Literature Reflects Society Quotes

Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).

Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.

I finally went where everyone goes and I realized I was never missing out.

Art (including literature) is the barometer of a culture. It reflects the sum of a society’s deepest philosophical values: not its professed notions and slogans, but its actual view of man and of existence.

I write for you, for me, for the 70% of us who make up the fabric of society: ordinary people with extraordinary lives, who play the roles of parents, siblings, children, neighbors and friends. We are those who work and study with tenacity, those who with effort and dedication bring sustenance to our homes, my novels and stories of horror, suspense and mystery are designed for the emerging generations, for those readers who seek freshness in literature and who feel distant from traditional literature, with its labyrinth of ostentatious and complex words that often alienate the average citizen..., I write for the marginalized, for those who have felt that literature does not offer them a mirror in which to reflect themselves, for those who seek in the pages a refuge or an acknowledgement of their existence, I write for the free and critical spirits, for the innate rebels who question the structures and narratives of our civilization, I write for the dreamers who imagine a world beyond the reach of politics and corporations, for those who resist being molded by the great machines of entertainment that seek to numb our minds and wills; It is my voice, through writing, that seeks to resonate with yours, inviting you on a literary journey where together we explore the confines of our reality and the abysses of our imagination.

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: ‘no one allows anyone anything.’ By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn’t move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman’s lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call ‘freedom’.

I write for you, for me, for the 70% of us who make up the fabric of society: ordinary people with extraordinary lives, who play the roles of parents, siblings, children, neighbours and friends. We are those who work and study with tenacity, those who with effort and dedication bring sustenance to our homes, my novels and stories of horror, suspense and mystery are designed for the emerging generations, for those readers who seek freshness in literature and who feel distanced from traditional literature, with its labyrinth of ostentatious and complex words that often alienate the average citizen..., I write for the marginalised, for those who have felt that literature does not offer them a mirror in which to reflect themselves, for those who seek in the pages a refuge or an acknowledgement of their existence, I write for the free and critical spirits, for the innate rebels who question the structures and narratives of our civilisation, I write for the dreamers who imagine a world beyond the reach of politics and corporations, for those who resist being moulded by the great entertainment machines that seek to numb our minds and wills; It is my voice, through writing, that seeks to resonate with yours, inviting you on a literary journey where together we explore the confines of our reality and the abysses of our imagination".

The beliefs and behaviour of the Restoration reflect the theories of society put forward by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan, which was written in exile in Paris and published in 1651. Like many texts of the time, The Leviathan is an allegory. It recalls mediaeval rather than Renaissance thinking. The leviathan is the Commonwealth, society as a total organism, in which the individual is the absolute subject of state control, represented by the monarch. Man - motivated by self-interest - is acquisitive and lacks codes of behaviour. Hence the necessity for a strong controlling state, 'an artificial man', to keep discord at bay. Self-interest and stability become the keynotes of British society after 1660, the voice of the new middle-class bourgeoisie making itself heard more and more in the expression of values, ideals, and ethics.

Shakespeare's plays do not present easy solutions. The audience has to decide for itself. King Lear is perhaps the most disturbing in this respect. One of the key words of the whole play is 'Nothing'. When King Lear's daughter Cordelia announces that she can say 'Nothing' about her love for her father, the ties of family love fall apart, taking the king from the height of power to the limits of endurance, reduced to 'nothing' but 'a poor bare forked animal'. Here, instead of 'readiness' to accept any challenge, the young Edgar says 'Ripeness is all'. This is a maturity that comes of learning from experience. But, just as the audience begins to see hope in a desperate and violent situation, it learns that things can always get worse: Who is't can say 'I am at the worst?' … The worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.' Shakespeare is exploring and redefining the geography of the human soul, taking his characters and his audience further than any other writer into the depths of human behaviour. The range of his plays covers all the 'form and pressure' of mankind in the modern world. They move from politics to family, from social to personal, from public to private. He imposed no fixed moral, no unalterable code of behaviour. That would come to English society many years after Shakespeare's death, and after the tragic hypothesis of Hamlet was fulfilled in 1649, when the people killed the King and replaced his rule with the Commonwealth. Some critics argue that Shakespeare supported the monarchy and set himself against any revolutionary tendencies. Certainly he is on the side of order and harmony, and his writing reflects a monarchic context rather than the more republican context which replaced the monarchy after 1649. It would be fanciful to see Shakespeare as foretelling the decline of the Stuart monarchy. He was not a political commentator. Rather, he was a psychologically acute observer of humanity who had a unique ability to portray his observations, explorations, and insights in dramatic form, in the richest and most exciting language ever used in the English theatre.

We propose that use of the term “false memory” to describe errors in memory for details directly contributes to removing the social context of abuse from research on memory for trauma. As the term “false memories” has increasingly been used to describe errors in details, the scientific weight of the term has increased. In turn, we see that the term “false memories” is treated as a construct supported by scientific fact, whereas other terms associated with questions about the veracity of abuse memories have been treated as suspect. For example, “recovered memories” often appears in quotations, whereas “false memories” does not (Campbell, 2003).The quotation marks suggest that one term is questioned, whereas the other is accepted as fact. Accepting “false memories” of abuse as fact reflects the subtle assimilation of the term into the cognitive literature, where the term is used increasingly to describe intrusions of semantically related words into lists of related words. The term, rooted in the controversy over the accuracy of abuse memories recalled during psychotherapy (Schacter, 1999), implies generalization of errors in details to memory for abuse—experienced largely by women and children (Campbell, 2003)." from: What's in a Name for Memory Errors? Implications and Ethical Issues Arising From the Use of the Term “False Memory” for Errors in Memory for Details, Journal: Ethics & Behavior

In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to "imagine a society in which all talk about the arts, music and literature is prohibited." In such a society there would be no more essays on whether Hamlet was mad or only pretending to be, no reviews of the latest exhibitions or novels, no profiles of writers or artists. There would be no secondary, or parasitic, discussion - let alone tertiary: commentary on commentary. We would have, instead, a "republic for writers and readers" with no cushion of professional opinion-makers to come between creators and audience. While the Sunday papers presently serve as a substitute for the experiencing of the actual exhibition or book, in Steiner's imagined republic the review pages would be turned into listings:catalogues and guides to what is about to open, be published, or be released. What would this republic be like? Would the arts suffer from the obliteration of this ozone of comment? Certainly not, says Steiner, for each performance of a Mahler symphony is also a critique of that symphony. Unlike the reviewer, however, the performer "invests his own being in the process of interpretation." Such interpretation is automatically responsible because the performer is answerable to the work in a way that even the most scrupulous reviewer is not. Although, most obviously, it is not only the case for drama and music; all art is also criticism. This is most clearly so when a writer or composer quotes or reworks material from another writer or composer. All literature, music, and art "embody an expository reflection which they pertain". In other words it is not only in their letters, essays, or conversation that writers like Henry James reveal themselves also to be the best critics; rather, The Portrait of a Lady is itself, among other things, a commentary on and a critique of Middlemarch. "The best readings of art are art." No sooner has Steiner summoned this imaginary republic into existence than he sighs, "The fantasy I have sketched is only that." Well, it is not. It is a real place and for much of the century it has provided a global home for millions of people. It is a republic with a simple name: jazz.

The militants of ethnicity contend that a main objective of public education should be the protection, strengthening, celebration, and perpetuation of ethnic origins and identities. Separatism, however, nourishes prejudices, magnifies differences, and stirs antagonisms. The consequent increase in ethnic and racial conflict lies behind the hullabaloo over "multiculturalism" and "political correctness", over the inequities of the "Eurocentric" curriculum, and over the notion that history and literature should be taught not as intellectual disciplines but as therapies whose function is to raise minority self-esteem.

This was another one of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the conditions of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls... Real Literature was about psychological, emotional and social truth as demonstrated by the actions and reflections of its protagonists.

Our patients predict the culture by living out consciously what the masses of people are able to keep unconscious for the time being. The neurotic is cast by destiny into a Cassandra role. In vain does Cassandra, sitting on the steps of the palace at Mycenae when Agamemnon brings her back from Troy, cry, “Oh for the nightingale’s pure song and a fate like hers!” She knows, in her ill-starred life, that “the pain flooding the song of sorrow is [hers] alone,” and that she must predict the doom she sees will occur there. The Mycenaeans speak of her as mad, but they also believe she does speak the truth, and that she has a special power to anticipate events. Today, the person with psychological problems bears the burdens of the conflicts of the times in his blood, and is fated to predict in his actions and struggles the issues which will later erupt on all sides in the society. The first and clearest demonstration of this thesis is seen in the sexual problems which Freud found in his Victorian patients in the two decades before World War I. These sexual topics‒even down to the words‒were entirely denied and repressed by the accepted society at the time. But the problems burst violently forth into endemic form two decades later after World War II. In the 1920's, everybody was preoccupied with sex and its functions. Not by the furthest stretch of the imagination can anyone argue that Freud "caused" this emergence. He rather reflected and interpreted, through the data revealed by his patients, the underlying conflicts of the society, which the “normal” members could and did succeed in repressing for the time being. Neurotic problems are the language of the unconscious emerging into social awareness. A second, more minor example is seen in the great amount of hostility which was found in patients in the 1930's. This was written about by Horney, among others, and it emerged more broadly and openly as a conscious phenomenon in our society a decade later. A third major example may be seen in the problem of anxiety. In the late 1930's and early 1940's, some therapists, including myself, were impressed by the fact that in many of our patients anxiety was appearing not merely as a symptom of repression or pathology, but as a generalized character state. My research on anxiety, and that of Hobart Mowrer and others, began in the early 1940's. In those days very little concern had been shown in this country for anxiety other than as a symptom of pathology. I recall arguing in the late 1940's, in my doctoral orals, for the concept of normal anxiety, and my professors heard me with respectful silence but with considerable frowning. Predictive as the artists are, the poet W. H. Auden published his Age of Anxiety in 1947, and just after that Bernstein wrote his symphony on that theme. Camus was then writing (1947) about this “century of fear,” and Kafka already had created powerful vignettes of the coming age of anxiety in his novels, most of them as yet untranslated. The formulations of the scientific establishment, as is normal, lagged behind what our patients were trying to tell us. Thus, at the annual convention of the American Psychopathological Association in 1949 on the theme “Anxiety,” the concept of normal anxiety, presented in a paper by me, was still denied by most of the psychiatrists and psychologists present. But in the 1950's a radical change became evident; everyone was talking about anxiety and there were conferences on the problem on every hand. Now the concept of "normal" anxiety gradually became accepted in the psychiatric literature. Everybody, normal as well as neurotic, seemed aware that he was living in the “age of anxiety.” What had been presented by the artists and had appeared in our patients in the late 30's and 40's was now endemic in the land.

The dolphins spent far more time near the mirror, inspecting their reflection, when they had been visibly marked than when they had been sham marked. They seemed to recognize that the mark they saw in the mirror had been put on their own body. Since they hardly paid any attention to marks on other dolphins, it was not as if they were obsessed with marks in general. They were specifically interested in the ones on themselves. Critics complained that the dolphins in this study failed to touch their own body. or rub off the mark, as humans or apes do, but I’m not sure we should hold the absence of self-touching against an animal that lacks the anatomy for it. Until better tests have been designed, it seems safe to let dolphins join the cognitive elite of animals that recognize themselves in a mirror. Dolphins possess large brains (larger than humans, in fact), and show every sign of high intelligence. Each individual produces its own unique whistle sound by which the others recognize him or her, and there are even indications that they use these sounds to call each other “by name,” so to speak. They enjoy lifelong bonds, and reconcile after fights by means of sexy petting (much like bonobos), while males form power-seeking coalitions. They may encircle a school of herring to drive them together in a compact ball, releasing bubbles to keep them in place, after which they pick their food like fruit from a tree. With regard to the co-emergence hypothesis, it is important to note the level of dolphin altruism. Does self-awareness go hand in hand with perspective-taking, and do dolphins show the sort of targeted helping known of humans and apes? One of the oldest reports in the scientific literature concerns an incident on October 30, 1954, off the coast of Florida. During a capture expedition for a public aquarium, a stick of dynamite was set off underwater near a pod of bottlenose dolphins. As soon as one stunned victim surfaced, heavily listing, two other dolphins came to its aid: “One came up from below on each side, and placing the upper lateral part of their heads approximately beneath the pectoral fins of the injured one, they buoyed it to the surface in an apparent effort to allow it to breathe while it remained partially stunned.” The two helpers were submerged, which meant that they couldn’t breathe during their effort. The entire pod remained nearby (whereas normally they’d take off immediately after an explosion), and waited until their companion had recovered. They then all fled in a hurry, making tremendous leaps. The scientists reporting this incident added: “There is no doubt in our minds that the cooperative assistance displayed for their own species was real and deliberate.

The reality of archaic civilization was centralization of political power, class stratification, the magnification of military power, the economic exploitation of the weak, and the universal introduction of some form of forced labor for both productive and military purposes. As against these undeniable realities we must also cite the major achievements of archaic society: the maintenance of peace within the realm, more productive agriculture, the opening of markets for long-range trade, and significant achievements in architecture, art, and literature. But equally important was, with the help of a literate elite, a new effort to give political power a moral meaning. The archaic king was almost always depicted as a warrior, as a defender of the realm against barbarians on the frontiers and rebels within; as such he embodied a powerful element of dominance. But he was also seen, and probably increasingly as archaic societies matured, as the defender of justice, in Mesopotamia and Egypt as the good shepherd, in Western Zhou as father and mother of his people. Gods as well as kings were increasingly thought of not only as dominant but also as nurturant. The very appeal to ethical standards of legitimacy for both gods and kings, however, opened new possibilities for political and theological reflection. In the axial age a new kind of upstart, the moral upstart who relies on speech, not force, would appear, foreshadowed as we have seen, by voices already raised in archaic societies.

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The Importance of Books in Our Lives Books have always been an integral part of human civilization, shaping societies, preserving knowledge, and fostering personal growth. From ancient manuscripts to modern digital eBooks, they provide a gateway to learning, imagination, and personal development. Books serve as a bridge to the past, allowing readers to explore the thoughts, ideas, and cultures of previous generations. They also encourage critical thinking by offering multiple perspectives on topics ranging from philosophy and science to art and fiction. One of the greatest values of books lies in their ability to educate. Whether it's academic textbooks, biographies, or self-help guides, books impart knowledge that helps individuals excel in personal and professional spheres. Students, for example, rely heavily on textbooks to prepare for exams, while professionals may turn to industry-specific literature to stay updated with new trends and technologies. Beyond formal education, reading fosters self-improvement by exposing individuals to new ideas, challenges, and perspectives that expand their thinking and worldview. Books also serve as an escape from reality, providing readers with an opportunity to dive into new worlds and experience life from different perspectives. Fictional genres, such as fantasy, mystery, and romance, offer entertainment while simultaneously inspiring empathy and creativity. A reader can embark on an adventure through the pages of a novel or experience a new culture through travel literature. In this sense, books become companions that help readers unwind, dream, and explore the unknown, even from the comfort of their homes. In addition to their educational and recreational benefits, books play a critical role in personal development. Self-help books guide readers through personal challenges by offering advice on mental health, relationships, or financial management. Biographies of influential personalities inspire readers to overcome obstacles and achieve success. Books also promote empathy by helping readers understand emotions and experiences different from their own. When individuals read about the struggles, triumphs, and perspectives of others, they become more compassionate and socially aware. Furthermore, books foster a lifelong habit of learning and personal reflection. They help develop concentration and focus, as reading requires sustained attention. This is particularly important in the digital age, where people are often distracted by social media and short-form content. Regular reading improves vocabulary, communication skills, and analytical thinking, all of which contribute to personal and professional growth. Additionally, books promote mental well-being, offering a sense of comfort and relaxation to readers. Many people find solace in reading, especially during challenging times, as books can provide both emotional support and practical solutions. Even in a world dominated by technology, the relevance of books remains undiminished. While the formats may change—moving from physical books to audiobooks and eBooks—their essence and purpose remain

learning—we have learned how to increase productivity, the outputs that can be produced with any inputs. There are two aspects of learning that we can distinguish: an improvement in best practices, reflected in increases in productivity of firms that marshal all available knowledge and technology, and improvements in the productivity of firms as they catch up to best practices. In fact, the distinction may be somewhat artificial; there may be no firm that has employed best practices in every aspect of its activities. One firm may be catching up with another in some dimension, but the second firm may be catching up with the first in others. In developing countries, almost all firms may be catching up with global best practices; but the real difference between developing and developed countries is the larger fraction of firms that are significantly below global best practices and the larger gap between their productivity and that of the best-performing firms. While we are concerned in this book with both aspects of learning, it is especially the learning associated with catching up that we believe has been given short shrift in the economics literature, and which is central to improvements in standards of living, especially in developing countries. But as we noted in chapter 1, the two are closely related; because of the improvements in best practices by the most innovative firms, most other firms are always engaged in a process of catching up. While the evidence of Solow and the work that followed demonstrated (what to many seems obvious) the importance of learning for increases in standards of living, to further explicate the role of learning, the first three sections of this chapter marshal other macro- and microeconomic evidence. In particular, we stress the pervasive gap between best practices and the productivity of most firms. We argue that this gap is far more important than the traditional allocative inefficiencies upon which most of economics has focused and is related to learning—or more accurately, the lack of learning. The final section provides a theoretical context within which to think about the sources of sustained increases in standards of living, employing the familiar distinction of movements of the production possibilities curve and movements toward the production possibilities curve. Using this framework, we explain why it is that we ascribe such importance to learning. Macroeconomic Perspectives There are several empirical arguments that can be brought to bear to support our conclusion concerning the importance of learning. The first is a simple argument: In theory, leading-edge technology is globally available. Thus, with sufficient capital and trained labor (or sufficient mobility for capital and trained labor), all countries should enjoy comparable standards of living. The only difference would be the rents associated with ownership of intellectual property rights and factor supplies. Yet there is an enormous divergence in economic performance and standards of living across national economies, far greater than can be explained by differences in factor supplies.1 And this includes many low-performing economies with high levels of capital intensity (especially among formerly socialist economies) and highly trained labor forces. Table 2.1 presents a comparison of formerly socialist countries with similar nonsocialist economies in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the state-controlled model of economic activity. TABLE 2.1 Quality of Life Comparisons, 1992–1994 (U.S. $) Source: Greenwald and Khan (2009), p. 30. In most of these cases, at the time communism was imposed after World War II, the subsequently socialist economies enjoyed higher levels of economic development than

The Importance of Books in Our Lives Books have always been an integral part of human civilization, shaping societies, preserving knowledge, and fostering personal growth. From ancient manuscripts to modern digital eBooks, they provide a gateway to learning, imagination, and personal development. Books serve as a bridge to the past, allowing readers to explore the thoughts, ideas, and cultures of previous generations. They also encourage critical thinking by offering multiple perspectives on topics ranging from philosophy and science to art and fiction. One of the greatest values of books lies in their ability to educate. Whether it's academic textbooks, biographies, or self-help guides, books impart knowledge that helps individuals excel in personal and professional spheres. Students, for example, rely heavily on textbooks to prepare for exams, while professionals may turn to industry-specific literature to stay updated with new trends and technologies. Beyond formal education, reading fosters self-improvement by exposing individuals to new ideas, challenges, and perspectives that expand their thinking and worldview. Books also serve as an escape from reality, providing readers with an opportunity to dive into new worlds and experience life from different perspectives. Fictional genres, such as fantasy, mystery, and romance, offer entertainment while simultaneously inspiring empathy and creativity. A reader can embark on an adventure through the pages of a novel or experience a new culture through travel literature. In this sense, books become companions that help readers unwind, dream, and explore the unknown, even from the comfort of their homes. In addition to their educational and recreational benefits, books play a critical role in personal development. Self-help books guide readers through personal challenges by offering advice on mental health, relationships, or financial management. Biographies of influential personalities inspire readers to overcome obstacles and achieve success. Books also promote empathy by helping readers understand emotions and experiences different from their own. When individuals read about the struggles, triumphs, and perspectives of others, they become more compassionate and socially aware. Furthermore, books foster a lifelong habit of learning and personal reflection. They help develop concentration and focus, as reading requires sustained attention. This is particularly important in the digital age, where people are often distracted by social media and short-form content. Regular reading improves vocabulary, communication skills, and analytical thinking, all of which contribute to personal and professional growth. Additionally, books promote mental well-being, offering a sense of comfort and relaxation to readers. Many people find solace in reading, especially during challenging times, as books can provide both emotional support and practical solutions. Even in a world dominated by technology, the relevance of books remains undiminished. While the formats may change—moving from physical books to audiobooks and eBooks—their essence and purpose remain

Presidential literature is a reflection of our American culture and society. In many cases it identifies what is important to use as a nation. We as a nation should never stop reading and our leaders need to continue to provide us with their thoughts and ideas that are the fabric of our country and a mirror of its history.

Only if the society makes thinking the axiom of their living, we might attain reformation in society than just reflection of society in literature.

Yet if our research and our teaching are to address the multifaceted challenges African Americans face, we must do the required contextual and interdisciplinary work, and we must remember that, by serving in leadership positions in the Society of Biblical Literature at any and all of its levels, we create the academic spaces we need for that work to flourish. (from "The Struggles: A Personal Reflection")

How can literature reflect our society if we are forbidden the most natural allusions? We should not be surprised to see the minister favouring in grandiloquent language the so-called classical system, but which we must call ministerial, a system which has effectively deprived us of popular literature while condemning authors to invoke endlessly the gods and great men of Rome and Athens, or to spoil national subjects with forms concecrated by authority. Our greatest talents are to be found in the opposition.

In the nineteenth century, decadence became the watchword for a conservative reaction against the excesses of Romanticism. The Romantic appeal to strong emotions and the bizarre and irrational shocked people who were used to more staid standards. At the end of his life, Goethe had pronounced that classicism was health and romanticism disease. Then, in 1834, Desiré Nisard published Studies on the Manners and Critiques of the Roman Poets of the Decadence, which purported to show that the bizarre decadence of modern Romantic literature was only a reflection of the larger decadence of moral and social values of modern society. Soon everyone was using the term. In 1845, a Parisian magistrate wrote in a report to his superiors, “I believe that our society is suffering from a profound malaise.” Romantic literature had, he concluded, “given license to the worst instincts….” Everywhere he saw the same thing: “immediate gratification of the appetites, the search for pleasure, a monstrous egotism … If we continue like this … the days of the Roman decadence will return.

Writing is like creating a whispered song because the volume outside is too loud.

Only literature, mirrors and reflects, our thoughts, conduct, attitude, character, system, knowledge, and life that, we execute in society.

It is not without good reason that the literary tradition of pastoral poetry can look back on an almost uninterrupted history of over two thousand years since its beginnings in Hellenism. With the exception of the early Middle Ages, when urban and court culture was extinguished, there have been variants of this poetry in every century. Apart from the thematic material of the novel of chivalry, there is probably no other subject-matter 15 that has occupied the literature of Western Europe for so long and maintained itself against the assaults of rationalism with such tenacity. This long and uninterrupted reign shows that ‘sentimental’ poetry, in Schiller’s sense of the word, plays an incomparably greater part in the history of literature than ‘naïve’ poetry. Even the idylls of Theocritus himself owe their existence not, as might be imagined, to genuine roots in nature and a direct relationship to the life of the common people, but to a reflective feeling for nature and a romantic conception of the common folk, that is, to sentiments which have their origin in a yearning for the remote, the strange and the exotic. The peasant and the shepherd are not enthusiastic about their surroundings or about their daily work. And interest in the life of the simple folk is, as we know, to be sought neither in spatial nor social proximity to the peasantry; it does not arise in the folk itself but in the higher classes, and not in the country but in the big towns and at the courts, in the midst of bustling life and an over-civilized, surfeited society. Even when Theocritus was writing his idylls, the pastoral theme and situation were certainly no longer a novelty; it will already have occurred in the poetry of the primitive pastoral peoples, but doubtless without the note of sentimentality and complacency, and probably also without attempting to describe the outward conditions of the shepherd’s life realistically. Pastoral scenes, although without the lyrical touch of the Idylls, were to be found before Theocritus, at any rate, in the mime. They are a matter of course in the satyr plays, and rural scenes are not unknown even to tragedy. But pastoral scenes and pictures of country life are not enough to produce bucolic poetry; the preconditions for this are, above all, the latent conflict of town and country and the feeling of discomfort with civilization.

Though it's often considered insulting to note, women in the aggregate have different preferences: we tend to put "people jobs" over "things jobs", as someone once put it to me. This has caused feminists a great deal of consternation. Pricked by the embarassment of natural differences between men and women, they blame society and insist women need to be taught to adopt different preferences. But behind this insistence lies the idea that women's preferences are inferior. Young girls are left to conclude that they must strive to be more like men- they must close the novel they were enjoying and take up coding. They must want things men want because men want them. The talking point about the dearth of women CEOs is a classic. The fact of this disparity might just as easily be understood differently: CEOs lead fairly unbalanced lives. They make a lot of money and have very little time. Their relationships suffer. They have high rates of divorce. Women might recognize this difference and assume that men are the ones to be pitied. We might just as easily say: Women are so much better adjusted, so much wiser for preferring relationships to dollars. We might as easily say: Of course women prefer literature to software engineering! It's far more interesting. It has the power to transport, to move hearts and minds. Literature is the story one generaton tells to the next. So many women study, teach and produce great literature. Who is the wiser sex? Instead we presume that if men dominate the STEM departments, they must be occupying the university's Arcadia. If CEOs are overwhelmingly male, then women are being unfairly excluded- by men who outfox them, a system that diminishes them, preferences that lead them astray. We want to have it both ways: acknowledging sotto voce that Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, and Jeff Bezos have not enjoyed enviable personal lives, while insisting every woman should or would stand in their shoes, given half a chance. [...] We must stop. It's a dumb habit, thoughtless and base. It reflects an unflattering insecurity we shouldn't indulge. The jealousy at its heart suggests that either we believe women aren't truly capable, or they have somehow be duped, made victims by a "system" that, generation after generation, locks us out and shuts us in with so many glass ceilings and walls. It's an exhausting set of untruths. Worst of all, girls are listening.

Literary subjects as a whole enjoyed a great popularity at the Salon of 1839. France had a passionate addiction throughout the twenties and thirties to English literature, English history, and Goethe. This addiction is seen, for instance, in the extraordinary popularity of the historical novels of Walter Scott. Their pages held not only events and figures of profound interest to a history-curious society, but also a wealth of descriptive detail about the material side of life in other times: what people did, what their homes were like, how they spoke, how they dressed, what they fought about, what they believed in, and—most entertaining—whom they loved. These accounts, told by a fictional observer of the lower class, found universal favor. The educated admired Scott’s erudition, while all social strata loved his use of local color, description, and melodramatic anecdotes. Scott’s historical novel, by format and methods, is the primary literary source of the genre historique in history painting. Both were equally popular in the arts. Both directly reflect bourgeois tastes and were dependent for their proliferation on a new literate, commercial society. By the early thirties, the Scott repertoire was so well known that a Salon audience would have found the stories recognizable without a catalog entry.