Originally published at Juliet E. McKenna. You can leavecomments here or there.
This is really interesting. If you look back at the short story I posted yesterday, you’ll see that I have now edited one word. I have changed the line in question to
noting which pupils could now usefully be directed towards reading Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey.
Because in the comments on my main blog, a reader wondered why only girls should be directed towards those books, as the initial text implied. That’s a very good question and the quick answer is self-evident. There is no good reason why only girls should read Austen and the Brontes. Indeed there are many good reasons why boys should read the full range of such classic literature.
The longer answer is more complex and more revealing. Writing this story, I was drawing on my own memories of A Level English, where, yes, we studied Keats. This is particularly the case because that first impulse to write this story was prompted by a friend I have known since that very class. It was her helpful phone that turned ‘varifocal’ into ‘verifcation’. We went to the same girls’ grammar school, so in my mind’s eye, the class I’m recalling is entirely female.
Then there’s the Twilight angle which you’ll see in the story. Again, I’m drawing on my own experiences going into schools these days and teaching creative writing. It’s invariably a dreamy-eyed girl who askes me if I’ve read Twilight. (To which my answer is always,’No, I haven’t got round to it yet, but I do read Kelley Armstrong and Patricia Briggs and now you’ve read all the Twilight books, why not give them a try’.) So once again, in that particular paragraph, my writerly subconsious is full of girls.
The key thing here is that while the longer answer is very illuminating, the shorter answer is the one that counts. Because there is no good reason why this line should only refer to girls. In fact, changing the word to ‘pupils’ actively improves the story in several subtle ways.
So there you go. A real-life, real-time example of the editing process and what it contributes to the books we read. Isn’t that great?
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Comments
My refrained-from nitpick was: in that order? Northanger Abbey gives a cool perspective and a model of a happy ending. Any Bronte book is likely to repel some students from that period altogether.
Personally I'm all in favour of girls vulnerable to the 'he's a moody/violent/manipulative bastard but True Love and I will change him!' narrative reading up on eg the real Heathcliffe and whatsisname, the rotten husband, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
For Victorian Lit, imo the Victorian thing of starting a book with a lot of gloomy child abuse growing up before the actual story starts (Dickens also), is likely to turn off young readers from ANYTHING that starts with Victorian language. NORTHANGER ABBEY's heroine is well treated, and the cheerful satire is easy to grok, and the ending happy. That shows that at least some Victorian stuff is healthy and fun. So I'd start with NA then maybe P&P. Or start with Lizzie Bennett Diaries. Show them that sanity and health DID happen then, was the ideal norm in real life, as it is now.
I'm not sure there is any good path for teaching 'beware of abuse' within the Victorian canon.
(Darcy does superficially look like the Brooding Hero who can be Changed, and may be on that spectrum.) If there is such a path, I do think a cheerful non-abusive story would be the starting point, to establish a norm.
For a path somewhere in that UK civilized aeon, if allowed, I might start with Peter Wimsey -- who is definitely okay, as a norm. Then maybe some Georgette Heyer. Then maybe NA and P&P. Then, introduced AS bad examples, some Brontes.
Dunno.
Perhaps this is a clue to Jane Austen's continuing appeal, as being currently discussed on the radio etc, 200 years of P&P and so on.