Status Updates From The History of Rasselas, Pr...

“Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.”

Imlac tells the kids about cultural relativism. “To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can be known.”

“I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their partners.”
This after earlier positing that parents and children are inherently competing against each other (after childhood), and that adults who marry (one in each couple) have to give up their path to follow the path of the partnership.

If I followed this, brother prince dismisses sister Nekayah’s take on family and marriage, ending that she’s hasty to conclude “from the infelicity of marriage against its institution”thus dooming the human race. “‘How the world is to be peopled,” returned Nekayah, ‘is not my care, and needs not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation should omit to leave successors behind them…’”

See previous
Prince disagrees. Nekayah says discord isn’t inevitable but also not easily avoided.
Prince says, if that’s marriage, I’ll stay single. Nekayah replies that she’s never found the prudence of the single “ought to raise envy.” It’s “a state more gloomy than solitude…” She concludes: “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”

The prince’s sister, Princess Nekayah, recounts her observations of family and social life.
“This parents and children, for the greatest part, live on to love less and less: and, if those whom nature has this closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and consolation?”

“Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at stated times to unbend their minds, and compare their opinions.” This turns out to be a not so good group of guys. Base.

The hermit they’ve gone to visit says: “The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.”

This little book is full of still quotable lines. This ends a discussion of how the Europeans differ from others in the world. “‘The Europeans,’ answered Imlac, ‘are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.’”

Academic introduction refers to “inconsolable gloominess” of the story

Series of “choice of life” stories