Greetings, fellow readers! At some point in your reading lives, I'm sure you've encountered some statements similar to these:
"Isn't reading just a form of escapism and wishful thinking?"
"Shouldn't books focus on, you know, serious issues?"
"We shouldn't read fairy tales to kids because it keeps them from living in the Real World."
Even the great Jane Austen had to deal with the attitude that novels did not count as Serious Literature. In fact, her novel Northanger Abbey has an entire chapter devoted to Austen's own apologia for novel reading. In her day, Cultured People read poetry, and novels were seen as trashy and frivolous. Austen argued that novels are worthy; in fact, her heroine, Catherine, uses her vast experience reading novels to uncover the mystery of Northanger Abbey. Far from being a form of escapism, novels can teach us and comfort us when our circumstances are miserable and inescapable, which brings me to my theme for this post.
Over the weekend, I went camping at Skidaway Island in Georga with some friends from the Honors Program Ambassadors club at my school. This trip was supposed to be a fun experience for us to bond and honor the graduating seniors, but the reality was not nearly so rosy. By the time we arrived at the campsite, it was pitch black and raining buckets. Everything was so wet we were unable to start a fire; all we could do was huddle inside a small shelter and eat our s'more ingredients raw as we tried to keep warm. To make matters worse, we had no tarps laid down under our tents. Not only was the floor of my tent one giant lake, but all my gear was waterlogged, and the tent roof leaked.
Now, let me pause for a moment to say I've survived many a bad camping trip in my day. I've slogged through rain, eaten food covered in onion juice because someone forgot to keep the pungent food off the rest of our meals, gotten lost in the woods, and my personal favorite, huddled under a tarp on an airfield in Canada amidst the wildest thunderstorm ever, but I have never lost my faith that things would be ok. This camping trip was entirely without hope or succor. I slept not a wink, and around 2 AM, thoroughly disheartened by my situation, I decided to pick up a book in the hopes of making myself feel at least a little bit better.
The soft light of my Kindle paperwhite illuminated the tent as my eyes drank in the familiar words of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. (Yes, I know you're supposed to be in the wilderness and commune with nature when you're out camping, but at this point, I didn't give a sh!t. I just wanted to be happy, and we live in the 21st century, dammit! I wasn't about to deprive myself of a good book just because I happened to be out in the woods.) Little Women is a book that never fails to remind me of home, perhaps because growing up, my mom, my sisters, and I were known as "the little women" among our friends. Also, when my mom was really sick after I was born, my dad took her to see the movie with Winona Ryder as Jo when she got out of the hospital--he was the only man in the theater, and it's a mark of his love and respect for my mom that he didn't care a bit. When I was little, Dad and I made our own version of the March girls' Pickwick Society (I still have our little handmade newspapers), and on our way to Canada (of rain-lashed airfield fame mentioned above), we stopped at Orchard House, the real life home of Alcott and her family and the inspiration for the Marches' house in the novel.
I read until just before sunrise, which was around 7 AM. Though I was exhausted, soaked, and sore by the time I stumbled out of the tent, my heart and mind were happy, still filled with visions of the girls and Marmee sitting around the fire, reading letters from Father, of Laurie and Jo dancing at the Gardners' Christmas party, of Amy losing her limes to the little Irish children, of Meg's tender courtship with John Brooke. The book didn't make my situation go away, but it did make me feel better, and that's a powerful thing. You may call reading books escapism if you want, but you cannot deny the power of literature to improve our state of mind and affect our emotions. I will always be glad I had Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy there to help me get through that horrible camping trip.
Until next time,
Anna
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