Category Archives: Discussion and Philosophy

Here is where I can rant about issues, or just calmly discuss them.

"A Little Princess"–self-discipline, kindness, and imagination…and a bit of moral luck

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Even if you have already read the book A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it is well worth re-reading. I picked it up again this past week to check a quotation and kept finding more and more to like in it.

 For starters, the book is full of lively descriptions. Sara’s wardrobe is enviable, with dancing frocks of rose gauze, petticoats with lace frills, and “velvet dresses trimmed with costly furs.” (14) There are comfortable rooms, with pleasant fires in the grate and soft chairs in which to sit, furnished with books and pictures and “curious things from India”. Later, we find ourselves in rooms in the bare and unwelcoming attic, with hard beds and whitewash flaking off the walls–but such a view of the sky and roofs! Sara herself provides lavishly imagined scenes through her story-telling–laughing merbabies with stars in their hair, fields full of fragrant lilies in heaven, and a sumptuous (though imaginary) feast.

But a story needs more than description, and A Little Princess has more. It has its heroine, Sara Crewe. When the story begins, Sara has just arrived in London from India, the only child of a doting and very rich father. But she is very far from the stereotype of a spoiled rich brat. She is well-mannered, kind-hearted, and very much in control of herself.

Frances Hodgson Burnett makes a particular point of the importance of self-control, and we see how Sara manages to restrain herself from unkind or ill-mannered responses, even when she has been much provoked. We admire her for it, and are delighted at how infuriated Lavinia or Miss Minchin is at being faced with such composure and steadfast good manners.

The restraint is not some magical innate goodness, but an effort that Sara makes–sometimes quite a difficult effort.

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage […] It must be remembered that she had been very deeply absorbed in the book about the Bastille, and she had had to recall several things very rapidly when she realized that she must go and take care of her adopted child. She was not an angel, and she was not fond of Lavinia.” (59-61)

Sara reminds herself that she is pretending to be a princess.

“If you were a princess, you did not fly into rages.” (62) 

Her imagination helps her with the difficult work of self-control.

Sara’s imagination makes her an appealing heroine because she uses it to tell stories to herself and to others. It draws the other children to her (in a world without videos or internet, a storyteller is much valued). Her imagination also helps her through hardships, as she can imagine more pleasant surroundings for herself–or if that is just too hard, she can pretend she is part of some dramatic and romantic story. Rather than living in a dreary attic, she is a prisoner in the Bastille, with Becky as the prisoner in the next cell.

Because Sara is so good at imagining how things might be different, she is also struck by the role of luck in her life. As she speaks with Becky the scullery-maid, she says,

“Why… we are just the same–I am only a little girl like you. It’s just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!” (53)

At another point, she tells her friend Ermengarde,

“Things happen to people by accident.[…] A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just happened that I always liked lessons and books, and could remember things when I learned them. it just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone is kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? […] Perhaps I’m a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials.” (36)

Of course, when her trials do come, she acquits herself admirably, but we can still puzzle over the role of luck (especially moral luck) in nature and in nurture, and wonder how one person comes to be so patient and determined, while another is self-centered and spiteful.

Sara’s strength and imagination would not make her nearly so appealing if they were not accompanied by great kindness. Sara is kind to the younger children and sympathetic to anyone who is suffering, whether they are suffering from hunger or from humiliation. We want Sara to flourish and be happy–she so deserves it.

I have two last remarks about this book. First, the movie they made of it some while back (set in America) makes a complete mess of it. It mistakes the crucial point. It is not the case that “all little girls are princesses”, as I believe Sara is made to say in the movie. It is true that being a princess is not a matter of wealth or birth or beauty, but Lavinia, for example, is clearly not a princess because she does not behave like a princess. She is neither kind nor well-mannered when things don’t go her way.

The second remark is that this is an old book, and while Sara’s kindness extends to all beings, the book still reflects to some extent some of the attitudes of its time and place. It is worth keeping in mind, but should not stop anyone from reading it.

Facts vs. Feelings–an overdose of human interest stories?

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The other day my husband told me that he was listening to gaming podcasts on his way to work instead of National Public Radio. NPR had been deluging him with human interest stories on Syrian refugees and other people in desperate circumstances. The constant tug at the heartstrings was making his morning drive a depressing and exhausting start to the day.    

I’ve heard that listening to stories about other people is a good way to develop the ability to empathize, to see the world through someone else’s eyes. I firmly believe this. Stories also give us a way to peek into other cultures and other living conditions. We need these stories. And some of these stories, certainly, should be about refugees. About migrant workers. And about children trying to survive in lands controlled by warlords.

But it is also true that one can get too much. Being bombarded by intense depictions of all the terrible things going on in the world can result in a sense of helplessness. Feeling helpless leads to paralysis, not action.

Obviously it is far better to be a commuter listening to a heart-rending story about a Syrian refugee, and feeling depressed about it, than it is to be the Syrian refugee. I don’t want to lose sight of that. But sympathetic suffering is not in itself an improvement in the world. It is good when it leads to reducing others’ suffering. No doubt the reporters on NPR hope their stories will inspire people to act. Probably they do, sometimes.

But compassion and sympathy are not sufficient for right action.

I don’t listen to NPR (or any radio, really) but there is something I have noticed both in Facebook posts and, I think, in newspaper editorials. There is a lot of appeal to emotion.  For example, I see a lot of the stories about undocumented/illegal immigrants that are focused on good people in untenable situations. I hear, for instance, about the children of such immigrants who fear being sent back to a country they have never known. I hear about people who have been valued contributors to their community for many years, but who could lose everything they have worked to build.

I don’t hear much about how we can create a workable, fair, compassionate and enforceable immigration policy so that we can avoid such situations in the first place. I don’t hear much about it from the left, and I don’t hear much about it from the right either. The appeals from the right seem to be equally emotional stories about hard working men and women (especially men) who can’t find jobs because the work has been taken by undocumented/illegal workers. (Exactly what jobs these are is a bit vague–presumably not the jobs that went overseas or that became obsolete, since they couldn’t have taken those jobs.)

Having a strong desire to improve things is not enough. Coming up with good policies requires knowledge of facts and context. Knowing which policies to support requires the same. Heart-stirring stories are good (in moderation.) Thoughtful discussions of cause-and-effect, historical background, and basic principles are also important.

If people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, then possibly I shouldn’t be posting this. My knowledge of practical details on most of these subjects is embarrassingly low. Then again, the fact that I’m falling short doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.
 
So, don’t get overwhelmed by the vastness of human need. Just pick your patch and dive in. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

Finding the Right Words–the importance of correct terminology

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I am periodically reminded of how important it is, when talking to an expert in something, to use the correct words.  There are a lot of words that I know the meaning of only in a general sort of way. That’s good enough when I run into them in a story or hear them in a conversation about something else, but not adequate when I need to communicate a problem.
Imagine the following conversation.
Me: “My computer doesn’t have enough memory.”
Husband-who-works-with-computers-professionally: “Really? Not enough memory?”
Me: “Yes, my computer keeps saying it doesn’t have enough space to back up my Scrivener files.”
Husband: “Oh, your hard drive is full.”
Me (suddenly remembering that there is such a thing as RAM): “Yes, that’s what I mean.”
Husband: “I’ll take a look.”
I’m not saying that actually happened, mind you… but there are a lot of terms associated with computer use that  haven’t always been clearly distinct in my mind. There’s the computer itself (whatever components that refers to), and then there’s its operating system, any applications that have been loaded onto it (including a browser), and then a bunch of other files created by using those applications. It’s taken me a while to distinguish between the applications and the (data) files created with them. It doesn’t help that the applications are also themselves comprised of files. It’s easier to keep straight if I think about the files for my novel, Adrift, and distinguish them from the Scrivener program I used to write them with.
(A slight digression. Think of those scam calls—“Hello, I’m Betty from Windows, and I’m calling about your computer…” “No, you aren’t, because Windows is an operating system, not a computer company, and anyway Microsoft isn’t going to give me that kind of personalized attention unless I first give them buckets of money.”)
There are many other areas where I discover my vocabulary is lacking. The construction of my own house is a bit of a mystery. It has joists, studs, drywall (which is the same as sheetrock, I think), and up above it has a roof with rafters, eaves, gables (maybe?), and soffits (is that part of the roof?). I don’t think much about these words when I read them in passing, but when someone is discussing potential damage to the floor from a leaky shower and whether it has affected the joist, suddenly I’m interested.
I also need the right words so I can describe a problem over the phone accurately—and without sounding stupid to myself. I don’t want to tell the plumber, “The problem is the bathroom sink. The faucet. I mean, the tap. That thing you turn to start the water where one is for hot and one is for cold.” I’ve used the word “tap” before, but in the moment when it matters,  I find myself wondering, “Is that the tap?”
Inadequate vocabulary is most a problem in discussing subjects that, while important, are not of interest to me.  Since I’ve never been particularly into cars, it was some time before I really caught on to the distinction between “wheel” and “tire”. I always sort of thought of them as a unit, the four round things that roll. But don’t tell your husband you think the wheel is damaged when you really mean the tire. You could give him a heart attack. Or a stroke.
Okay, I’m exaggerating as a lead-in to my last set of examples—medical terms. As a kid, I lumped together “heart attack”, “stroke”, “heart failure”, “cardiac arrest”, “coronary”, and “apoplexy” as terms for a bad thing that could happen suddenly and which seemed, in popular expressions, to be linked to sudden shocks or anger.
Now that I’m older, I know that heart attacks involve a problem with the blood supply to part of the heart muscle, and strokes involve a problem with the blood supply to part of the brain. Not the same thing. On looking the other terms up, I find that “coronary” is often used to mean “heart attack” and “apoplexy” to mean “stroke”, but that heart failure means the heart is weak and not working very well, and that cardiac arrest just means the heart has stopped for whatever reason.
But being older and (a little bit) wiser doesn’t mean there aren’t other health-related words I’m misusing. There was some word I used in describing a problem to my doctor which I later realized probably had a very specific meaning for the doctor, and not the meaning I had intended. Further, the doctor, being used to the specific terminology, probably didn’t even realize that I was using it loosely and inaccurately. And that is a communication problem.
I wish I could remember now what the particular word was. Instead, I’ll just offer as an example “dizzy” versus “light-headed”, which apparently have slightly different uses.
Using the right words is important. With them, you can be precise in describing a problem with your computer or your health. Without them, you can inadvertantly create a lot of confusion. Eight-plus years studying philosophy contributed to my concern for correct use of words (“if…then…” is not the same as “if and only if”), but it didn’t teach me how to distinguish a joist from a stud, or a trot from a canter. Some distinctions only get learned when experience makes them relevant.