vexed

classic literature

After reading more and more classics I have been beginning to understand older English. I believe it started with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, when I started listening to audiobooks while reading. It didn’t feel like something I was simply absorbing; it felt like something being spoken around me.

I’ve grown accustomed to the sound and rhythm of certain words through tone. The way people addressed one another, the softness and sharpness of their words—it all settled into my mind the way voices do when you grow used to hearing them.

Vexed is the word that stood out to me most.

“Do not vex me,” characters would say. It felt deep, more personal, like a disturbance of the spirit rather than a passing irritation. The word almost felt personified, as if vexing someone meant placing something heavy and negative onto them. People now use their ability to be rude so casually. Like words don’t stick.

Because I spend so much of my time subconsciously sympathizing with characters, and trying to understand why they feel what they feel, I feel just as vexed as they do.

People always say books change you but no singular book has ever done that to me. I never thought a book could reach into my personality and rearrange something. Now I’m starting to think it isn’t just one book that changes you—it’s the accumulation. The hours spent inside other minds. The steady exposure to different moral worlds, different emotional languages.

Maybe it isn’t dramatic. Maybe nothing in me has “transformed.” But I do feel slightly altered, like my vocabulary for feelings has expanded. Like I’ve grown more sensitive to tone, to intention, to the weight behind words. Reading hasn’t just given me stories but it’s also adjusting the way I understand people, and maybe even the way I understand myself.

And in case you were wondering my favorite classic, it is (at the moment) The Picture of Dorian Gray.

per sempre ora: not forever but for now

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your doll,

bambolina ⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚