“Did you know Anthony was a slave?" Letty asked one night in hall. Unlike Victoire, she was determined to raise the issue at every opportunity; indeed, she was obsessed with Anthony's death in a way that felt uncomfortably, performatively righteous. "Or would have been. His master didn't want him freed when abolition took effect, so he was going to take him to America, and he only got to stay at Oxford because Babel paid for his freedom. Paid. Can you believe it?" Robin glanced to Victoire, but her face had not changed one bit. "Letty," she said very calmly, "I am trying to eat.” FreedomGuiltSlaveRighteousPerformanceMisunderstandAssuage Book:Babel Source: Babel
“The only way he could justify his happiness here, to keep dancing on the edges of two worlds, was to continue awaiting Griffin's correspondence at night - a hidden, silent rebellion whose main purpose was to assuage his guilt over the fact that all this gold and glitter had to come at a cost.” PainHappinessGuiltRebellionCostsPulled Apart Book:Babel Source: Babel
“He didn't mention the family to Mrs. Piper or Professor Lovell. He didn't want to dwell on the things they represented - the fact that for all of his professed allegiance to revolution, for his commitment to equality and to helping those who were without, he had no experience of true poverty at all. He'd seen hard times in Canton, but he had never not known where his next meal might come from or where he would sleep at night. He had never looked at his family and wondered what it might take to keep them alive. For all his identification with the poor orphan Oliver Twist, for all his bitter self-pity, the fact remained that since the day he had set foot in England, he had not once gone to sleep hungry.” PoorRevolutionExperienceGuiltHungerAllegianceAssuage Book:Babel Source: Babel
“Strikers in this country never won broad public support, for the public merely wanted all the conveniences of modern life without the guilt of knowing how those conveniences were procured.” GuiltStrikesConvenience Book:Babel Source: Babel