Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Guilt drama is disappearing from fiction and life, offering a relief similar to curing illnesses.
In plain terms
Stories about guilt are fading away, which feels like a relief.
What can you take from it?
Less focus on guilt in modern stories reflects social relief.

Where it applies

  • writing fiction
  • studying trends
  • analyzing culture

Putting it to work

  • writing modern fiction
  • critiquing themes
  • studying trends

Questions to consider

  • Is less guilt in stories good?
  • Why does guilt disappear?

Another view

Guilt remains a powerful motivator and theme for many people.

More from Elizabeth Hardwick

  1. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, …

    Permalink to quote #4
  2. Sex, without society as its landscape, has never been of much interest to fiction.

    Permalink to quote #6
  3. Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquac…

    Permalink to quote #3

Related quotes

  1. Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp …

    Carl SaganCarl Sagan quote #2
  2. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places - whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest - where crime has been…

    Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne quote #3
  3. The twenty-first century is, and will remain, the Age of Insecurity.

    Rabbi Sir Jonathan SacksRabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks quote #3