Literary notes about Whitewash (AI summary)
The term whitewash appears in literature with a dual significance. On one hand, it refers to a literal process—a coating applied to walls, fences, and other structures—often evoking the simplicity and labor of everyday life (as seen in the depictions of cottages and fences being whitewashed in [1], [2], [3], and [4]). On the other hand, authors employ it metaphorically to describe acts of concealing faults or attempting to purify one’s reputation, highlighting a deliberate effort to cover up blemishes in character or history (for instance, in passages that speak of whitewashing one’s character or even social compromises in [5], [6], and [7]). This versatility makes whitewash a rich symbol in literature, seamlessly bridging tangible craftsmanship with abstract moral or societal commentary ([8]).
- It used to be employed in the composition of a whitewash for walls and fences.
— from Toronto of Old by Henry Scadding - The edifice is nothing but boards, well whitewash'd inside, and the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by Mark Twain - Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ’long an’ ’tend to my own business—she ’lowed she’d ’tend to de whitewashin’.”
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by Mark Twain - But it was necessary that she should at once do something to whitewash her own character in her own esteem.
— from The Landleaguers by Anthony Trollope - And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering "whitewash!"
— from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame - Justinian, p. 175—209) works hard, very hard, to whitewash—the blackamoor.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - I as a manufacturer of fancy soap remove physical impurities from the skin; Whitewash effaces the blots that calumny has cast upon innocence.
— from Retained for the Defence: A Farce, in One Act by John Oxenford
