Gogol is a pleasant companion for a couple of hours of reading. His agreeable, good humoured tone ameliorates the misery and grimness of the story. The quality of the writing is conversational, confidential even. We can imagine him sitting next to us, telling us his tale, including us in a world which to him is ordinary and every day, but, for us, is a glimpse into one which is exotic and unreachable. The little life of Akaky Akakyevich Bashmachkin, ‘a somewhat short, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired man’ becomes important to us because of the warmth with which the narrator describes him. When he is teased by his colleagues at work, he asks to be left alone. The narrator describes the tone in which he speaks to them: ‘there was something in it that touched one’s heart with pity’. Akaky Akakeyvich’s vulnerability as well as his ordinariness make him an unusual but affecting hero.
His life gains a new focus when he starts to save up for a new overcoat; because of that ‘his whole existence indeed seemed somehow to have become fuller…’ The day he finally gets his new overcoat ‘was one of the greatest days in Akaky’s life’. He celebrates with the colleagues who don’t care about him, in a place and at a time which make him uncomfortable, and on the way home he is attacked and his coat is stolen. He tries to get justice for his loss, but the system is described as full of self-centred, self-important bureaucrats and he is left alone with no reparation. The end of the novella has a darkness and supernatural element which feels truly Russian. Justice, in the end, is done. After having read it, though, what is left is only the dim sense of the littleness of life and its struggles, and the hopelessness of the small man against the pettiness and casual thoughtlessness of others.
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol Николай Васильевич Гоголь
1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1809– 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852
He was a Russian writer of Ukrainian extraction.
The Overcoat: Шинель, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, as expressed in a quote attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “We all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’.”
As the (almost) total lockdown sets in properly, I have started to dig into my ‘to read’ pile. I did add to it significantly just before we all had to stay at home, knowing that I may not get another chance to buy the books I have been thinking of reading. Some of the books are short and can be read in a couple of hours. Others will no doubt take a few weeks at least. I love to read. I have recommended it on this blog often enough. I don’t read as much as I used to, or as much as I could. I imagine that most booklovers might say the same. Now that I have no work (or very little), I have plenty of time to get started on some of those things which I have been meaning to read.
I thought that I might try and post a book review every week, both to encourage myself to read and think about what I have read, and to share my ideas with you all. Maybe you can pick up one of these books. Maybe it will give you some new ideas of things to read. At the very worst, you might read the review and decide the book is not for you. At least, then, you’ll know which books to avoid.
When dark days come – and they have certainly arrived now – what do we do to survive? It seems to me that this is when stories come into their own. However we access them, through TV, film or books, these are the things that help us cope. They help us forget our own troubles in the lives of others, they help us make sense of our own feelings and they show us we are not alone.
Literature always has its followers. I am unashamedly one of them. But in the easy times, literature is seen as frivolous and unnecessary by so many people. I remember being asked (by a student of engineering) why I would want to study English at university as I could already read. Talk to many students now, and they may admit that it’s useful to be able to understand the written word and be understood themselves, but very few see the merits in literature. Essentially, though, literature is just a way of telling stories. Sometimes long stories, broad historical sweeps of time and a cast of thousands like Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Sometimes a short snapshot of time in one person’s experience like Keats’ poem To Sleep. War and Peace talks about war and death, families and relationships. To Sleep talks about the longing to escape the worries of the day into restful oblivion. Which adult looking at their lives and concerns does not number relationships, families, death, worry and rest amongst the things they think about?
I take two random pieces of literature, both classics from the 19th century, but you could take any example you like. All true literature deals with the human condition. It teaches us, shows us good and bad ways of dealing with crises, the myriad ways to love and hate, the struggles with our own minds and bodies. It looks into our souls and through it we can look into the souls of others.
Which of us does not look for guidance in this confusing world? And where do we look for it? Too often I think we look at our swirling mass of celebrity culture, the news cycle, vacuous entertainment and the empty pronouncements of the ‘famous’ on social media. What do we see there? Nothing. An absence of logic and intelligence, an absence of love and generosity, an absence of wisdom and insight. If there is a nugget of gold amongst the rubbish, we certainly have to look hard to find it.
Instead, why not look to the greatest minds of the past and present to guide us? I’m not suggesting that they tell us what to think. We should never switch off our critical faculties, whoever we are reading. I do sincerely believe that the writers of the past and present have lessons to teach us and insights to share.
If nothing else, they tell us that this has all been suffered before. We feel, in these days of COVID-19, that no one has ever been through times like these. Boccaccio’s Decameron, written in the 14th century tells of ten people who ‘self-isolate’ from the plague in a castle outside Florence and tell each other stories. It has happened before. And last time, at least in the imagination of Giovanni Boccaccio, people weathered the storm by telling stories.
Let this be a time to open your mind to the ideas of some of the most interesting, wise, odd and fascinating geniuses of history. Let this be a time to read!
I suppose we all have our anxiety level heightened in these days of fire, flood and plague, but for those of us already teetering on the brink of panic, how do we keep ourselves calm? The balance for me is between behaving cautiously and sensibly without getting too stressed and worried or going to extremes. With COVID-19 stalking our world, and apparently our governments being as clueless and illogical as we are, we are all facing this challenge. How do we separate what is important to concern ourselves with (washing our hands, minimising contact with people, avoiding large gatherings) from what it is useless to worry about (how our governments are reacting to the crisis, how travel restrictions will affect our holidays)? How do we regulate our behaviour from what is unnecessary and even harmful (panic buying hand sanitiser and toilet roll) to what is sensible and prudent (staying home if you have symptoms)? And how do we prevent the ‘rebellious’ amongst us from undoing our good work by throwing caution to the winds (‘it’s just flu’ ‘I’m not that ill’ ‘nothing’s going to stop me from carrying on as normal’ ‘that doesn’t really apply to me!’)
It occurs to me that this human behaviour is not just apparent in this health crisis, but is how we all struggle to cope with the stresses of our lives. Students behave in exactly this way when they are preparing for exams.
There will be some whose reaction to panic and worry is – just like the panic buyers – to behave in an extreme way. They may work ridiculous hours, not get enough sleep, constantly message friends with worried queries and panicky thoughts, and wind themselves up into a frenzy. Those who do this are not keeping a healthy balance. They risk damaging their health, mental and physical, and they don’t even necessarily do better in their work because of it.
There will be some who worry about what they can’t change instead of what they can – just like those who are constantly watching the news and social media and willing governments around the world to behave as they should. They will think about all the aspects of the situation which are out of their control rather than trying to work on those things they can (i.e. doing a bit of work!).
Then there are those who say, “I don’t care! It’s too stressful, I don’t want to think about it. Leave me out of it!” – just like the ‘it’s just flu’ brigade. They bury their heads in the sand, and so do not prepare for their exams.
I’m sure these are not the only reactions students have to the stresses of the exam season, but it seems to me that there is a definite parallel to the reactions we are all having over this more global crisis. What help this is, I’m not sure. For me, at least, it is helping me understand the crazy behaviour of people in the supermarkets who are thinking of their own welfare to the detriment of others, forgetting we are all in this together. It is helping me to understand my own spiralling thoughts and try to separate the helpful from the not so helpful. And it is helping me to understand my students and my own son as they prepare for their exams.
What can we do but try and understand each other, encourage and reassure each other, and work together to do what we can to improve the situation? Let’s see how it unfolds.
As a child brought up by a church-going Presbyterian, I was taught that to do things for others, whatever the cost to yourself, was the pathway to salvation. More than that, whatever value you have comes from what you do to be useful in the world. That sounds very worthy. What can be wrong with growing up believing this? I must admit, that this constant nagging in my head to help, to serve, to be useful, overcomes my laziness and fear and forces me to do what I can in the world. I am not the warrior my mother was and is, but I do more because of that voice in my head.
This world view has a dark side, however. It makes relaxing hard to do. Doing nothing seems sinful. I still find watching TV in the middle of the day an almost intolerable decadence. It makes guilt a constant companion. Am I doing enough? Why am I comfortable when others aren’t? The biggest of those negative sides, however, is the toll it takes on the individual giver. The needs of others are never met. Give all you can, and more, and there will still be aching need in the world. It saps your strength, it weakens and tires you. It starts to affect those who you love. You no longer have time for them, for your relationships. When you are tired and irritable, it is they who bear the brunt of it. When you give your time, you take it from your loved ones and give it to strangers.
You may be wondering why I am writing about this on my blog which deals with literature, reading and teaching. Or perhaps you have already guessed.
My mother, in addition to being a Presbyterian, was also a teacher. She gave her time, energy, thoughts and efforts to her vocation. She happily gave our toys away to the needy children in her class. She took things from home which I missed and used them for the benefit of others. She worked hard and, I really believe, tried her best for some of the poorest children in our area. The idea that you should serve and not count the cost is at the heart of teaching. Those who do it are often drawn to the profession because they long to help others. I think my mother’s Protestant Work Ethic exacerbated the issue, but it seems to me that teaching’s success and downfall lie in that very laudable desire.
The key to the problem is not in the idea of serving others, but in not counting the cost. Teachers are so desperate to help the children they work with that they are willing to practically destroy their own lives to do it. There are many teachers, no doubt, who balance their work and life beautifully. There are lots of teachers who are extremely happy in their profession and do not feel stressed or out of their depth. I am happy to even know one or two of them. It cannot be denied, however, that there are so many others who struggle to find that equilibrium. I think this martyrdom at the core of the profession is a key reason why. Daily on Twitter I read of people who feel they must justify themselves constantly. They have to tell everyone how hard they are working, how much they are doing. They want to claim that teachers have more pressures and harder work than any other profession. It is certainly true that a disproportionate number of teachers end up off work with stress and droves of experienced and newly qualified teachers are leaving the profession in the hope of finding a happier and less intense life in other fields of work. I am not sure that teachers face more stress or have a heavier workload than other professions do. I think the difference lies in the expectations the teacher-managers have and the teachers have of themselves.
Again and again I read in tweets on my timeline comments which suggest that to count the cost of that dedication is seen as selfish. People who feel burdened with guilt if they are off sick. People who can barely hold it together but carry on to the detriment of their mental and physical health in order to support their Year 11 classes or get Year 6 up to the SATs or whatever it may be. I have an admiration for this attitude as I have for my mother’s daily sacrifice of herself all the years I have known her. But with the admiration comes a degree of irritation. There is an arrogance at the heart of some of this thinking. The idea that my contribution is so important that without it all is lost, so I must carry on, whatever it takes.
The truth is, in all but the most particular of cases, we are all replaceable. I hope we will be remembered with fondness. I hope we make a practical, positive difference. I hope we build relationships and change lives for the better. But we are not the only ones who can do it. To ruin ourselves, eking the last drop of our souls out into the ever hungry mouth of that ever present need, is not healthy for us and not necessary for anyone else. However wonderful we are, others can step in. However fantastic our contribution, taking it down 5% or 10% will not cause anyone to fail or stumble, though it may make it possible for us to continue to contribute for many years to come.
I am not a teacher in a school, though I have some understanding of the pressures involved. I understand that much of the stress is imposed from above or from outside the institution. I know that the impulse to give and keep giving is such a good one. But, ultimately, senior management, the government, our society, will keep on taking from us until we say ‘no’. Until we say, ‘that’s enough! No more’. It is the responsibility of the individual, as well as of the institution and the profession, to look at wellbeing as a serious issue. To stand up to management and say – I can do this much and no more. To try and slough off the guilt and be joyful in grasping the freedom which lies outside of work.
What right have I to comment? None! How you all cope with your difficult, complex and wonderful work is not my business. But as a concerned outsider, I would advise a little self-reflective self-preservation. Just a thought.
I hear some demotivating advice given for revision techniques, and I feel I should redress the balance. I know that I am not an expert; I am simply someone who works with teenagers who are taking exams. It may be, therefore, that I have totally the wrong idea and others are more qualified to pass on advice. However, from what I see, students need something tailored to them and their needs, and need to be given time and space to work on improving their own work practices.
I have heard recently that a local school recommended (for the holiday) a diet of 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work and 8 hours to do what you want in every day. That last 8 hours, by the way, includes eating, drinking, washing, dressing and other vital daily chores. I would laugh if it weren’t so desperately counter-productive. This suggestion is not given in isolation. Barnaby Lenon, a former headteacher of Harrow, suggested students study for 7 hours a day over the Easter Holidays, according to a Guardian article published last year.
At first I thought only about how demotivating this advice would be to the ordinary student. Most students need encouragement and help in organising and motivating themselves. The suggestion that they do 8 hours a day is ludicrous. They will either try and fail, leaving them feeling awful and even less motivated than before, or they will laugh and think their teachers are fools, and be as little motivated and organised as before.
Now I am beginning to acknowledge that for the focused and driven student such advice can be just as detrimental. The student who wants to be the best, to get the top marks, will take such advice to heart. They may even go beyond it, thinking that if all students are meant to do 8 hours a day, then they must do more if they want to be the best. The result of this thinking is over-stress and over-work. Young people already put their peace of mind and their body’s health in jeopardy at exam times. Every school counsellor will tell you that. Not only that, but it doesn’t work. Anyone with any sense can tell you that after having done 2 or 3 hours of hard thinking, everything else will be a blur. If you get to the eighth hour, your best work is already a few hours behind you. The danger is you stare unseeing at the paper in front of you and remember nothing of it the next day when you drag yourself reluctantly to try and repeat the process. What we need to do is to teach our young people to work ‘smart’.
Do you disagree? Do you think that we should be aiming to the top of what is possible (in the hope that something at least will be achieved)? As I say, I am no expert. I do know a lot of teenagers, though. I work with a good number of students who find doing any work outside of lessons is a struggle. Instead of putting a number of hours as a target, we perhaps should focus on teaching our young people how best to organise and motivate themselves. We should be getting them to ask themselves what works best for them.
Perhaps the pomodoro technique is the best; 20 minutes of work and 10 minutes of rest, repeated as often as possible. Perhaps setting a particular time in the day when they always work can help. Perhaps carving out a particular place where they feel comfortable working can help – be that in a public library, school library, work-space or their own bedroom. It may be that working with others can help them get motivated. It may be that music helps them shut out the world and concentrate on the task in hand. It may be that they are task driven – they work until they are finished that element of work and then stop. It may be that time slots work better for them. The truth is, there are as many ways of working as there are people. Young people are inexperienced and don’t necessarily know what will work best for them, and so, I think, it is our job to speak to them about the different ways they can try and encourage them to find a rhythm that suits them.
Too often I hear comments like, ‘you can’t work while listening to music’, or ‘how can anyone concentrate in a busy room?’ and I realise that the teacher or parent is trying to impose their own study habits and preferences on their student or child. Who is to say what works for them? Only they can tell. We need to give them the information and space to help them work it out for themselves, while being careful not to sanction 6 hours of sitting listening to music in their rooms with little concentrated work done. The truth is, when they are 15 or 16 they are liable to make mistakes and need a bit of guidance. Even at A level and beyond they need a bit of help and encouragement. But if students are ever to learn to be independent learners, they need to work out how they should study. We can help them, but we can’t force them into a particular way, even if that way worked for us.
Essentially, as a mother and as a teacher, I have not got a definitive answer to the problem of revision. Hard work wins the day. It will always beat all but the most talented of minds, and will guarantee your child reaches their potential. The problem is always how to equip young people with the internal motivation to work and the sense to work out what is the best study method for them, without putting them off work completely. It seems to me that advocating 8 hours study a day is not the way to do it. What do you think? Am I aiming too low or are they asking too much?
I was sent this tweet by my son, who rightly identified it as something I would get incensed about, and after having read some of the comments, I feel even more strongly that I have to try and adjust this way of thinking.
The premise of the tweet and of many of the replies is that, as an adult, it is a failure to be reading books that were written for children. It somehow means that we aren’t as clever as we should be, or as we used to be. And the fault of this lies with social media, in this case, specifically Twitter. I feel there is so much wrong with this idea that I really do begin to despair.
I have said it many times before, but we do not have to read to the top of our ability all the time. How can anyone really do that? In fact, it is the lack of reading which contributes to the decline in our abilities. So, if you want to read Harry Potter for the umpteenth time, or get a romance from the teen section or the library, then that is fantastic. You are enjoying reading, and that, of course, is what it is for! What I would love to see more of is a wonder, curiosity and fascination with stories, characters and ideas. What I would like to see less of, particularly in the realm of reading and literacy, is a judgemental attitude. What is wrong with reading this book rather than that? Obviously, some books are more fun to read, open our eyes to the world more, are more poetically written, influence us more and so on. But who is to say which books those are? What I mean is, judge for yourself which books you think of as the best ones. If you are rereading Harry Potter, perhaps it is because you value something in that book which takes you back to it again and again. Why should you imagine there is something wrong with that, just because someone else finds the thing they are looking for in a different place?
The snooty attitude of so many literary types towards children’s books annoys me, probably disproportionally to any logical consequence. It smacks of the kind of condescension, which I am usually on the wrong side of. The rich, the famous, those au fait with youth culture, those who know about high culture, the beautiful, the thin – every one of those groups seems to sneer at me out of every magazine, TV programme and film. When it comes to books, I feel I can fight with the best of them, but I hate the sneery attitude just as much, even though I am not on the receiving end of it. When it comes to children’s books, I think quite a lot of the judgement comes without knowledge. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had in English Departments where it is clear the teachers have not read a single children’s book since The Famous Five. It is depressing how often broadsheet newspapers print top children’s books which have nothing published in the last fifty years, never mind things published this year. If you had read any books for young people, you would know that they are every bit as wonderful and varied as books for adults.
I like to go and search through the teen books in the library close to where I live. Children’s books are not a lesser option. They are often brilliantly written, interesting, complex. They talk about all the issues you may be interested in – love, death, pride, hate, politics, society. There may be a little less graphic sex and violence, but I can live with that. I just read A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it far more than I have many of the ‘adult’ books I have ploughed through over the last few months. What a beautiful creation of a world! What strength in the characters! What a fast paced, exiting plot!
So, let us not be put off reading because what we yearn to read is not considered good enough. Whether we are rereading or reading books written for children, it is just wonderful that we are reading and enjoying it.
That takes me on to my last point – that our reluctance or inability to read is the fault of social media. I agree that if we spend all our days looking at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and no time on books, then our reading will suffer. However, reading anything at all will always help. I read a great deal of stuff on Twitter, and it informs, amuses and educates me. As long as it is not all we read, then what is the problem? In the end, we should not blame our behaviour on social media. I could blame cakes for my being overweight, but it the fact that I eat too many of them (and don’t exercise enough) which is the problem. I cannot blame the cake for my behaviour. It is not the fault of the cake! Self-discipline is the issue here; a balanced diet of texts is best for our literacy.
To the person who tweeted that they were rereading their 8th grade book, I would like to reply – well done! Go for it! Enjoy yourself! May it lead you on to new pastures, things that you might never otherwise have discovered. May it give you the security and comfort you are looking for. There are enough things to feel guilty about in this world without adding what we read to the list. Now, I’m off to eat some cake!
It’s a niche subject this week, but it is something that has been simmering away in my mind for a while.
When teaching English Literature, we naturally teach about the texts and develop the skills required in doing so. When teaching English Language, we can choose the texts. They don’t much matter as it is how they are written and how the student can understand, analyse, evaluate and compare them that counts. Why then, do we offer the students such stultifyingly boring texts? So very often the subjects of the non-fiction extracts we see in past exam papers is so divorced from the lives the children lead. It is actually pathetic to notice how the subjects are the concerns of a middle-aged middle-class audience. Downsizing was a topic on a recent exam paper. Which child has ever considered that as an idea? We know that the examiner may be at that time of life where their children have left home and they are considering what the future holds, but how is this relevant for the average 16 year old? One of the texts recommended for comparison in the exam board’s literature is about an old man remembering his youth and a woman whose mother has dementia. Again, perfectly placed to interest me, a middle-aged woman, but of no interest at all to a teenager.
Why does this matter? Well, for the most able, it doesn’t. To be able to write about any subject which is put in front of you, is a great skill and one which is worth learning. To understand a topic, even though it is boring to you, or one you have never considered, that is also a skill you may well need in life. But for those who struggle, these topics make an already challenging exam even more difficult.
We all know the difference it makes to a child who does not enjoy English if we change the topic to one they care about. Read and write about rugby, or dancing, or fashion, or football – or whatever is your passion – and suddenly things don’t seem so daunting. Suddenly, you’re in your own world with familiar ideas and vocabulary. All at once, you are involved in something which means something to you. Recently I have encouraged a student who wanted to write a speech about how Mike Ashley is ruining Newcastle United and someone else wrote an email to Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club asking why they don’t spend more effort on encouraging girls’ rugby. Both students were engaged and interested in a way that they could not hope to be if the subject had been how to decorate the home or what kind of food you can cook on a budget.
Of course, everyone has different passions, and you can’t hope to please everyone. However, I’d like to suggest that some of these topics we see taught in school and we see on the exam papers themselves are deadly dull for nearly all students. They seem to be out of touch in a way which is staggering considering that we all work with young people.
I have been speaking mainly about the non-fiction extracts. It may seem harder to find subjects which interest young people amongst the musings of the nineteenth century classical writers. I’m not sure that’s true, though. Literature speaks of universal ideas like death, love, danger, loss and pain. Teenagers may have limited experience of these things, but they have a more universal appeal than some of the appallingly tedious subjects that have cropped up in the non-fiction paper. But don’t get me started on the subjects they choose for the unseen poetry comparison – Snails, cats and the weather – I mean, what were they thinking?
It’s always tempting to categorise characters in a novel or play. I feel we have a tendency to want them to be ‘baddies’ or ‘goodies’. We want to love them or hate them. No wonder the dramas where we can give this desire full reign are so popular. Comic book heroes and villains (like Batman and the Joker, Superman and Lex Luther), fantasy fights between good and evil (like Harry Potter and Voldemort) are so loved whole-heartedly by millions. It is not only for this reason, but it is a relief not to have to check yourself and say, ‘I’m sure they have their good points’, or ‘They can’t be all good – they must have their flaws’. We can just blindly embrace the caricature in simplicity and naivety. I love these black and white battles as much as anyone, and I also appreciate that many incarnations of these stories are introducing more nuanced characterisation, but I can’t escape the feeling of safety these stories give you. In these stories, there is no way of mistaking who is good and who is bad. If only life were like that!
Novelists and playwrights who have a desire to draw more from life and search for psychological realism cannot give us this warm, safe feeling. They wish to discuss life, what is important in the human condition, and we know that life is not as simple as this black and white division. Duncan, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, ironically states that ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face’ when he discovers that the Thane of Cawdor has betrayed him. Obviously, this is ironic because he bestows the title on Macbeth who will go on to murder him and take his crown. But he is right. Not only can we not tell by someone’s face, but it is also hard to tell their character from their demeanour. An older source says, ‘By their fruits you shall know them’. Perhaps this is the only true way to judge a person accurately, but this takes time, insight and wisdom to discern; most of us lack at least one of these attributes!
Finding out who is good and who is not is, however, a fruitless task, because, as we all know, very few of us are truly either. Most of us are a grey mixture of hopes, good intentions, selfish impulses and careless self-centredness. There may be a few of the human race who we may fairly say, whatever their good points, they are too overshadowed by evil for us to care about their virtues. Opinions may differ, but perhaps Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Jack the Ripper and Fred West may be amongst these. The rest of us, though, are neither perfectly good, or perfectly evil. The best literature acknowledges this.
Tennessee Williams put this idea into words when he wrote:
I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.
When studying A Streetcar Named Desire students often can’t wait to make Blanche the heroine and Stanley the villain. It simplifies a complex world. Stanley wins and Blanche loses. The society they move in determines that. The New South with its new and hard expectations damns Blanche, so Stanley’s shining of that cruel light on her vulnerable frailties destroys her. You can imagine, though, the ‘Polak’ Stanley at Belle Reve in an earlier time, being destroyed by Blanche and her kind and their snobbish distain. I am not saying that I don’t sympathise with Blanche. I do. Her life has been hard and she has found no refuge from the realities of death, isolation and loneliness. Her personality began to disintegrate and, as she crumbled, she sought help from her sister, only to be destroyed by her sister’s husband. She does not deserve the fate that awaits her at the end of the play. Williams’ sister was incarcerated in an asylum, and the tender feeling he has for the vulnerable may well stem from his personal experience. But Blanche is a promiscuous alcoholic who has preyed on a young man, using her position to form a relationship based on sexual need rather than love and respect. Her disgust at her young husband’s homosexuality is what ultimately drove him to commit suicide. Her guilt, and her need to hide it, contribute to her descent into madness.
Stanley, a war veteran who, no doubt, witnessed atrocities at Salerno during the Second World War, shines the light of truth on Blanche to discover her lies and fabrications. In another story, he might have appeared to be the hero. Instead, his violence, towards Stella who he loves, and then towards Blanche who he hates, makes his truth seem like brutality. He is a bully, not only of his wife, but also of his friend Mitch, whose vulnerability is easy prey to this ‘man’s man’. He shows no compunction in stripping away Blanche’s shell to reveal her faults and weakness. He has no empathy, not even for the pregnant Stella as he beats her, only to cry in remorse immediately afterwards. The coldest of all, he rapes Blanche. His prey, down and bleeding, must be finished off. He takes his pleasure, destroying her in the process. He also betrays his wife by cruelly torturing her sister to assert his masculinity.
Neither Blanche nor Stanley is unflawed. We may root for Blanche and hate Stanley, but each is vulnerable and destructive. Each is dependent on their environment for their power. Blanche’s environment is dying – the corrupt Old South was in decline. Stanley’s is in the ascendant.
As an audience member or a reader we need to have sympathies for the characters, or else why bother to watch or read? But in the end, it is the flawed, desperate human beings that attract us most. They tell us about ourselves, in all our ‘tainted glory’.
In another post, I offered you my musings about sorting books into levels. My contention was that we should not give books ability or age levels as that disadvantages certain types of reader and discourages almost all readers. Since I wrote that, I have been thinking about how teachers and parents can choose a book for a child when they have no expertise in children’s books. How can they gauge the appropriateness of a book?
It is obvious that when buying or borrowing books we need a place to start. Where many people start is the age range of the reader. As a parent, grandparent, auntie or otherwise interested adult, who is not aware of the books out there, this is where you might think of starting. Books shops divide the children’s section into age groups for this very reason. It’s quite useful too. It saves you doing a huge amount of research. There is some sense in it: children of five have wildly different reading levels, abilities and interests to young people of fourteen.
What I can’t get away from, however, is the judgemental nature of such divisions, useful and convenient as they are. Children might feel we are saying that they should not choose books from an age range lower than their own. How does that encourage reading? We don’t do this to adults. We don’t put the ‘classics’ section in the ‘higher ability’ bracket, and the autobiography of the latest Love Island winner in the ‘lower ability’ section, even though it is undeniably true that it is much harder to read Wuthering Heights than it is a current ghost-written autobiography. But we acknowledge that adults choose books for reasons other than their literacy level. It may be true that some could not read the classic book and others would be bored reading the autobiography, but there will be swathes of people who enjoy reading both.
As I have said many times before. books are about more than levels. They are about the genre (horror, gothic, romance, thriller..), the subject matter (trains, relationships, the Tudors, the drugs problem in inner cities…), the style (literary, colloquial, formal, humorous…) as well as a host of other factors. Might these things not be equally important ways of categorising books, both in libraries and book shops? Could we not work out the reading level before buying – by reading a bit of it or looking something as simple as the size of the font – and have our choice driven by what the book is about? After all, this is what inspires and motivates the reader, surely? It is how we classify adult books.
Now we come to the main reason why I cannot just advocate scrapping age recommendation on books altogether. How can parents determine the appropriateness of a book to its reader? As a school librarian I had to steer between giving my customers a wide, varied and interesting choice of books, styles, subjects and genres, and making sure little minds were not confused, horrified or offended by inappropriate ideas and language. To be fair, most of the horror and offense was coming from parents rather than children, and most children who are truly too young for a book would not make it far enough in to discover the disturbing themes or language. However, I do appreciate the point that, until a certain age, discussing abortion, suicide and alcoholism may not be appropriate. It may not be done at the level and depth appropriate to the child’s development, and many would suggest that children should not be reading about those kinds of things until they are in their mid-teens.
I have a pretty liberal view of what children should be allowed to read about. After all, children suffer bereavement, feel themselves to be outsiders because of race or gender, endure domestic abuse and see the effects of drug and alcohol abuse in their own lives in the real world. If these issues are discussed thoughtfully and in a balanced and nuanced way, then they should do more good than harm. However, I do understand that it is not my place to make the decision for parents as to what it is good for their child to read. That being the case, there must be a way for parents, and the other adults who are responsible for bringing up children, to find out if the book has the ‘right’ level of subject matter for their age. One quick and easy way to do this is to put an age on a book and be quite cautious about what that age range can tolerate as regards the intricacies of life.
The ideal would be that the expert in the library or bookshop could give you the information about the book you are thinking of borrowing or buying for your child, or give the information directly to the child. And, the parent is free, if they are concerned enough, to read the book too and work through any issues with the child as they go. The trouble is that quite often those experts are not available. In schools, often librarians have been replaced by over-worked English teachers or Teaching Assistants; in many public libraries there are volunteers rather than trained staff. Often books are sold in places like supermarkets where there are no staff on hand at all. Another problem, of course, is that what a child thinks they are capable of reading and coping with may differ widely from what their parent thinks. I am very far from thinking that children know what is best for them, but I have seen many instances of children being ‘protected’ from issues that they would be better knowing about. There are certainly instances of schools dropping the study of the holocaust in Year 7 or 8 because of parental complaints. Our common humanity (and what happens when we forget it) is something I think we should all learn about. But that is just my opinion.
And that is the point. We are all entitled to our opinion, and so the consumer and the reader need to have all the information to enable them to make a choice based on their own opinion. In conclusion, without taking away the very liberty of choice that I want to create, I cannot get rid of putting ages on books. Though providing expertise in assisting choice is always the best way, whether in providing trained librarians or trained booksellers.
The fact that there are fewer and fewer of these is more damaging than we can yet realise. The proliferation of ‘libraries’, or rather, collections of books, with no expert management, promotion or advice is a rant for another day.
Enjoy English 