As I did last summer with Lord of the Flies, I'm sharing Tyler's burden of wading through the verbose Victorian text of his assigned summer reading. There are so many good books I missed when I was in school, I find it a good way to share in his life, and build my own cultural literacy.
But I'm also being mentored by fictional characters.
I didn't catch this important list and learn from this description of a young Nancy Lammeter when I first read Silas Marner in 10th Grade.
1. High veracity
2. Delicate honor
3. Deference to others
4. Refined Personal habits
A description of this woman in part 2 as she sat to read her Bible jumped out and bit me too:
She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she opened without method, and her own obscure simple life; but the spirit of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy's character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past feelings and actions with self-questioning solicitude.
Still, why a teacher would choose this particular book to burden any modern 15 year old with over summer is beyond me! I am enjoying the story as a nice diversion to packing & moving, even though I find the text tedious. When there are so many classic books not requiring such concentrated mental effort to decipher the author's meanings, I'd wish the teacher had assigned something different for these days of summer when there are so many distractions to keep a kid from knuckling down with a Victorian novel!
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