it is a sign of good leadership, and taking the consequences for your actions is admirable and should be mandatory for anyone who holds a position of importance.

What if Jude and Sue had officially tied the knot? She says herself that even so, she would have left him and gone back to Phillotson, “But how if you and I had married legally, as we were on the point of doing?’ ‘I should have felt just the same—that ours was not a marriage and I would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if he asked me” (Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure Norton Critical Edition p.283). But since that wasn’t actually the case, we’ll never know for sure what would have happened.

Indeed, if we lose all firmness of conviction, what weight will anyone’s word have anymore?