I mean, Elizabeth Gaskell's husband and father were both Unitarian ministers, so I don't think she was necessarily wedded to CoE doctrine. My theory is pure laziness.
Heh. I hope that this is not what's causing your issues, because it is creating deep conflicts in my life to know that if I have a sandwich at lunch I can't wear lipstick in the evening. (And oops, just saw that the vaseline advice is a no-go.)
This is going to sound like Terrible Internet Advice, but have you tried experimenting with cutting out wheat? My horribly chapped lips completely heal themselves whenever I avoid wheat, which is not enough of an incentive on its own to actually stop eating bread and pasta, but it's good to know that there's at least a root cause here. Other than that, the only advice I can offer is layering enough vaseline at night that you're definitely ingesting some.
It's explained at the end of the article. :)
This is fascinating! So, let's say that I was very active in early adolescence, but (hypothetically, of course) have spent the almost-decade since then sitting on the couch. Have I lost any of the benefits from that early activity by now, and should I give up and resign myself to slowly wasting away until my skeleton crumbles to dust in front of my computer?
"I’m now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I’m working at turning myself into a Seer. You won’t understand any of this, and I’m almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. And I’ve realized that I am a poet. It’s really not my fault."
I mean, I hate to bust out the evolutionary-psych shit, but there is a pretty good reason why plenty of people have genuine OMG BABIES feelings.
Have we already talked about how odd the sneaking-in of Cora's Jewish father is? I'm not an expert on Judaism/anti-Semitism in late nineteenth/early-twentieth century England, but it seems to me that it would have come up before now. (I'm assuming the decision wasn't made before "Levinson" was selected as her maiden name one or two seasons ago.) Could her Americaness have shielded her from being perceived as a double outsider? How ahistorical is it for the Crawleys' Jewishness to simply not come up?
I don't know, it seems to me that the more obvious point here is that the fact that she made people literally pick up after her writing underlines her wealth/conservatism/investment in the status quo. I'm not sure I can follow you the next step into making it a gendered critique--after all, one of the most famous bed-writers was the super-manly Mark Twain. As far as I know, though, he wasn't making his secretary get down on hands and knees to retrieve his writing.
If you're lucky enough to have someone who works for you, the least you can do is not treat them like shit or make their job harder. This doesn't seem to have occurred to Wharton.
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