"One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me"
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A surprisingly modern kind of disgust sits inside Stowe's complaint: not failure, but the gray, self-satisfied middle that refuses even the drama of striving. She frames ambition as a binary because she’s mocking a culture that treats identity like a costume trunk. If you can’t be "grand and heroic", then at least be "stylish and fashionable" - the pivot is the tell. Heroism and fashion become adjacent options, two different ways of escaping ordinariness through spectacle. The target isn’t humility; it’s the cramped imagination of a society that substitutes surface distinction for moral magnitude.
The subtext is a critique of respectability, especially the 19th-century domestic order that prized composure over conviction. Stowe knew what "mediocrity" looks like when it’s institutional: people who can tolerate cruelty so long as life stays polite. Read against her abolitionist work, the boredom she names is ethically charged. It’s the tedium of watching comfort launder itself into virtue, of seeing big moral questions shrunk into manners, wardrobes, and social standing.
The line works because it weaponizes impatience. "Why try at all?" isn’t counsel; it’s provocation, a dare aimed at the complacent. Stowe’s voice here is less saintly reformer than sharp observer of status economies, where being "very" something matters more than being good. Mediocrity bores because it’s not neutral - it’s a choice to keep the world unchallenged.
The subtext is a critique of respectability, especially the 19th-century domestic order that prized composure over conviction. Stowe knew what "mediocrity" looks like when it’s institutional: people who can tolerate cruelty so long as life stays polite. Read against her abolitionist work, the boredom she names is ethically charged. It’s the tedium of watching comfort launder itself into virtue, of seeing big moral questions shrunk into manners, wardrobes, and social standing.
The line works because it weaponizes impatience. "Why try at all?" isn’t counsel; it’s provocation, a dare aimed at the complacent. Stowe’s voice here is less saintly reformer than sharp observer of status economies, where being "very" something matters more than being good. Mediocrity bores because it’s not neutral - it’s a choice to keep the world unchallenged.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
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