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Literary notes about Remonstrate (AI summary)

In literature, "remonstrate" is often used to convey a character’s earnest protest or objection in the face of injustice, folly, or moral wrongdoing. Writers deploy the term to illustrate moments when a character’s conscience compels them to challenge authority or express disapproval, whether in states of personal grievance or public dissent. For instance, Shaw portrays a sincere, almost pleading remonstration as a call for accountability [1], while Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley uses it to signal a moment of internal conflict and disappearing protest once reason takes hold [2][3]. In other narratives, the act of remonstrating becomes a formal, sometimes ironic, intervention against prevailing norms or decisions, as seen in the moral debates of Dickens and his contemporaries [4][5][6]. Such varied usage underscores the word’s capacity to evoke both the gravity of ethical contention and the nuanced subtleties of interpersonal disagreement.
  1. They remonstrate sincerely, asking me what good such painful exposures can possibly do.
    — from Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
  2. Henry wished to dissuade me; but, seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate.
    — from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  3. Henry wished to dissuade me, but seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate.
    — from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  4. The last word grated on me; but how could I remonstrate!
    — from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  5. “And did you not remonstrate against such infamy?” asked the abbé; “if not, you were an accomplice.”
    — from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet
  6. While he lived, he could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate against, and even to refuse.
    — from Middlemarch by George Eliot

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