Southern Womanhood – Wilbur Fisk Tillett (1891)

“Woman’s opportunities for work have increased. The number of single women who support themselves, and of married women who help their husbands in supporting their families, is much larger than before the war, and this class of women is more respected than in ante-bellum times. The number of vocations open to women is of course much larger than before the war, but the value in money of woman’s work is shamefully depreciated. No matter what work a woman does, men will not pay her its full value, not half what they would pay a man for the very same work. There is proof of this unjust discrimination in almost every female college in the South where men and women are employed to do the same or equal work as teachers, not to speak of other callings where they are performing exactly the same work for very unequal wages.”

***

“The growing respectability of self-support in woman is everywhere recognized as one of the healthiest signs of the times. The number of vocations open to women is constantly on the increase. Some modes of self-support are, and always will be, socially more respectable than others. In the report for 1888 of the Commissioner of Labor concerning the number and condition of working-women in the large cities is the following concerning Charleston, South Carolina:

[In no other Southern city has the exclusion of women from business been so rigid and the tradition that respectability is forfeited by manual labor so influential and powerful. Proud and well-born women have practised great self-denial at ill-paid conventional pursuits in preference to independence in untrodden paths. The embargo against self-support, however, has to some extent been lifted, and were there a larger number of remunerative occupations open to women, the rush to avail of them would show how ineffectual the old traditions have become.]”

The Context of “The Awakening” – Margaret Culley (1976)

Most married women in New Orleans, where the novel is set, were the property of their husbands. The Napoleonic Code was still the basis of the laws governing the marriage contract. All of a wife’s “accumulations” after marriage were the property of her husband, including money she might earn and the clothes she wore. The husband was the legal guardian of the children, and until 1888 was granted custody of the children in the event of a divorce. The wife was “bound to live with her husband, and follow him wherever he [chose] to reside.” A wife could not sign any legal contract (with the exception of her will) without the consent of her husband, nor could she institute a lawsuit, appear in court, hold public office, or make a donation to a living person. The woman’s position in the eyes of the law was conveyed by the language of Article 1591 of the laws of Louisiana: “The following persons are absolutely incapable of being witness to testaments: 1. Women of any age soever 2. Male children who have not attained the age of sixteen years complete 3. Persona of are insane, deaf, dumb or blind. 4. Persons whom the criminal laws declare incapable of exercising civil functions.”

The Awakening – Kate Chopin (1899)

Ch. XXXVIII

“The trouble is,” sighed the Doctor, grasping her meaning intuitively, “that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.”

“Yes,” she said. “The years that are gone seem like dreams-if one might go on sleeping and dreaming-but to wake up and find-oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”

The Awakening – Kate Chopin (1899)

Ch. XIX

It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier’s mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.

***

There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,–when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.

Ch. XXI

“To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts–absolute gifts–which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

“What do you mean by the courageous soul?”

“Courageous, ma foi! The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

The Last Tycoon – F. Scott Fitzgerald (1940)

“People fall in and out of love all the time, don’t they?”

“Every three years or so, Fanny Brice says. I just read it in the paper.”

“I wonder how they manage it,” he said. I know it’s true because I see them. But they look so convinced every time. And then suddenly they don’t look convinced. But they get convinced all over.”

“You’ve been making too many movies.”

“I wonder if they’re as convinced the second time or the third time or the fourth time,” he persisted.

“More each time,” I said. “Most of all the last time.”

He thought this over and seemed to agree.

“I suppose so. Most of all the last time.”

I didn’t like the way he said this, and I suddenly saw that under the surface he was miserable.

“It’s a great nuisance,” he said. “It’ll be better when it’s over.”

White Nights – Fyodor Dostoevsky (1848)

A Sentimental Story from the Diary of a Dreamer

Second Night

“Then how have you lived, if you have no history?” she interrupted, laughing.

“Absolutely without any history! I have lived, as they say, keeping myself to myself, that is, utterly alone—alone, entirely alone. Do you know what it means to be alone?”

“But how alone? Do you mean you never saw any one?”

“Oh no, I see people, of course; but still I am alone.”

“Why, do you never talk to any one?”

“Strictly speaking, with no one.”

…

“Listen, Nastenka. (It seems to me I shall never be tired of calling you Nastenka.) Let me tell you that in these corners live strange people—dreamers. The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or, anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature, which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise. 

…

It has grown dark in the room; his soul is sad and empty; the whole kingdom of fancies drops to pieces about him, drops to pieces without a trace, without a sound, floats away like a dream, and he cannot himself remember what he was dreaming. But a vague sensation faintly stirs his heart and sets it aching, some new desire temptingly tickles and excites his fancy, and imperceptibly evokes a swarm of fresh phantoms. Stillness reigns in the little room; imagination is fostered by solitude and idleness; it is faintly smouldering, faintly simmering, like the water with which old Matrona is making her coffee as she moves quietly about in the kitchen close by. Now it breaks out spasmodically; and the book, picked up aimlessly and at random, drops from my dreamer’s hand before he has reached the third page. His imagination is again stirred and at work, and again a new world, a new fascinating life opens vistas before him. A fresh dream—fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our life! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as though ill-humoured among us…. Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious person. See what varied adventures, what an endless swarm of ecstatic dreams. You ask, perhaps, what he is dreaming of. Why ask that?—why, of everything … 

…

No, Nastenka, what is there, what is there for him, voluptuous sluggard, in this life, for which you and I have such a longing? He thinks that this is a poor pitiful life, not foreseeing that for him too, maybe, sometime the mournful hour may strike, when for one day of that pitiful life he would give all his years of phantasy, and would give them not only for joy and for happiness, but without caring to make distinctions in that hour of sadness, remorse and unchecked grief. But so far that threatening has not arrived—he desires nothing, because he is superior to all desire, because he has everything, because he is satiated, because he is the artist of his own life, and creates it for himself every hour to suit his latest whim. And you know this fantastic world of fairyland is so easily, so naturally created! As though it were not a delusion!

Iroha – (794-1179)

[Japanese poem based on verse from Nirvana sutra]

All acts are impermanent
That’s the law of creation and destruction.
When all creation and destruction are extinguished
That ultimate stillness (nirvana) is true bliss.

Chapter 2: from The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra

“The law of what is created
Is by nature non-eternal.
Life ended, we leave the world;
Extinction is bliss.”

Fundamentals of Taxation – Pasquale Pistone et al (2019)

Ch. 1 – Introduction to Tax Policy

1.1. Fiscal policy and tax policy

Fiscal policy is generally defined as the policy to use government revenue (taxes) and government expenditure to influence the market (the economy). Tax policy is a subset of fiscal policy examining the revenue side of fiscal policy (i.e. the collection of revenue by a state).

1.3.1

For a government charge to be considered a tax, there are some common
traits observable in all taxes:
– a tax is a compulsory charge (i.e. not a voluntary contribution);
– a tax is imposed by legislation (government);
– a tax is to be used for a public purpose; and
– a tax is usually not tied to a specific service to be provided to the individual paying the tax (i.e. the tax may support services to the collective
and not the individual).

…

1.3.2. Theories justifying taxation

In assessing why states raise taxation, the first consideration is the justification for a state to raise tax (i.e. the legitimacy of the tax). This is one of the most neglected issues in defining tax principles. Taxes have become so firmly entrenched in the collective thinking that the more common approach is to ask what governments will do with the tax revenue rather than whether the collection of tax is justified.

…

1.3.3

The purposes for which taxes may be levied can be grouped into various
categories. The most commonly used categories include

(1) providing government functions (also called “state building”) such as government infrastructure and military;

(2) providing other public goods and services;

(3) creating greater equality through redistributive functions; and

(4) guiding behaviour in society (as tax can serve to provide guidance as to acceptable and unacceptable behaviour).

Categories (2)-(4) are sometimes grouped as elements of state-building or classified as “internal management”, which is the nature of what the government is trying to achieve (management of the economy and society). More recently, the influence of the global economy
and global society (discussed in section 1.3.2.) can also be perceived as a need for taxation (i.e. revenue is required to respond to these influences), which has been termed “negotiated expansion”.

…

Ultimately, the core of the justification of taxation largely has to do with the (general) purpose for which the tax will be imposed for the benefit of society and represents a blend of the benefit and sacrifice theories and the theory of social contract. Whichever description is used to justify the tax, governments are ideally served by a broad tax base on which taxes are levied that is fair, efficiently administered and responsive to societal challenges
and demands. The taxes levied should be levied legitimately and in an environment in which corruption, inefficiencies and inequities are minimized or eliminated. Developing a tax-compliant culture is equally important to tax policy, but this is only realistically achieved when taxes are viewed as justified and the obligations of the state with respect to the delivery of public goods or services are met.

Faust – JW von Goethe (1831)

Second Part, Act II, pg. 111

Thales

…For small means only unto small deeds tend,

But great means make the small man great

Act III, pg. 179

Chorus

Who peace and unity

Scorneth, for war’s array,

With impunity

Slays his hope of a better day.

On Sense and Reference – Gottlob Frege (1892)

pg. 4

Si duo idem faciunt, non est idem. If two persons picture the same thing, each still has his own idea. It is indeed sometimes possible to establish differences in the ideas, or even in the sensations, of different men; but an exact comparison is not possible, because we cannot have both ideas together in the same consciousness.