Castles in the Air
Beth needs care. Jo writes sensation stories for the Weekly Volcano and hides the work. The editor strips the morals because morals do not sell. She darkens the material until she can no longer tell what she believes. Professor Bhaer names the genre as poison at a gathering she cannot laugh off. She burns the pile. The money had been doing a good impression of necessity until someone she respected made the cost visible.
Key Insight
Financial pressure and ethical drift travel together in small, defensible steps. You do not wake up sold out. You wake up a person who can no longer read her own pages without flinching, and by then the check has become a habit.
