Book Girl

by Sarah Clarkson

  I’m still struck by the way Anne came alongside me in my imagination during my teenage years. She challenged me specifically to friendship, something I was struggling to find after a cross-country move in my fifteenth year, as my shier, more introverted self emerged amid the fomentation of hormones and teenage emotion. My impulse in that season was to withdraw, to brood, but Anne’s cheerful openness to friendship—in unlikely people, in new places—her quickness to encourage and affirm and delight helped me to look around and start a conversation, a lunch group, a little book club of my own. After all, how could I expect Anne to find me a kindred spirit if I wasn’t willing to be one myself?

  When it came to larger questions of vocation and identity, Anne was still my mentor, a model of intellectual curiosity who loved books and big words and helped me to add those attributes to my idea of healthy womanhood. Anne answered my big, budding questions about self and purpose via narrative, in the image of a curious, imaginative, resourceful young woman whose stubborn optimism could not be defeated.

  Consider these quotes, characteristic of certain virtues embodied by Anne and encouraged through her story:

  Anne is curious, engaged, and full of wonder: “Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it?”

  She is plucky and ambitious: “I’ve done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the ‘joy of the strife.’ Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”

  She values friendship: “Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

  She loves to learn and isn’t embarrassed to say so: “People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?”

  And she’s downright determined: “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

  Apparently my friends and I were not alone in our enthusiasm. A simple Google search will quickly reveal how many women from vastly different backgrounds share a sense that Montgomery’s story was a powerful gift of discovery for them as young women. I found articles in major publications both in the United States and abroad with titles such as “Ten Things Anne of Green Gables Taught Me”[1] in publications from the Atlantic to Vanity Fair. When Netflix released a contemporary update on the beloved 1985 TV miniseries version of the books, literally dozens of articles sprouted up across the internet in praise of the red-haired dreamer whose vim, tenderness, tenacity, and intelligence were a model of womanhood to a generation of young women.

  And this was the reason I sent Anne of Green Gables to a little girl I’d never met. I knew that in a confusing, turbulent world where she will receive countless contradictory and often negative messages about what she, as a budding young woman, ought to be, Anne would come alongside her with health, possibility, innocence, and joy.

  This is the ongoing and wondrous gift of all good literature. I have long argued that children cannot think in abstract terms, but I’m increasingly convinced that adults cannot either. What does it mean to be good, brave, and resourceful? We struggle to define those vague, existential ideas, but we know exactly what they look like when we see them embodied in Lucy from the Narnia books or Dorothea in Middlemarch, or described in the sparkle and wit that is the spiritual writing of G. K. Chesterton. A great book meets you in the narrative motion of your own life, showing you in vividly imagined ways exactly what it looks like to be evil or good, brave or cowardly, each of those choices shaping the happy (or tragic) ending of the stories in which they’re made. Books teach us to take hold of ourselves—to be, in philosophical terms, agents, with the capacity to learn, dream, think, and shape the world around us.

  Stories, to my book-girlish mind, are the lifeblood of existence. They come to us first in the epic of Scripture, the one real story of the world, told by God, peopled by the imperfect, brave, striving, loving characters of the Bible who show us what it means to be fallen and yet to desire redemption. They come to us afresh in each generation through the works of great writing that echo Scripture’s challenge to choice and action, to creativity, to endurance, to joy. Word by word, the narratives we read equip our hands and broaden our imaginations for the real and daily narratives of our lives. It’s not that we read the tales of perfect people or unerring heroines. We read all kinds: comedies, tragedies, stories that show us the depth of our sin, stories that teach us the beauty of which we are capable.

  Regardless of the genre, stories form us. Each narrative shapes the tale we are weaving in the real and daily world, and I remember this especially because of the solemn note on which my kindred-spirited conversation about Anne ended that long ago day. One of my new friends from the conference was a teacher, and her wistful words toward the end of our discussion echo as a challenge to me both as a reader and as one who recommends books for others to read.

  “I worry about the girls I teach,” she said. “Anne certainly isn’t on their book lists. Their generation is far more defined by Twilight and teen magazines. I cringe when I realize that every word they’re reading is teaching them what it means to be a woman. I wish they had Anne or Narnia or Elizabeth Goudge in their heads instead.”

  I think all young women should read Anne. But that’s just the beginning. I think pretty much every woman should go on to read Jane Austen and George Eliot, Marilynne Robinson and Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton and C. S. Lewis, because these authors really do help us to understand what it means to be a woman of life and grace. Those authors work in the great tradition of writing that reveals what it means to be an agent in the real and urgent drama of our actual lives, and to do it with grace, love, and hope.

  For as a book girl knows, great stories shape us to live great life stories.

  [1] Samantha Ellis, “Ten Things Anne of Green Gables Taught Me,” Guardian, May 19, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/19/10-things-anne-of-green-gables-taught-me.

  Girlhood Classics: The Books That Began It All for Me

  (OR, WHAT TO READ ON YOUR WAY TO BECOMING A FULL-SOULED WOMAN)

  FOR MANY YEARS (eleven, to be exact), I was the only girl in our sibling lineup. This certainly toughened my muscles, of both mind and body, but it also meant I was sometimes in special (and occasionally desperate) need of some girl-only time. My mother, delightful woman, filled this need by instigating tea and reading dates for just the two of us on Monday evenings. We’d brew cups of tea (cambric for me, which meant it was mostly milk and sugar) in special bone china cups and find a corner somewhere in the house where the boys were sternly told (by me, though I’m sure the actual obedience had more to do with the lifted eyebrow on my mother’s face) not to intrude.

  Thus girded and sustained, tucked into a space just ours for the moment, we ventured forth together into a series of classic stories of girlhood, books chosen by my mom for the spunky heroines and girlish adventures she knew would tickle me and shape me for health, good sense, and curiosity. In compiling the lists for this book, I realized they wouldn’t feel complete without a list of the classics that began my love for novels, my sense of characters as friends, my deep awareness of suddenly having companions who dwelled in my very imagination and showed me the kind of girl I wanted to keep becoming.

  Let no one despise children’s books. I am entirely with C. S. Lewis when it comes to children’s classics: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally—and often far more—worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” Before I started writing about books for adults, I spent ten years studying and writing about children’s literature (in Read for the Heart and Caught Up in a Story), and I am convinced that great children’s books, in their clarity of language, in the disciplined simplicity of their themes, bear as much ins
ight into the workings of the human heart and its desires as the great adult classics. But they manage to do all that while being accessible to a child’s wonder and innocence.

  In the epilogue of this book, you’ll find a few lists of my very favorite picture books and childhood readers. But this list specifically speaks to the girlhood tales I love as a book girl, the stories that helped me rejoice in the possibilities of my developing womanhood, my own capacity for insight and adventure. If you missed these classic tales in childhood, I might suggest you begin with this list. To me, they are of equal stature with every other “grown-up” book in the lists that follow. These are the stories that continue to inform the way I think about womanhood, to shape my experience of the world as something wondrous. There is a value to innocence, to remembering the clarity with which we saw the world as children—something that is richly evoked in the following books. I find that the quality of these books, along with their emotional depth, actually equips me to evaluate the ideas of the novels I read now. I’m often struck when reading literary interviews by how many childhood classics shaped the novelists writing today. You could also explore these books in the company of a daughter or other young girl in your life, as my mom did with me. She says that one of the best parts of having kids was the chance to read all the books she’d missed, and our shared delight in them just doubled the joy.

  The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

  I wanted to be as brave as Bonnie, the doughty little heroine of this adventure tale, set in an imagined (alternative) history of England when it is invaded by wild and dangerous wolves. When Bonnie’s parents seem to be lost, it falls to her to resist the evil Miss Slighcarp and to protect her fragile cousin Sylvia and the honor of the family home at Willoughby Hall.

  Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

  I love the sisterly dramas in this novel—the entangled dreams and dramatic creativity of the March girls and their wise Marmee, as loyal to each other as they are humorously different and creatively bent. (Reading about their attic dramas and in-house post might have inspired me to a few such escapades myself.) But it was Jo, the burgeoning writer in her tension between ideals and home, her need for adventure, her love for family, whom I most identified with. A classic of exploring the bonds between sisters, the difficulty and wonder of growing up, and the capacity of family to survive both trouble and grief.

  A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  A Little Princess was one of the first books my mother and I read aloud together. It follows the story of Sara Crewe, once the wealthy star student of Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies, then orphaned and cast on the none-too-gentle mercy of the school. But she is undaunted: “Whatever comes,” she said, “cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”

  Also by Burnett:

  The Secret Garden

  Little Lord Fauntleroy

  The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

  Maria Merryweather may be orphaned, slightly afraid, and uncertain of what awaits her in the ancient home of the uncle she is traveling to meet in the hills of Devon, but courage is a trait of the “moon Merryweathers,” as is a love for elegance. Girded by lovely new boots and the comforting presence of Miss Heliotrope (her loyal governess), Maria rises to meet the occasion and soon finds she will need both her courage and a strong character to defend Moonacre Manor, the home she comes to love, from the old feuds brooding on its borders. A magical tale blending fantastical elements with real-life detail in a captivating weave.

  The Story Girl by L. M. Montgomery

  You’ll encounter my love for the Anne books in other lists, so here I’ll mention one of Montgomery’s lesser known but oh-so-vivid characters in a story of siblings and childhood fancy. Sara Stanley is a girl with the gift of story whose powerful imagination seems able to draw those who listen right into her tales, including the cousins whose many foibles, adventures, and squabbles she shares. Montgomery demonstrates her usual skill in capturing the pettiness and affection of family, the tempest in a teacup of a small-town world, and the way beauty haunts and brightens the ordinary.

  The Railway Children by E. Nesbit

  When disaster strikes a Victorian family in London, forcing Mother and the siblings Bobbie (Roberta), Phyllis, and Peter to leave their townhome for a country house of questionable upkeep and a much more frugal existence, they find themselves in a new world of responsibility and unimagined adventure, at the heart of which are the daily trains they watch like friends. As an older sister, I felt such sympathy with Bobbie in her quest to help her mother and be a good example to her siblings amid their many explorations.

  Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter

  Pollyanna is an orphan, sent to live with her stern and wealthy aunt after the death of her beloved father. But she is a girl of determined joy, playing the “glad game” to survive her sorrow. She teaches those around her to look for something glad in every situation, as her father first taught her. A pert, warming story about a little girl’s optimism as it confronts and shatters the cynicism of those around her.

  Heidi by Johanna Spyri

  Perhaps my abiding memory of Heidi is of how good melted, toasted cheese on crusty bread sounded as described in this tale of a little girl sent to live with her grumpy and solitary grandfather in the Swiss Alps. This is a story of alpine meadows and friendship, of old grudges, and of the triumph of love.

  Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John

  A story of guilt and grace and the power of forgiveness, set in the cold beauty of the Swiss Alps. The story centers on the thoughtless act of the boy Lucien; its consequences for little Dani, a boy of good heart and cheer; and the bitter anger of Annette, Dani’s big sister, as she comes to terms with her own capacity for hate and her own need for forgiveness.

  Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

  Charlotte, the wise and gracious spider, is one of my imaginative types for Lady Wisdom as portrayed in the marvelous Proverbs passages. She has just the right word for the moment, and by her wisdom the life of the young pig Wilbur is saved and Fern, his owner, brought to greater maturity. A clever, sparkling tale.

  Biographies: The Real-Life Epics That Shaped My Dreams

  (OR, HOW REAL-LIFE HEROES INVITE US TO REAL-TIME HEROISM)

  WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, my parents were always pushing biographies into my hands. They seemed intent on cramming my brain with real-to-life tales of heroes—historical and biblical, spiritual and artistic. I read them as quickly as I could and then turned to what was usually my reward: a novel of some fantastical or imaginative bent. Tending as I did (and still do) toward the world of imagination, with the open horizons of the possible, I was never as interested in the more defined horizons of the actual—at least until I reached the cusp of adulthood. It was only then that I began to understand what those countless biographies had built within my heart: an expectation that I was meant to do something worthwhile with the life I had waiting before me and evidence, actual evidence, that all sorts of worthy options awaited me.

  There is particular power in well-crafted biographies. Such works do not obscure the flaws or frailties of their human subjects, but they manage to reflect the vision burning at the heart of the artist or preacher, the driving love or force that led them to exceptional acts of compassion, artistry, sacrifice, or courage. To glimpse such vision is to desire that fire in yourself.

  My parents knew exactly what they were doing. Following their example, I set the following list before you. It’s mixed: missionary tales and nature-centered memoirs, stories about the lives of musicians and the ruminations of old writers, but they are the true-life epics that glimmered for me with that contagious, inspiring fire.

  God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew

  My siblings and I sat riveted as we lis
tened to my mom read aloud this real story of a mischievous Dutch boy who grew up to become a famed and fascinating smuggler of Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. A memoir that thrums with the adventure of radical trust in God and the divine intrigue of mission work under communism.

  The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Paul Elie

  I listened to this one on a road trip in an autumn of vocational confusion, and at the end of the book (and the journey), I knew I wanted to be a writer because I hungered for what I saw in the lives examined here. A fascinating exploration of four Catholic authors—Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor—Elie’s book traces the way in which each person was formed to both a strong faith and an articulate faith and then expressed that belief in words. A fascinating look at the way each wrestled with the issues of their day and wrote uniquely to the hunger and doubt of the turbulent 1960s.

  A Chance to Die by Elisabeth Elliot

  This was one of those landmark biographies I read as a teen that startled me into a consideration of my own looming adulthood. Elliot’s insightful biography follows the life of Amy Carmichael, the intrepid and determined Irish missionary and writer who spent a lifetime serving the orphaned and poor in India. I still clearly recall Elliot noting that the surname of Amy’s mother was Dalziel, literally, “I Dare,” a name and characteristic that defined Amy Carmichael’s fierce and creative faith. Elliot’s account of Carmichael’s sacrificial life gave me a vivid model of womanhood and godliness as my own daring dreams began to form.