What exactly is sulking! It is a peculiar way of withdrawing into ourselves, very frequently associated with tears of commiseration for our own unhappy self. With a lump in our throat, we take a sort of mournful delight in imagining how the person who has wronged us would feel at this moment if he heard that we had met with a disaster.

We are itching, not to avenge the insult we have suffered by retaliating in kind, but to punish its author by shaming him. We wish so to arrange and manifest the consequences of his conduct (perhaps by inveigling him into a new set of circumstances in some way analogous to the former situation), so that his guilt, or at any rate his selfishness, callousness or whatever fault we attribute to him, will appear in a glaring light. We derive an unhealthy joy from representing to ourselves the chagrin and contrition of the guilty one as he becomes aware of what he has forfeited by his act of inconsiderateness, or as he sees us in a condition that reveals the gravity of his offense.

Sulking, then, implies an act, not of hardening but of dosing to. Whereas the truly meek one always remains open (even to an enemy), the sulker, even though remaining soft, lets the lids of his soul fall, as it were. He quits the kindly, serene attitude of love. Also, the resentment of sulking implies an inward crampedness in the place of freedom.

Moreover, softness in the sulker takes on a spineless quality incompatible with all strength of soul. Only an effeminate weakling can gain comfort and pleasure from wallowing in self-pity. Inseparable from sulking is an attitude of self-importance and self-centeredness. This, again, means a sharp contrast to meekness, for which a selfless attention to the fellow person—as expressed in the glance of love—is absolutely essential.

Whereas he who possesses meekness is ready to endure a wrong charitably, the sulker, though he too suffers it without retaliating, cannot be properly said to endure it. He only does so ostensibly: in reality, he forbears from hitting back precisely in order to make the offender’s guilt more conspicuous and thus to hurt him.

The meek man forgives the wrong his adversary has committed. The sulker, far from forgiving it, definitely resents it and charges his enemy with it no less than does the irascible man. The meek person is wounded by an uncharitable act, but it is powerless to deflect him from charity; in the sulker, however, a sting is left behind: he continues cleaving inwardly to the wrong with which he perpetually reproaches the offender—perhaps, indeed, more so than does the man prone to explosive anger.

Sulking is motivated both by pride and concupiscence

The sensitive person, with a penchant for sulking, is hungry for love; not that he is himself rich in love and eager to see his love reciprocated, but he craves the soft comfort of being ensconced in a snug corner, the gratifying sensation of being petted, cajoled, and pampered. He is generally of a soft-fibered type. He is greatly attached to the amenities of life; he spoils himself and wants to be spoiled by others. He is indignant at being roughly handled, not because uncharitableness as such wounds him but because he is shocked by an experience opposed to that of caresses and blandishments—his chief source of pleasure.