"The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight"
About this Quote
Addison lands a moral indictment with the quiet precision of a man who understands how cruelty hides in respectable homes. “Unjustifiable severity” is carefully lawyered language: not discipline, not firmness, but punishment that can’t defend itself in reason. He’s not arguing that parents shouldn’t correct; he’s arguing that when authority becomes temper, vanity, or control, it turns into an ongoing offense.
The twist is the “aggravation”: the injured are “always in his sight.” That clause does two jobs at once. It condemns the parent for a kind of captive-taking - the child can’t simply leave the scene of harm - and it exposes the psychological afterlife of severity. The parent must live with the evidence of his own injustice, day after day, in the face of the person he’s diminished. Addison implies that domestic tyranny is uniquely corrosive because it collapses the distance that lets wrongdoing feel abstract. A politician can forget the voters; a harsh parent eats dinner across from the consequences.
The subtext is also about power’s self-deception. If the child remains visible, the parent has to keep justifying the severity to himself, doubling down, hardening into righteousness. That’s the real “loading”: each encounter becomes a fresh provocation to either repent or rationalize.
Context matters. Writing in an age when paternal authority was near-sacred, Addison smuggles a reformist ethic into a sentence that sounds merely observant. The elegance is strategic: an 18th-century warning about how private cruelty manufactures public character, one household at a time.
The twist is the “aggravation”: the injured are “always in his sight.” That clause does two jobs at once. It condemns the parent for a kind of captive-taking - the child can’t simply leave the scene of harm - and it exposes the psychological afterlife of severity. The parent must live with the evidence of his own injustice, day after day, in the face of the person he’s diminished. Addison implies that domestic tyranny is uniquely corrosive because it collapses the distance that lets wrongdoing feel abstract. A politician can forget the voters; a harsh parent eats dinner across from the consequences.
The subtext is also about power’s self-deception. If the child remains visible, the parent has to keep justifying the severity to himself, doubling down, hardening into righteousness. That’s the real “loading”: each encounter becomes a fresh provocation to either repent or rationalize.
Context matters. Writing in an age when paternal authority was near-sacred, Addison smuggles a reformist ethic into a sentence that sounds merely observant. The elegance is strategic: an 18th-century warning about how private cruelty manufactures public character, one household at a time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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