Literary notes about Mortification (AI summary)
The term "mortification" in literature is deployed to convey an intense, often multifaceted experience of internal shame and humiliation, as well as the deliberate practice of self-denial for moral or aesthetic reasons. Authors evoke a sense of personal anguish by describing moments when characters feel crushed by embarrassment or self-disgust—sometimes leading to tears, despair, or silent submission [1, 2, 3]—while in other instances, the word signifies a calculated renunciation of bodily or sensual pleasures for spiritual or ascetic purposes [4, 5]. Its usage, ranging from the private agonies of an individual's failing pride [6, 7] to societal embarrassment and even physical consequences [8, 9], illustrates the concept’s versatility as both an emotional state and a physical condition, enriching narrative tension and character development [10, 11].
- On the first occasion I burst into tears (I do not care to own it) and had serious thoughts of committing suicide, so great was my mortification.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray - Anne, if I were to say ‘I seen’ before Mrs. Morgan I’d die of mortification.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery - Anne fully submitted, in silent, deep mortification.
— from Persuasion by Jane Austen - St. Paul shews the necessity of self-denial and mortification, to subdue the flesh, and its inordinate desires.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - But there is in my nature a strain of asceticism, and I have subjected my flesh each week to a more severe mortification.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham - Of those who were present, such as knew the prince listened to his outburst in a state of alarm, some with a feeling of mortification.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - but no, I had the mortification to be beneath her regard; she did not even perceive I was there.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - A longer period is unsafe, as cutting off the circulation may cause mortification.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook by Boy Scouts of America - Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low?
— from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African by Equiano - "If that were true, Celia, my giving-up would be self-indulgence, not self-mortification.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot
