This is beautiful and challenging, Elise! I had many 'main character' moments this morning, too impatient with my kids, too caught up in *my* ideas... but this piece reminded me to be more present to the perspectives of others. It's so interesting how we independently saw Middlemarch as explicitly challenging us to empathy. I think I read that Eliot wrote in a letter that she saw fiction as having an almost moral compulsion to inspire empathy. If that was her hope, she certainly succeeded!!
Thank you so much! I think, as a Mom, it can be a huge temptation because we are dealing with minds/bodies that are not fully formed/fully rational yet, and so we can easily assume an attitude of superiority and self-centering (which I think is different than a properly constituted attitude of parental authority/stewardship). It is wonderful to see how literature can touch hearts in similar ways! That's fascinating. I can imagine her letters would be very interesting to read. And she most definitely did.
This is beautiful and challenging, Elise! I had many 'main character' moments this morning, too impatient with my kids, too caught up in *my* ideas... but this piece reminded me to be more present to the perspectives of others. It's so interesting how we independently saw Middlemarch as explicitly challenging us to empathy. I think I read that Eliot wrote in a letter that she saw fiction as having an almost moral compulsion to inspire empathy. If that was her hope, she certainly succeeded!!
Thank you so much! I think, as a Mom, it can be a huge temptation because we are dealing with minds/bodies that are not fully formed/fully rational yet, and so we can easily assume an attitude of superiority and self-centering (which I think is different than a properly constituted attitude of parental authority/stewardship). It is wonderful to see how literature can touch hearts in similar ways! That's fascinating. I can imagine her letters would be very interesting to read. And she most definitely did.