Okay, I'll come clean. Even though I grew up in a household where everyone read all the time, I took to the habit much later in life. I still have spells of not reading and then overcompensating almost guiltily with a lot of reading. I don't enjoy book reviews because they hold out on the plot, such is it's design. But blame my grandma for early on attuning me to listening to someone patiently as they share their story. And this felt like that. Like you held my hand and you took me meandering through the childhood alleys of you coming to terms with complicated concepts of adulthood. All I can say is, thank you for taking me along. :)
Thank you for reading! :) Now this reminds me that I might have gotten the bug of storytelling from my grandmother. Her horror stories during summer holidays were something I looked forward to.
Thank you, Sayani. This was so heartfelt and engaging. I loved the snippets of comparison with modern dating, the interweaving with your own life (how books accompany our own stories), and the grappling with feminist themes. This feels like such a beautifully open question in my life: how can we adopt a critical attitude to relationships (when they are so clearly influenced by patriarchy) without the forfeiture of vulnerability? There is risk in self-giving, even more risk for a person whose self-giving has been required, or at least taken-for-granted. There is such an interesting interplay between the "private" sphere of love and the "public" sphere of social issues. Of course nothing is wholly private or wholly public, but I think that the naivete of private love must be preserved in a way that does not ignore social structures but also maintains a freedom, even in these structures. Perhaps love can attain a kind of "second innocence," not the first innocence of the blushing lovers who are blind to the other's faults and blind to the sacrifice that love may require, but a recovered innocence that recognizes the other's frailty, and the social's power, without reducing love to either (either a mere "putting up with" the other's faults or love as only a social/ political arrangement). There is a freedom in this dialectic, I think, between recognition of social structures and the simultaneous willing of the lover to surprise you, to open to you in ways that are not determined by such structures. This is a long and rambling response to your beautiful essay, but I think your defense of Bhaer is such an interesting recovery of a more mature love for Jo. I really wonder, if this fictional character were real, how they would continue to navigate their love for each other, for books, and for their lives. <3
Okay, I'll come clean. Even though I grew up in a household where everyone read all the time, I took to the habit much later in life. I still have spells of not reading and then overcompensating almost guiltily with a lot of reading. I don't enjoy book reviews because they hold out on the plot, such is it's design. But blame my grandma for early on attuning me to listening to someone patiently as they share their story. And this felt like that. Like you held my hand and you took me meandering through the childhood alleys of you coming to terms with complicated concepts of adulthood. All I can say is, thank you for taking me along. :)
Thank you for reading! :) Now this reminds me that I might have gotten the bug of storytelling from my grandmother. Her horror stories during summer holidays were something I looked forward to.
Thank you, Sayani. This was so heartfelt and engaging. I loved the snippets of comparison with modern dating, the interweaving with your own life (how books accompany our own stories), and the grappling with feminist themes. This feels like such a beautifully open question in my life: how can we adopt a critical attitude to relationships (when they are so clearly influenced by patriarchy) without the forfeiture of vulnerability? There is risk in self-giving, even more risk for a person whose self-giving has been required, or at least taken-for-granted. There is such an interesting interplay between the "private" sphere of love and the "public" sphere of social issues. Of course nothing is wholly private or wholly public, but I think that the naivete of private love must be preserved in a way that does not ignore social structures but also maintains a freedom, even in these structures. Perhaps love can attain a kind of "second innocence," not the first innocence of the blushing lovers who are blind to the other's faults and blind to the sacrifice that love may require, but a recovered innocence that recognizes the other's frailty, and the social's power, without reducing love to either (either a mere "putting up with" the other's faults or love as only a social/ political arrangement). There is a freedom in this dialectic, I think, between recognition of social structures and the simultaneous willing of the lover to surprise you, to open to you in ways that are not determined by such structures. This is a long and rambling response to your beautiful essay, but I think your defense of Bhaer is such an interesting recovery of a more mature love for Jo. I really wonder, if this fictional character were real, how they would continue to navigate their love for each other, for books, and for their lives. <3