Passion Without Boundaries
Re-experiencing the Brontë Sisters, Part Two
I am re-reading Wuthering Heights, and doing a slow study of the Bronte Sisters. I have decided to give myself no deadline and maintain personal permission to read whatever I please between my studies. (Part One to this little blog series I am attempting may be found here.) I learned long ago, when it comes to a blog series, not to force myself into a formulaic mold or dictate a strict schedule or I would set myself up to fail. I love my readers and want to respect their time and curiosity, but also, I write for me as a thinking process and this blog has been (over the years) a way to grow as a writer, a way to grow as an author, a way to grow as a human, and sometimes a way to pay an electricity bill. It hasn’t done that last bit in a long, long time, as I went un-monetized for nearly a decade, but once upon a time I did rely on my blog to keep on the lights.
Although I hadn’t picked up Wuthering Heights to read in quite some time, I had several copies in various editions on my personal shelves, none of which were the copy I read out of in high school or my early twenties. I have a tendency to donate things I’m not reading and acquire different copies with different editorial essays than the other editions, because I happen to enjoy reading essays. Even bad ones with bad takes I will find entertaining sometimes. This time I am reading out of The World’s Popular Classics Art-type Edition. They were inexpensive hardbacks made in the 1940s and 1950s, printed in New York, and mine has a little burgundy spine. I plucked it out of a library sale for $2. It used to belong to one Carolyn Coppock. She left her bookplate on the front endpapers. It opens with a 1930 Editor’s Introduction that discusses its uniqueness in literature, describing “the peculiar quality of its power.” (pg 7)
As an older adult, I am having a much harder time getting into Wuthering Heights. As a child and teen the intrigue for me was: Will this be a Human Redemption story? Or a Kill the Monster story? And it is, in fact, neither. (Or both?) Well, not in the expected way, at least. I remember loving it because it was neither and it managed to surprise me. I didn’t see the cautionary tale coming and I didn’t recognize the redemption arc for the secondary characters. As a child, I wanted the redemption story, the knowledge that everyone can be saved tucked neatly in my back pocket. As a teenager I was more of a cynic and wanted the monster vanquished and judgments doled out. As a forty-one year old, I’m just too tired for all these people. I don’t want anything to do with any of them… I don’t want to save them or slay them. I want to walk away, close the book, and read something else. For that reason, I have been camped out re-reading Wuthering Heights for nearly a month, when normally it would take me a few hours. I keep putting it down in annoyance rather than feeling the rush of curiosity I had when I read it for the first time. I keep ping-ponging away from the characters to see what others have to say about them in essays. An easy task because the author herself didn’t give us personal access to them, but told us the story through the gossip of several first person narrators, with varying levels of reliability. This writing tactic is equal parts annoying and clever.
“Not Nature, but Fate, seem to take the pen from the writer, and write for her,” H.W. Garrod states. Pinning down a “review” or even a “literary criticism” of Wuthering Heights that feels true and accurate is a struggle because the entire work feels feral, but it’s obviously a controlled feral, so you know there is a purpose if only you can step away from the roller coaster ride long enough to look at it clearly. The characters seem to fight against the pen itself, wriggling and writhing under the documentation of their actions. Perhaps that is why everyone focuses on the madness of the Brontës, even Currer Bell (the brother) touches upon Emily’s taste for the grotesque and praises Sidney Dobell for recognizing his sister’s ability to look into the human psyche, her desire to see things that are criminal as not necessarily rooted in evil. The sisters not only attacked “societal norms” (as so many critics say) but also seemed to have a complicated relationship with the literary tradition, flirting with it while attempting to disregard it. “Neither Emily nor Anne was learned; they had no thought of filling their pitchers at the well-spring of other minds; they always wrote from the impulse of Nature, the dictates of intuition, and from such stores of observation as their limited experience had enabled them to amass.” (pg 20)
The Editor’s Preface is also written by Currer Bell. There he discusses the wildness of the moors and the story. He warns the reader of the “perverted passion and passionate perversity.” He goes on to explain that “the single link that connects Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely confessed regard for Hareton Earnshaw–the young man whom he has ruined; and then his half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean. These solitary trains omitted, we should say he was child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s shape animated by demon life–a Ghoul–an Afreet.” (pg 25) Indeed, the work itself is “swarming with ghosts and goblins!” despite no goblins or ghosts in the traditional sense being present, but simply grotesque carvings in the architecture, bitter swirls of wind, and intrusions in dreamscapes. In typical Gothic fashion, there is “atmospheric tumult” and hints at the black arts, while the moors (symbolizing hell, the wilderness, the damned, the otherworldly) intermingle with the depictions of the characters’ souls.
I tossed the book in a bag and abandoned it for a week or so while I laid out Geometry lessons in my mind. One of the hazards and joys of being a homeschool mom is having many ideas crashing around in your head at once. I love continuing my education by educating my children and was willing to abandon Wuthering Heights completely as something “been there, done that” in my life, but was spurred on by the atrocities of the new movie trailer, featuring Margot Robbie and various other actors, sticking their fingers in each other’s and their own mouths, I had to revisit this “greatest love story ever told.” (The algorithm has me all wrong on this point, because I keep seeing these ads on the internet and I do not want to be seeing these ads on the internet.) I needed to understand where the disconnect lay between the story I thought I read and the one being advertised, because to me Wuthering Heights is as much a love story as Romeo & Juliet. Making that comparison it how I figured out why so many people have conflicting reactions to Wuthering Heights.
I suppose it is time for me to clarify. My hot take on Romeo & Juliet is that it is equal parts cautionary tale and satire. Romeo & Juliet, I think Shakespeare is telling us, is what happens when two teenagers deep dive into feelings without restraint or wisdom: everybody dies.
Wuthering Heights reads the same way for me. Unbridled passions, “love” without boundaries, destroys everyone around you and leaves destruction in your wake. The only hope of redemption is for the future generations after you’re dead because your passions gave way to chaos. Wuthering Heights remains, for me, a cautionary tale. It’s not a romance at all, as good, truth, and beauty was never part of the Heathcliff and Catherine equation. Instead, Heathcliff and Catherine embody toxic power struggle dynamics, passion for the sake of passion, and the two being in remotely the same vicinity of each other makes everyone worse.
We see Catherine’s passion being set up for sinful rage in the first hundred pages as Catherine “never had the power to conceal her passion, it always set her whole complexion in a blaze.” (pg 96) It reminds me of Susanna Kaysen’s observations in Girl, Interrupted: “Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.” Catherine seems to enjoy her manic episodes and passionate rages and reminds me of my toddler who screamed at me mercilessly the other day because she wanted to wear her shirt on backwards. The character has bought the lie that feeling of any kind is what makes us alive, even if what we’re feeling and how we’re choosing to show that feeling to others, is leading us down the road to death.
Then we have Heathcliff, neither man nor monster, but for sure a monstrous man. “Heathcliff to me is a sort of sprite of the bergs, a cousin to Mary Shelly’s monster, a creature of the northern mists, a gnome,” Philip Larkin wrote to Monica Jones in 1955. Mary Shelly’s Monster was created. Beowulf’s Grendel simply was, Heathcliff, we could argue was both born monstrous and created to be more monstrous (“total depravity of man” theology plus abuse and ill treatment he received). Heathcliff is where the monster metaphor meets the psychological truth of human nature. Having re-read Count of Monte Cristo last year with my oldest daughter, I now see a lot of the similarities in the revenge stories. Both go away and return better educated and financially stable, but that education and financial gain combined with their anger becomes weaponized and ruthless. On page 130 on my edition, Heathcliff is described as “not a rough-diamond–a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.” As humans we want so badly for education and money to refine character, but character is refined by Jesus Christ, not worldly gains.
What makes the book worth reading is the redemption of the next generation. Despite Heathcliff’s abuse, the cycle was broken, generational curses do not have to exist. Human beings are free to choose the gift of peace. I’m not done re-reading the book, but I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel while recalling what I do remember of each character’s ending.
(As an Amazon affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
“Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression.
Isn’t there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
The Brain Station and little Italian Conductors
An Essay of the Mind
by: A.Z.K.R.
The “Train of Thought” is a very common expression, that I’ve discovered is (at least for me) very helpful in visualizing and understanding my AuDHD mind, as long as you remember, it’s a whole train station and not just one train.
“The Brain Station” first came to mind when I was trying to explain why (I think) I tend to repeat myself and have the same kind of conversations over and over.
I picture a topic like a train car. When several topics/stories/memories/thoughts or ideas are connected in a way, probably not by one grand picture, but like how Spot It cards all have one thing that they share with each other Spot It card, they get hitched together on the same train, and most likely stay on that train together for a while—or indefinitely—so that if something gets brought up that triggers a need for one of these cars, the little conductor just brings the whole train in and unloads the information accordingly.
This idea came back to me when I was getting stuck in logic puzzles and geometric proofs. My mom said that based off of how I described “The information just being there or not” (and how she observed me staring off into space until an answer came to me) it seemed that, as opposed to just being incredibly stupid (my conclusion) I was just so smart that I was used to having answers come to me and not using my thinking muscles. So when I actually needed to think, those thinking muscles had atrophied. Now I understood what she said, but it didn’t quite ‘click’ in the right way until a specific proof in my geometry book about parallel lines. I was able to articulate that I understood the proof just fine, but on my own, I would have never been able to come up with and break down the steps to explain why the given was true, because it just obviously was true based on the definitions on the previous page. (Now the reasons for the proof were all, ‘because of this definition’ but I wouldn’t have realized I was supposed to write that.) Mom connected this scenario to the proofs and logic puzzles I had been doing and I was able to understand my struggle, which I explained to myself first through how reading works, and from there, to train cars.
I realized that my problem was like learning to read. In the early stages you learn phonics and sounding out. But once you’ve learned to read proficiently, you don’t need to sound out every word anymore. So, in my case, if for some reason I needed to sound a word out now, it would be as if I have completely lost the information of how because I haven’t in so long. (I can sound out words, but not with a very high success rate. I can read at a college level… and spell like a fifth grader. I might be being generous with myself on the spelling part.) Now we bring in the Italian Conductor.
You’ve learned to read, or maybe you can come up with a more suitable example, but you no longer need the basic, rudimentary, information for your topic of choice.
It is tedious to the little conductor to have the “phonics” and “sounding out” train car on the train of information responsible for every time you read. There are probably several of these reading trains depending on how much you compartmentalize school subjects; so to be more accurate, it is tedious to the little conductor to move these cars back and forth from each needed train. There’s probably a more useful car he needs to put in that spot, like word definitions that keep getting lost. (Let’s face it, if the words are in a bin like a coal car, the new ones will fly off the top anyway.) So, he unhooks the “phonics,” and “sounding out” train cars, and leaves them in the “Graveyard of Information” to rust.
Then, inexplicably, one day, you need that information. But it isn’t on the train. The little conductor goes to the graveyard, but he cannot find the lone rusted train car among many similarly rusted train cars he had thought wouldn’t be need anymore. On top of that, they’ve accumulated even more things that he’s forgotten for you, as you were learning more things. So, it’s lost. He’s missplaced this outdated information. He scratches his head.
“Eet-a ees-a not-a here.” (This is why he’s Italian.) So he shrugs and moves on. He has better things to do than check the faded label of every rusted train car to find one among thousands.
But, “Eet-a ees-a not-a here” obviously isn’t enough for your parents, or teachers, or what have you.
(No, for real, it’s not enough. My mother made me look up the translation for “It’s not here” in Italian. So, my little Italian Conductor cartoon in my head should be saying: “Non è qui.” Thank you Google translate.)
“But we taught you this! It has to be there!”
And they’re right, of course, it is there. You just don’t know how to remember it. You can’t talk to the conductor as far as you know. His telegraph machine is probably broken.
The even more irksome part is that if the memory of actively learning the information is connected to the information itself, (who am I kidding? it absolutely is!) then when Mr. Italian Conductor unlatches ‘unnecessary’ information he probably left the memory of learning it in the first place, also in the “Graveyard of Information,” still hooked to “phonics” and “sounding out.” Which means that you might only remember the parts of learning that are actively connected to still-relevant information. Which could just be a funny story you like to tell, or a particular lesson you loved for any given reason, which leaves huge gaps in your memory that annoys everyone. Especially your mom.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has a quote he wrote for Sherlock Holmes, along the lines of this: Everyone’s brain is an attic that must be furnished with the necessary information of getting through life. He says that this attic does not have rubber walls and can’t be stretched to accommodate information you don’t need. Which is why, he argues to Watson, that as a detective, facts about the solar system are a clutter to him, and he doesn’t need to know who orbits what, or how many planets there are, in order to solve crimes.
I think Sherlock is wrong on the part about not stretching our attic walls. We can, he’s just lazy. The answers come to him.
Maybe people have different consistencies of rubber, but I think you can stretch it. Like my mom said, it’s like a muscle. The part he is right about is clutter and furniture. While we work on stretching the rubber attic muscles, we still have a lot of crap to sort through and keep track of. That’s what the train station is for, to bring information in and out of the crowded attic, or across parts of it, you pick. Our problem? It’s this: The person in charge of maintaining and organizing the attic? He’s just as confused as your are, because he’s a just little cartoon Italian Train Conductor. And his English ees’a not’a too good.
(Mom is an Amazon affiliate, so she might earn something if you click through and buy that Spot It game.)
The Timon and Pumbaa Method
by A.Z.K.R.
Personality wise, my mother is always that tired, sarcastic, babysitting/parental figure in kids stories. She embodies the fish from The Cat in the Hat, Sebastian, from The Little Mermaid, and Zazu from The Lion King. But the other day, I didn’t compare her to Zazu, I compared her to Timon and Pumbaa.
She wrinkled her nose.
“Timon and Pumbaa? I’m both of them? The essence of two?”
While it sounds weird put like that, my point was how she acted in the homeschool community and within and outside of mom groups. She is the Pimon. The Tumbaa. However you want to say it. She lives outside of other people, she does her own thing. She chose not to be part of the public school system, why would she conform to a system set by anyone else? She isn’t someone else. She is the wild, bug-eating mom who adopts any floundering homeschool family that comes her way. Sure, she acts more like Zazu or Sebastian in the “someone needs to nail that girl’s fins to the floor” mentality, but when it comes down to her own lifestyle, she won’t let her fins be nailed to the floor. Not to be where the people are. Never to be where the people are, but to live in her own, private, homeschool jungle, eating grubs and educating the passing Simbas of the world.
Wild and Free
Once a year or so I choose an audiobook to listen to that is NOT for my children. I have an auditory processing disorder, which makes listening hard; but as a firm believer in working brain muscles, building skills, and asking for as few accommodations in life as possible, I work on my listening through audiobooks. It takes me months to listen to a book that I could otherwise read in an hour or two. (I read, according to my husband, extraordinarily fast.)
My audiobook choice the last few months has been Ainsley Arment’s The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child’s Education. I chose this one, frankly, because it was available on Spotify and as a homeschool mom for the last decade (and a homeschool aunt for the last two), I have tried to read anything and everything published on and within the homeschool community since my early twenties. It’s important to me to understand a lot of ideas to really feel comfortable choosing direction for our family. Although I firmly land in the Classical /Charlotte Mason corner of the homeschool realm, I have read a great deal on all the corners. I like that Ainsley Arment has as well. She has done her research, she has put in the hours, she is a fantastic source of information.
I needed the affirmation this week as I was recommending groups to new homeschool moms and realized I had been blocked from the one I was trying to recommend! I also, apparently, had accidentally been complicit to stirring a pot in another, by sharing it with people. You see, I classically educate my kids via the Charlotte Mason method, but I don’t limit myself to one particular curriculum or another. I refer to Ambleside Online, I look for ideas on The Charlotte Mason Cottage Curriculum, I utilize the free resources on the Well Educated Heart/Libraries of Hope website. I meet my kids where they are with resources I can afford. Many times I choose my own living books altogether, ones not mentioned on anyone’s published curriculum. For this, I’m not a part of any group. For this, I’m often evicted from certain communities for not doing the same thing the others are doing. If you don’t use Ambleside Online exactly as listed, I feel you are shunned by the AO purists. When I was using Classical Conversations resources as I saw fit, I was constantly admonished for not “trusting the process.” Veering my own direction as I meet the needs of my children is not leaving the path of God’s design, as I’m quite certain God does not have a hard rule on studying a specific topic in September verses February, or a requirement to do school for 8 months rather than year round, or that everyone has to been on the same exact topic at the same time in order to be part of a community. For this, I found Arment’s book a life giving relief after being a maverick black sheep in most homeschool communities. I show up for my kids to have people, I’m in the online groups for the exchange of ideas. I determined this week, I should probably just stay off the internet unless I’m blogging because my ideas are too fluid for those who write their own curricula.
The humor in this mentality amongst homeschool groups is that: aren’t we all bucking the system already? Why would those staying out of a system that doesn’t work for them choose to be a lemming in another system. Sharing ideas and curricula you’ve made is wonderful. I have some I’ve made as well; but when I share it, I share it knowing that it will (and should) be tweaked by the family using it. Why? Because each family unit is unique, each student is unique. I’m sharing what worked for me in case it works for you. I love reading through what works for others to see if it will work for me. The idea that our homes must all be identical is insane to me.
So without realizing it, I have embodied what Arment describes as “wild and free” for years, despite being methodical and extremely diligent. Being wild doesn’t mean abandoning guidelines, rules, or structure. It often comes with embracing rhythms rather than strict schedules. It comes with studying high school level Chemistry as an 8th grader, outside sprawled in the grass, but regularly sitting at the table for Algebra I. It means knowing that STEM can absolutely be prepped for through nature study. I actually had to defend that online earlier this week… the idea that a student can be fully prepped to engage in college level science due to their extensive nature studies was something I thought was common sense. Look at Isaac Newton, for example. People actually think you cannot study fractals and Fibonacci swirls, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, and calculus, without sitting in a classroom at a desk. I find this baffling. Nature philosophy is how every scientist from the beginning of time got their start, why does modern society discredit it so quickly?
If you are a parent doubting your ability to walk the homeschool path through graduation with you child, I urge you to read Arment’s book. Also try Julie Bogart’s The Brave Learner, Charlotte Mason’s Home Education series, and Law’s and Lygren’s How to Teach Nature Journaling or Anna Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study. If you’ve been on the homeschool path awhile and don’t seem to “fit” anywhere, read The Call of the Wild and Free and know that it is ok. Your kids are learning, you probably do have friends, it just doesn’t feel like it sometimes when people get pigeon-holed into “you must do it this way or the highway” mentalities.
To anyone reading this, I do not subscribe to the practice of gatekeeping knowledge. My toxic trait is: the second someone tries to do so, I absolutely think less of them. After reading Arment’s book, I think quite highly of her.
Timothy and the Dragon Defenders, Part Three
A Short Story from the Archives of A.Z.K.R., author of Tales of Porcelain Thrones: Middle School Edition
[To read Timothy’s adventure from the beginning, click here.]
Once the commotion of a moving dragon—scales against underbrush, plodding, heavy, footfalls, claws scratching against pebbles—all came to a halt, Timothy began to actually hear the sounds of the forest around him. A myriad of bird calls, most of which he didn’t recognize and sounded rather otherworldly, filled his ears. The wind rushed through the tops of strange trees and under it all, a distant melody, akin to a flute, danced with the leaves. The melody grew louder and Timothy looked about in curiosity.
“Who’s playing music in the woods?” He wonder aloud. And will I remember what it sounds like when I wake up? Beside him, Galen’s ears twitched in the breeze. Until he saw them move in this way, Timothy had thought they where some kind of developing horns.
Galen looked in each direction before starting down a path to Timothy’s right. It was faint and covered in soft grasses. Orange and white flowers waved, tickling the companion’s ankles as they headed to the ever swelling song. Then the music suddenly stopped, as did Galen, who then looked at Timothy and did the twitch with his shoulders that Timothy had decided to interpret as a human shrug.
The two stood there, wondering what to do next, when a small man half Timothy’s size materialized in front of them. He was a fawn, Timothy saw, but he had very little hair. Timothy’s thoughts flickerd again to Narnia as he laughed.
“I said I have no time for tea!” Timothy said, half to Galen, half to himself.
The fellow’s pointy hat slipped back on his bald head and flopped to the side. He scowled at the boy and his dragon.
“What are you two doing in my forest?” The little man demanded.
“Walking. It’s not like we knew it was yours. Or, I didn’t know.”
Galen burped.
“Are you here to smash my house?” This question was directed at Galen, who in turn, burped.
“What do you think you’re doing alone with a dragon, boy? Twelve year old civilian and taking such blatant sides in the war?”
“No, we don’t smash houses.” Timothy said. Then eyeing Galen, demurred, “I don’t think. How did you know I was twelve?”
The gnome-fawn-whatever he was, looked him up and down. “You look to be Twelve,” he said dismissively, arighting his hat as he did.
“You raised by Clubs?” He asked Galen.
Burp.
“What are Clubs? What war?” demanded Timothy.
“Clubs, my boy, are big, mean, and blue. They belch the foulest smells, as they are known to eat garbage, and they have a habit of smashing things. I was in fear of my house, based on the noise and smell. I tried to warn you away with my flute, but it seems you don’t understand music messages and came nearer instead. Dragons, however, are less foul. This one must have been raised by a Club Clan. They’re known to hoard dragon eggs under threat.”
“What war?” Timothy repeated.
“No time to discuss politics on the outside. Get in before we’re seen and I’ll give you your belated history lessons, and—well—news.”
“Seen?” Timothy looked around, then up.
“Not you, The dragon. They’re an illegal species in Zentop, by order of Lord Lucius of Romodore.”
He glanced at the dragon’s tatooed wing, and said “Come along Galen, son of Clubbers.”
Galen, of course, answered, with a burp.
[To Be Continued…]
Jane Austen’s Use of Satire In Northanger Abbey
by: A.Z.K.R., from Tales of Porcelain Thrones: Middle School Edition
Jane Austen was an author in Regency Era England. She wrote satirical novels and enjoyed mocking the frivolities of English society and “the Novel” itself. Satire as defined by Webster’s New Word Dictionary is a literary work in which vices and follies are held up to ridicule, satire doesn’t have to be funny, but Austen’s work definitely is.
Jane Austen was born nine months after the beginning of The American Revolution, she had several brothers, and one sister (Leithart 1). Austen was an avid reader and loved novels, but she still found them a little ridiculous. Austen wanted her books to reflect the real world, showing real dangers. Instead of writing about bandits and murderers, Jane’s villains included liars and social climbers. Jane Austen was fighting against stereotypical heroines, bizarre and dangerous social expectations, and the problems of treating novels like real life. Yet, ironically, Jane Austen’s novels were realistic, which was sort of the point. Jane Austen wrote about real problems in a funny way. Even for someone who does not live in Regency Era England, Austen’s characters represent real types of people and can help give young women the wherewithal to avoid the Big Bad Wolves (John Thorps) of the world and find their very own Prince Charming (Henry Tilney).
Austen starts her book Northanger Abbey with a mockery of a novel’s heroine. Austen does this by describing her heroine, Catherine Morland, as normal, and “almost pretty,” emphasizing her normality by saying her family was neither rich nor poor, her father was a clergyman, neither of her parents were abusive, and her mother was—unfortunately—alive. Catherine loves reading novels, but not history books. These are all in direct contrast to the kinds of heroines Catherine herself reads about over the course of the book, stories such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho where the heroine, Emily St. Aubert, is beautiful, orphaned, and well versed in the arts. Catherine’s neighbors, the Allens, a childless couple of some fortune, decide to take sixteen year old Catherine to Bath. Bath is a tourist destination in England, complete with spas, parties, and shopping centers, which served many as a ‘coming out’ excursion (Cunliffe 41). Austen was able to write about Bath well because she lived there. Even while making fun of novels, Austen used some of their troops to her advantage, such as having a relative or family friend taking a young heroine on a coming out trip.
In English society one couldn’t just walk up to someone and talk to them, you had to be introduced by someone you already knew, forcing everyone to rely on family, family friends, other acquaintances, or the master of ceremonies. At Catherine’s first ball Mrs. Allen laments constantly that they don’t know anyone of consequence, while Catherine wishes they knew anyone at all (Austen 30).
At Catherine’s second ball, the master of ceremonies introduces her to Henry Tilney. Halfway through a conversation that they were having, Tilney interrupts by saying, “I hitherto have been very remiss, madam, in the proper attentions of a partner here; I have not yet asked you how long you have been in Bath.” Jane Austen mocks polite society through Henry Tilney’s comical performance of asking Catherine all the ‘right’ questions, such as ‘how long have you been in Bath,’ ‘do you enjoy Bath,’ ‘Is this your first ball,’ et cetera. Tilney, although he thinks society is silly, still follows its rules, and remains a respectable young man.
Jane Austen uses Catherine’s naivety to point out how unspoken rules can be extremely problematic, and even dangerous. The real dangers of society were people like the Thorps, social climbers and narcissists, who used these unspoken expectations to put other people in sticky situations. The Thorps, through a series of blunders, suppose that the Morlands have lots of money. They had already met Catherine’s older brother, James, at Oxford. Upon meeting Catherine with Mrs. Allen, they supposed that she would receive the Allen’s fortune due to the kind way the childless Allens were treating her. They catch their mistake when Isabella Thorp becomes engaged to James Morland and she receives a letter about James’s future income, one that sounds reasonable to the Morlands, but is disappointing to the gold digging Thorps. Isabella attempts to break off the engagement to run off with Henry Tilney’s older brother, Captain Frederick Tilney, but this proves to be her downfall. Captain Tilney, unlike his brother, is a rake, he doesn’t care about any of societies rules, and breaks the social customs that were actually worth keeping.
Because the Thorps thought Catherine so rich, and John Thorp planned to marry her, and they gossiped about her wealth in order to make themselves look better. At a theater, they brag to General Tilney, Henry’s father, who then wished to have Catherine married to his son. In order to empress her he invites her to stay at his home, Northanger Abbey for a holiday. Catherine is naive and unaware of the Thorps deceptions until she receives a letter from her brother explaining Isabella’s behavior. She is totally unaware that money is the reason General Tilney is interested in her alliance. Henry however is aware that his father cares a great deal about money, and isn’t sure why he is interested in having Catherine for a daughter-in-law. With these events Jane Austen is showing us the true the ‘villains’ of society, and how Catherine was totally oblivious to their presence. She was so caught up in the idea of bandits and mysterious murderers that she could not see the danger at the end of her nose.
‘The Novel’ becomes increasingly important in this part of the story, as it leads to Catherine’s embarrassment several times over the course of her stay at Northanger Abbey. Catherine’s preconceived notions about abbeys, established while reading gothic romances, leads her to disappointment when discovering modern renovations inside the home of her hosts. She fails to find secret passages, or incriminating letters, as the heroine Adeline did in Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest, in her guest room and, worst of all it leads to a terrible confusion regarding the cause of Henry’s mother’s death. General Tilney is harsh, but not villainous. He takes good care of his servants and his estate, hence the renovations. He wants his children to marry well, thus his interest in Catherine’s supposed inheritance. General Tilney’s stony demeanor, combined with Catherine’s overconfidence in the reality of novels, leads her to make the worst of blunders: she makes assumptions. She speaks briefly to Miss Tilney, Henry’s sister, and finds she was not at home when her mother died, leading Catherine to assume no one was at home when Mrs. Tilney died. Catherine suspects foul play. Her blunder is discovered when she sneaks into Mrs. Tilney’s old room and is discovered by Henry. When she admits her thoughts, he admonishes her. He and his brother had been home when his mother had died, and she had perished of sickness rather than ill treatment. General Tilney’s behavior had nothing to do with skeletons in a closet. Catherine’s gothic fantasies stop here; she has learned and grown. The dangers are not ended, though.
The Thorps, angry due to their hurt pride, speak to General Tilney again and tell him not only that the Morlands are not rich, but that they were exceedingly poor, projecting their own flaws onto Catherine. General Tilney, in a rage, comes home and sends Catherine off in the middle of the night without a chaperone or money. The situation is quite unforgivable, but Catherine doesn’t yet understand and cannot fathom what she has done to displease General Tilney. Henry later comes to her house to explain and offer his hand in marriage, not just because he loves her, but because he feels responsible due to his father’s behavior. General Tilney, of course, does not approve.
Jane Austen, for all her realism, never leaves her stories with sad endings. Henry’s sister, previously forbidden, marries the man she loves, and by a novel twist of fate, now financially outranks her father. She demands that General Tilney allow Catherine and Henry to marry, and her will is done. Jane Austen defends the ending of her own book, at the beginning of the story, while talking about novels in chapter five. “For I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common to with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding— joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas!” (Austen 42) Jane Austen is talking about Catherine’s own habit of consuming dramatic stories, but she’s also explaining here, that despite her book calling out the faults in these stories, its still a novel its self.
The story is funny, you can’t help but laugh when Catherine finds not evidence of murder, but instead laundry receipts in the cabinet. This is not was makes it satire however, Jane Austen books are satire because of exactly how it is funny: elements of the story mock society, and express its difficulties, she’s calling to attention problems regarding expectations when they are appropriate and when they are silly. We’re lucky to have Jane Austen doing this is a humorous manner as opposed to long dry articles listing the problems of society like a grocery list. Not all satire is presented in a comical fashion, but a point is better made when it provokes some kind of emotion, either anguish, or in Jane Austen’s case, joy.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Signet Classic, 1996.
Cunliffe, Barry. The Roman Baths at Bath: Authorized Guide Book. Bath Archeological Trust, 1993.
Leithart, Peter. Jane Austen. Thomas Nelson, 2009.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Mysteries of Udolpho. Penguin Books, 2001.
Radcliffe, Ann. The Romance of the Forest. Oxford University Press, 1988.
The Year in Books
We read a lot. We are homeschoolers, so of course we spend a lot of time reading. I was at the pediatrician years ago with my oldest, an old man I didn’t know who didn’t know me… he complimented how articulate and well mannered my child was and then found out we homeschooled and immediately started lecturing me on the dangers of screen time and video games. I said, “Sir, we don’t even own a console.” He would not let up. He was convinced that being homeschooled meant we sat around and did nothing but watch TV and played video games. Funny thing is, now we don’t even own a TV. My teenager will tell you, we don’t have time for TV, because there are so many things to read. We play outside, we hang out with friends, we play musical instruments, we participate in clubs, she flies planes, and we read and read and read.
A lot of our books we read together, some (not not many) I read alone. This year (2025), we read:
- Writing to Learn by William Zinsser
- Napoleon’s Buttons by Le Couteur and Burreson
- Desiring God by John Piper
- The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (I actually read two different editions back to back with notes, as I was teaching it.)
- The Bringer of Fire by Oehler (I did not let my teen read this one)
- Why Read Moby Dick? by Philbrick
- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
- The Peter Rabbit Library by Beatrix Potter (this is an ongoing favorite and I love having babies to re-read these to)
- Why? by Anne Graham Lotz
- Rapunzel (all the versions, every one we could get our hands on)
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (another one I enjoy teaching to more than my own kids)
- Purgatorio by Dante
- The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
- All the Arnold Lobel picture books, including a few new ones I had not owned when my oldest was small.
- Jane Austen by Peter J. Leithart
- Hank the Cowdog by John R. Erickson (my son is obsessed with the books and the podcast, I think we have them memorized now)
- New Essays on The Great Gatsby by Matthew J. Bruccoli
- The Los Angeles Diaries by James Brown
- I Know Many Songs… by Brian Kiteley
- The Parrot’s Lament by Eugene Linden
- On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior
- Common Arts Education by Chris Hall
- You’re Not Enough (and That’s Okay) by Allie Beth Stuckey
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas
- Everything we could get our hands on by Trina Schart Hyman because we love her.
- Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan
- The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (an annual Easter tradition at our house)
- Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
- The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson
- Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
- A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte
- Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
- The World of Pooh by A.A. Milne
- Lightfoot the Deer by Thornton W. Burgess
- The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
- The Geography Behind History by W. Gordon East
- String, Straight-Edge, and Shadow by Julia E. Diggins
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Hamlet by Shakespeare
- World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down by McEwen
- The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis
- Drake Hall by Christina Baehr
- Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
- The Floating City by Pamela Ball
- Moth and Spark by Anne Leonard
- That Eye, The Sky by Tim Winton
- Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips
- The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday
- Beauty and the Word by Stratford Caldecott
- Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan
- The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
- Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton
- J.R.R. Tolkien’s Santifying Myth by Bradley J. Birzer
- Engaging the Christian Scriptures by Aterbury and more
- Journey Into Summer by Edwin Way Teale
- Kon Tiki by THor Heyerdahl
- Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
- Be Strong (Joshua) by Warren W. Wiersbe
- A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants by Jaed Coffin
- Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
- Sightings by Sam Keen
- Maisie Dobbs by Winspear
- Local Girls by Hoffman
- Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Stoppard
- How to Teach Kids Theology by Luce and Williams
- Medea and Other Plays by Euripedes
- The Infinities by John Banville
- Climbing Parnassus by Tracy Lee Simmons
- How to Keep From Losing Your Mind by Hudson
- Sharing His Secrets by Vickey Banks
- Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
- Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
- The Last Rakosh by F. Paul Wilson (straight to the nope pile)
- A History of France by John Julius Norwich (he is one of my favorite historians)
- Book Trails for Baby Feet
- The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
- Don’t Mom Alone by Heather MacFayden (a gift from my midwife after having baby number four)
- The Fall of the Year by Dallas Lore Sharp
- The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White
- Heaven by Jennifer Rothschild (donated this too)
- Cultural Literacy by E.D. Hirsch Jr.
- Bringing Up Boys by James C. Dobson
- Ourselves by Charlotte Mason
- The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden (we read this every Christmas)
- One Man’s Christmas by Leon Hale
- The Iliad by Homer (Fagles)
- Hallelujah by Cindy Rollins (another annual tradition)
- Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon
- Easily 300-400 picture books because I have three children under five and that’s what we do for hours on end.
I purged a lot this year, as you can see there’s a lot of chaff in this list. But I found favorites I will re-read with every child as well. We’ve been purging a lot as our shelves are stuffed to the gills (about 22 seven foot units retired from Half Price Books) and then some. I decided I don’t actually need more books, I need to be more conscientious about curating the ones I have, so I’ve been donating hundreds of volumes I’m done with every year… but we still have a packed inventory, because we are homeschoolers and we are readers.
As for this year, I truly enjoyed the chemistry titles. I actually enjoyed teaching high school chemistry, especially with the literature bent, essay writing, and speech giving I required of the students. The kids had more fun with the labs, obviously, but Napoleon’s Buttons, Faraday’s papers, and The Disappearing Spoon are all keepers, for sure.
I got rid of most the contemporary fiction, and kept the classics. I loved The Scarlet Letter when I read it in high school and I loved it even more while teaching it. The book as a whole is so much richer right after reading Dante’s Divine Comedy. “The Custom House” introduction hits so much deeper as an adult.
What did you read this year? Were they re-reads or new reads? A mixture of both? What was your favorite? What will you read again every year?
Traditions! (Hallelujah!)
A few years ago we started the tradition of celebrating Advent using Cindy Rollins’ Hallelujah! study of Handel’s Messiah and I absolutely love it. Celebrating Advent has been a new and gradual practice for me. About eight years ago. the church I was attending was lighting weekly candles at the front of service, but not spending much time explaining it and it provoked me to start doing some research in conjunction with learning about liturgical practices in the home.
As we settle into using Hallelujah! to enrich our family life, we’re adding in some of the things from the appendix slowly. This was our first year doing St. Nick shortbread cookies and I was pretty excited. Despite a few hiccups, we were pleased with our efforts. My oldest has been learning to decorate cakes off and on for the last five years, and she made icing and turned the cookies into little Christmas wreaths for an event the following week as well. We didn’t celebrate St. Lucia’s Feast Day this year, but little by little we’re adding traditions to our holiday season that line up with the Christian calendar.
In order to do that, I’ve been having to learn about the Christian calendar in general. I was not raised in a church that followed it other than Christmas and Easter. I knew nothing of Advent or Lent. I still don’t fully understand Lent, but I used Living the Christian Year by Gross as a starting point. It didn’t answer the questions I had, which as usual are questions I’m not even sure how to articulate yet, so I donated it to our church library hoping it will help someone else. I hoped to find more clarity by adding The Sacred Sacrifice to our Lent and Easter season, I read it last year when it first came out and plan use it again with my children during our morning basket time again this year.
It’s interesting because despite my children all loving classical music, my son used to beg to listen to Mozart as a toddler, they are fairly indifferent about these family traditions surrounding the Christian holidays and classical pieces. I’m curious to see how they feel about it the older we get as it becomes nostalgic and part of their family memories. When we first added the tradition of getting a live Christmas tree at a family owned Christmas tree farm, my oldest was also indifferent. But now they all beg to go to the farm as soon as Thanksgiving passes. They love the petting zoo feature, there are sure to be baby goats and tortoises. They love the outdoors and the bees and hunting down the perfect tree. They love getting subpar hot cocoa in Styrofoam cups (my husband makes amazing hot cocoa from scratch at home) and pumping Christmas themed rubber ducks down the PVC pipe racing shoots… these things have come to mean the beginning of the Christmas season to them and I love that.
Another tradition we have added to our lives is listening to The Dark is Rising BBC World Service production: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvp7. The Dark is Rising book (and podcast) starts on the winter solstice, December 20th, and it’s fun to listen to the events of the story alongside the events of our own corresponding days.
What does your family do as a household tradition?
(As an Amazon affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
Timothy and the Dragon Defenders, Part Two
A Short Story from the Archives of A.Z.K.R., author of Tales of Porcelain Thrones: Middle School Edition
[To read Timothy’s adventure from the beginning, click here.]
The purple dragon roared fiercely. A river rushed behind it, the sun made the water glisten, peeking over what almost looked like pines. The sudden brightness pierced Timothy’s eyes and all his senses were overwhelmed at once. He was grateful for the warmth, but the sun beat down harshly on his skin.
“Good thing the basement wasn’t a wardrobe and this place isn’t Narnia,” Timothy said to the dragon. “I’d be freezing and I’ve no time for tea with Mr. Tumnus, I have a test tomorrow.”
The dragon roared. And burped. Bits of Mrs. McCracken’s jelly still lingered on the corners of its mouth.
“So you are?” Timothy asked.
The dragon burped again.
“Ok, then. I’ll call you Burp.”
The dragon shook his head no.
“Belch?”
It shook its head again, then fluttered its wings. The right wing featured a brand, or tattoo, and when they came to rest against the beast’s back again, Timothy saw the name, “Galen” etched into the dragon’s flesh.
“Galen?”
The dragon danced, a bit like the McCracken’s golden retriever puppy when someone dropped bacon on the breakfast room floor.
“Like the Greek physician?”
The dragon danced again.
“So where are we, Galen?”
Galen belched another round, evicting all the glass from the crunched Mason jars into the river as he did.
“Ew.”
The dragon seemed to shrug and began walking away.
“Hey, wait!” Timothy followed. Pebbles from the riverside massaged his bare feet, not so unpleasantly. “Seriously, wait!”
He caught up to the bumbling dragon, “So where are we, anyway?”
Galen burped, then stopped abruptly, and Timothy bumped into a tree to avoid running into him.
Anakalian Whims 