And though there was nothing easy about Fitzgerald's form of mortification, her snobbery about money and material possession was in part premised on that most English of possessions: the invisible superiority of her class.
So, in a very privileged way, I have a strong hint of what it's like for the people soldiering on with their makeshift lives after every dear and familiar material possession was taken from them.
The researchers quote William James's theory that our attachment to our material possessions is so strong that losing them causes "a sense of shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion of ourselves to nothingness".
As Jenna Garrett explained in Feature Shoot, "With SIM cards and mobile phones rapidly becoming hot commodities, Romano hints that be it practical or frivolous, longing for material possessions is a universally human trait".
The accumulation of material possessions is something you just don't have space to afford on a sailboat, and that ultimately fit in with how the Astins wanted to live their ideal life.
"What has happened in the last 25-30 years as India has become much more conscious of material possessions is that it has come back with a vengeance," she said of the fatal abuses.
We were poor, with few material possessions, but we wore our poverty with pride, because we were taught that material possessions were evil.
The narrator speaks to the camera and describes the shocking panic of realizing his or her material possessions are his or her closest friends.
But in disinheritance, material possessions are emblematic of withheld love; the individual has sought affirmation, approval and affection throughout life, and being cut off is the final raspberry on a sundae of rejection.
Of noble birth, Bhartrihari was attached for a time to the court of the Maitraka king of Valabhi (modern Vala, Gujarat), where most likely his taste for sensuous living and material possessions was formed.
