Ship of Fools by Porter Katherine Anne

Author:Porter, Katherine Anne [Porter, Katherine Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fiction, Classics
ISBN: 9781504003537
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1962-01-01T03:00:00+00:00

She spoke aloud, astonished to hear her own voice: “I do know well there are many evil people in this world, many more evil than good ones, even the lazy good ones; evil by nature, by choice, by deepest inclination, evil all through; we encourage these monsters by being charitable to them, by making excuses for them, or just by being slack, as Dr. Schumann says. Too indifferent to be bothered so long as they do not harm us. And sometimes even if they do harm us. They don’t in the least care that we are being scrupulous to treat them fairly and honestly—no, they laugh up their sleeves at us, and call us fools, and go on cheating us even more, because they think we are too stupid to know what they are doing to us! And we do not punish them as they deserve, because we have lost our sense of justice, and we say, ‘If we put a thief in jail, or a murderer to death, we are as criminal as they!’ Oh what injustice to innocent people and what sentimental dishonesty and we should be ashamed of it. Or we go on blindly saying, ‘If we behave well to them, they will end by behaving well to us!’ That is one of the great lies of life. I have found that this makes them bolder, because they despise us instead of fearing us as they should—and it is all our own weakness, and yes, we do evil in letting them do evil without punishment. They think we are cowards and they are right. At least we are dupes and we deserve what we get from them.…”

She ran down slowly at this point, in despair and something like prostration, hearing herself with frightful clearness in the clammy silence. The others were thoughtfully arranging their plates and fiddling with their napkins. Dinner was over, they were ready to leave the table, and were waiting for her to finish her talk. Her husband sat like something molded in sand, his expression that of a strong innocent man gazing into a pit of cobras. After her instant glimpse of his face, she dared not look above his hands, folded across his stomach. She thought, Now, I have ruined his life; and it did not occur to her until later what she might have done to her own, which depended so entirely on her husband’s well-being. She had offended not even recklessly, just thoughtlessly, so intent on giving out her own opinions she didn’t care for anything else, against her husband’s main conviction on which everything else in their marriage was based soundly: that a wife’s first duty was to be in complete agreement with her husband at all times, no matter on what questions, from the greatest to the smallest; more especially, the faintest shade of public dissent was a most disloyal act. She need not hurry to support him positively—that would give the air of compulsion to her manner. No, hers was the amiable part of that silence which gives consent.

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