Literary notes about grievance (AI summary)
In literature, “grievance” assumes a multifaceted role, conveying everything from personal anguish to broader social injustices. Some authors use it to depict intimate, internal struggles—as when a character is so absorbed in his own grievance that all else is rendered invisible ([1]) or when a personal wrong forms the core of an individual's emotional life ([2]). Other writers deploy the term with a hint of irony or humor to emphasize the absurdity of certain predicaments, as seen in the lively narrative tone of Dickens and the playful critique in Cervantes’ commentary ([3], [4]). At the same time, “grievance” can signal collective discontent—ranging from critiques of economic practices ([5]) to lamentations of public wrongs that resonate throughout society ([6]). This versatile usage shows how the word bridges the gap between the deeply personal and the broadly political in literary discourse.
- He was absorbed in his grievance and was oblivious of the boy’s presence, as he always had been.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - “No,” cried Lucy, remembering her grievance.
— from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster - Beg your pardon, sir,’ said Sam, when he had concluded, ‘but wen I gets on this here grievance, I runs on like a new barrow with the wheel greased.’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - Had Avellaneda, in fact, been content with merely bringing out a continuation to “Don Quixote,” Cervantes would have had no reasonable grievance.
— from The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Complete by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Usury, the inveterate grievance of the city, had been discouraged by the Twelve Tables, and abolished by the clamors of the people.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - And now when this second more tangible grievance has articulated itself universally in the mind of the common man: Peculation of his Pay!
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle
