The bloom is off, after months of close quarters: What can be done?
Welcome to the Literary Therapy Help Desk. This is something I’ve long dreamed of establishing: the afflicted bring me their problems and I send them away with a reading list. This won’t work for major traumas, but for the everyday “What is this nonsense?” type of ennui, well-chosen literature is a pretty good remedy. So, let’s begin.
Lockdown has got to all of us. Even the more flinty-hearted among us cop to impatience, frustration, fear and anxiety, loneliness, anger, impatience, restlessness, boredom, and, yes, even impatience. What we read has the power to enflame or soothe or redirect these emotions. This is why it is important to choose your reading material carefully.
We may have been yearning for more time to spend with our families for years, but after being stuck together day and night for months now, the bloom is off.
This is not creative advice, mind. In fact, I’ve lifted it directly from Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, and many others of note (but I’d be right about it even if I had come up with it all on my own). All manner of stress and strain have found new angles of attack during the acute phase of this global health emergency, and their effects are not the thing of a day. We’ll all continue to feel them in various ways, even after we’ve begun to emerge from our caves.
The lockdown woe I want to address with a more complete prescription is the surfeit of domesticity many of us are experiencing. We may have been yearning for more time to spend with our families for years, but after being stuck together day and night for months now, the bloom is off. What can be done? Perhaps you will find this an odd suggestion, but I advise you to read more stories involving families and their dramas, in order to rediscover, from a safe distance, the good and the hilarious in family life.
My list for you is not to help you escape, but to set you up to find humour and enjoyment with your family in these fractious times, not because it is easy, but because it can be difficult. May you find something to laugh at in the foibles, or admire in the devotion of these families, as well as your own.
******************
I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith: The Mortmain family’s genteel poverty means life is almost as limited as lock down confinement. The story is in the form of the journal of the younger teenage daughter of the house, Cassandra, and is an insightful, humorous, and surprisingly relatable coming-of-age story. Suitable for teens and up.
Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery: Set on Canada’s Prince Edward Island at the turn of the 20th century. Dreamy orphan Anne Shirley is accidentally adopted by aging brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. I would have said an excellent mother-daughter read (as my nine-year-old and I found), but my extremely bookish eleven-year-old son devoured the whole series of seven books, so the potential audience may be wider than I supposed. Suitable to read with children from about the age of eight or nine, but adults will greatly enjoy the books, too.
Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B Gilbreth, Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey: A semi-autobiographical story about growing up amongst the twelve children of the Gilbreth family. Funny, a great whole-family read, and bears absolutely no resemblance to the regrettable Steve Martin film of the same name. The sequel, Bells on Their Toes, is also excellent.
[E]ven as we emerge from seclusion, the weirdness and newness will continue. Some things have changed forever.
My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell: The first of three books by naturalist Gerald Durrell recounting his eccentric family’s years on the Greek island of Corfu. Also the subject of a recent TV production, which I have not seen. I listened to this book half a dozen times on cassette during childhood family road trips, and it always makes me laugh.
Eight Cousins (or Aunt-Hill), by Louisa May Alcott: A lesser-known work by the author of Little Women, which is also worth a read. Orphaned teenager Rose negotiates life with her six aunts, eight male cousins, and her guardian Uncle Alec. Like all of Alcott’s work it has what I believe is referred to as ‘a high moral tone,’ but it is gentle, humorous in parts, and genuinely uplifting.
Jane Austen: Any of her novels. (I’m not fond of Mansfield Park, though – don’t tell!) Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice show Austen’s dry wit and domestic observation at their best. Family is at the heart of every Austen novel, and in the least sentimental way imaginable: not all families are easy, but most are survivable.
******************
In lockdown we are in peril of feeling like we are on pause, or like what we are doing is a mere placeholder for the real life that happens out there. Of course, even as we emerge from seclusion, the weirdness and newness will continue. Some things have changed forever.
Modern travel, and even more so modern media, have stretched our horizons far beyond our towns. It can be hard to believe anything close to home could be as absorbing as the wider world, which, to add to its fascination, does appear to be mostly on fire at the moment. Harmony, productivity, and peace are elusive, all those projects we intended to tackle are an amusing memory, and Zoom and Google Classroom have taken over our lives. There’s a feeling of gritting our teeth and holding our breaths until we can return to our usual, rose-tinted routines.
These books will not do much to alleviate any of that directly, but they may help you see our circumstances differently, and to appreciate – for good and for ill – what we have where we are right now. That will help, now and in the future, whatever’s in store.
Victoria Seed is a writer and editor; she works in publishing.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.