Fannie Louise
Fannie Louise is often ill at ease and a bit withdrawn, but always polite and pleasant. She would never make a spectacle of herself. She believes restraint is a virtue and visibility is something one earns by being right.
She is known as kind and caring, which is mostly true. Kindness is her currency. It buys her validation, and with validation comes the confidence to be morally certain about herself and others. That certainty steadies her. It tells her she matters.
She was raised on poverty and ignorance, and the quiet shame that clings to both. From this, she learned tight, small-town boundaries where faith steps in when evidence grows inconvenient. Her education at a small, religion-affiliated university in the Midwest confirmed what she already suspected, namely that doubt is dangerous and questions are best answered before they are fully asked.
She thinks and acts within these limits faithfully, even when others object. Objections are not signals to reconsider. They are tests of resolve.
In her personal relationships, especially with her brothers, her moral certainty finds its fullest expression. Alleged immorality in others does not merely concern her, it obligates her. She judges and exposes. Punishment, after all, is a form of care. And she does not see it as interference. She sees it as truth, bravely revealed, and moral responsibility.
She involves herself in family research with diligence and persistence. Documentation reassures her, even when the context is thin or nonexistent. Methodology is unnecessary when conviction is strong. Wishful thinking, conjecture, and inference do the heavy lifting, although she would never call them that. To her, conclusions precede evidence, and evidence exists to confirm them.
Her politics follow the same moral geometry. It is right, she insists, for the government to coerce Peter into paying Paul if Paul is in need, especially if she is Paul. This is fairness. This is social justice. This is morally correct. But if she is Peter, the geometry shifts. Then the coercion is at least questionable if not wrong. And disagreement with all this is intolerable.
Her appearance is practical, often unfeminine, signaling seriousness and not appeal. She does not intend harm. She believes she is being helpful, honest, and responsible.
What she lacks is not care, but doubt, and not certainty, but depth. She cannot free herself from moral certainty long enough to ask whether it is a substitute for understanding rather than its reward. She is what life, unexamined, has made her.
She is not cruel. She is worse than cruel. She is morally certain.
Copyright © 2026 Frank Zahn. Published in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Number 87, February 23, 2026, https://adelaidemagazine.org/feel-less-and-think-more.