Literary notes about fettered (AI summary)
Throughout literature, "fettered" is employed both as a literal depiction of physical chains and as a metaphor for various forms of restraint or limitation. Its uses range from the vivid imagery of bound prisoners and shackled limbs ([1], [2], [3]) to more abstract senses of being held back by internal inhibitions or societal structures, such as being emotionally chained or politically constrained ([4], [5], [6]). Authors like Dickens ([7], [8]), Twain ([9], [10]), and Poe ([11]) utilize the term to evoke a sense of confinement—whether it be the stifling of speech, the paralysis of grief, or the oppression of the human spirit—thereby enriching their narratives with layered meanings that connect physical captivity with the broader experience of being limited by circumstance or tradition ([12], [13]).
- They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,—an obscene and noisy gang.
— from The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain - She falters on, her way scarce knowing, As if with fettered feet that stay her going.
— from Faust [part 1]. Translated Into English in the Original Metres by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - [807] Fettered fast : Binding up their eyes.
— from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri - Hampered at every turn by my colleagues, fettered by the democratic system of which I should be the mere figurehead!
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie - If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - The prince has a taste for the arts, and would improve if his mind were not fettered by cold rules and mere technical ideas.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter some reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - 'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling.
— from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - His whole frame was racked and wrenched with fettered hurrahs.
— from The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner - "THE FETTERED LITTLE KING" A VICTIM OF TREACHERY
— from The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain - In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug)
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - Then again the kindly influence ceased to act—I found myself fettered again to grief, and indulging in all the misery of reflection.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - And at any rate, she lost nothing by continuing the engagement, for she has proved that it fettered neither her inclination nor her actions.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
