I was having a conversation the other night with someone who said, sort of apologetically, "I was an English major, but there are huge gaps in my reading." I think at this point this is the occupational hazard of, well, almost anyone. The pile of books on my shelves that I really ought to have read grows faster than I can attack it.
In a small effort to rectify this, I'm reading Twenty Years at Hull House, Jane Addams' account of her Chicago settlement house. I thought I'd blog it as I go along.
The first thing that strikes you is her hero-worship of her father. Modern people don't write like this; we want to see parents as people. In Addams' portrayal, her father comes across as a sort of Christ-like figure--endlessly patient, kind, generous, modest, and so forth. The childhood she describes in a small Illinois town is so perfectly idyllic that you can't help but wonder what dark secret she was hiding.
The other thing that you notice is how willing she is to castigate herself for her moral failings, but how much she shies away from discussing any other sort of pain. It's rather Calvinist--all her suffering comes about from her lapses in virtue.
But she was a frail woman, afflicted with a congenital spinal deformity about which we hear only once. She never married (Hull House was founded when she was twenty nine), which must have been a severe blow for a woman of that era. She clearly suffered from major depression, along with her health worries, but she attributes her depressive episodes to the squalor of the poor, and her failure to help them. I have no doubt that these things morbidly afflicted her while she was down--but I have a hard time believing that the mere sight of poverty (which after all, was also present in American cities) was itself enough to send her into a morbid fit.
The whole thing is cast along the lines of the sort of saccharine Victorian literature that is now blessedly forgotten. Yet it's absolutely gripping. Her motives are opaque, her grasp of economics abysmal, and her description of the people around her annoyingly scant--but she has an amazing eye for the world she lived in, and the fervor of a zealot.
Her treatment of Lincoln's death is also interesting, as I recall, and if you hate her take on economics, you'll really enjoy her chapter on visiting Leo Tolstoy.
Just so you know, the whole thing is available online.
Addams did not marry but she had a "Boston marriage" with Mary Rozet Smith, which probably involved a sexual relationship.
Megan,
Not having read Addams, I wonder if you could clarify the sense in which she “has an amazing eye for the world she lived in” given that she doesn’t much describe the people. What then does she capture so well about that world—architecture? political institutions? human behavior? communities of people with whom she lived or worked, albeit not individuals?
Speaking of books that we all should have read years ago, I'm finally reading (actually listening to, on my MP3 player) Atlas Shrugged, for the first time. There surely are some Ayn Rand fans here, including 'Jane Galt'. Don't you think some of it is a bit overdone? It seems like the same speeches over and over, and very extreme one-dimensional characters. It gets monotonous.
Even so, it's a good story (which I haven't finished yet). And I can see how it would have an effect - having heard that same "but the people need it" argument over and over in the whining voice of the narrator (who only whines for certain characters), I'm now hypersensitive to such arguments.
When I'm done with Atlas Shrugged, does anyone have any suggestions on which Ayn Rand book I should read next?
Jason: She's brilliant at describing institutions, general human emotions, desperate human situations. She is wretched at describing actual human beings; in fact, she barely tries. We don't know what they look like or anything about them other than their economic and social situation.
Ann: We the Living is her best novel. And yes, Atlas Shrugged is terribly overdone. Of course, that's what I like about it.
Megan -
Thanks, I'll listen to We the Living next, if Audible has it (or maybe I'll save it for last). And I'm enjoying Atlas Shrugged. It just surprised me a bit, at first, that it was so heavy-handed. Rand really wanted to make sure that she had made her point!
Thanks Megan! My brain is happy now.
I think jane addams was smart for inventing the Hull House. she was truly using her smarts in 1889.
I think jane addams was smart for inventing the Hull House. she was truly using her smarts in 1889.
I think jane addams was smart for inventing the Hull House. she was truly using her smarts in 1889.
I think jane addams was smart for inventing the Hull House. she was truly using her smarts in 1889.