novels and women

This past weekend I arose at 3:30am, ate an apple, and saw a raccoon.

After that, three good friends and I drove to a nearby mountain to climb 2.5 miles essentially straight up to the peak. The intention was to watch the sunrise from the crest, to enjoy the view of three prominent mountains and the ocean at dawn. However, after pantingly booking it up the side of the mountain, we found ourselves inside a blustering, foggering, freezing cloud. We sat at the top of the mountian, split a power bar four ways, and looked at the ice-coated landscape... that is, about ten feet of the landscape, before it disappeared into the cloud. Needless to say, we couldn't really tell that the sun had risen, and all of our exposed skin was turning numb, so we skidded back down the mountain face and into the shelter of the forest below. It was really a fantastic hike. I could not have picked more awesome people to hike with, the morning was invigorating, we saw a grouse (?) doing his little mating dance/song, and we stopped at a logging camp for breakfast and ate cinnamon rolls the size of our faces. Literally. On the way up, however, at around 4:15am, our conversation was scintillating, and I made a really astounding connection quite eloquently. My comment may have just seemed profound because it was uttered at such an ungodly hour, but I think it is worthy of a blog post.

This past week I finished a research paper that is worth an incredibly large part of my final grade. My topic was education--more specifically, the sort of education that the founders thought was proper for America. During the course of my research, I discovered that Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson both clearly believed women should not read novels. They observed that women would read novels and become so caught up in the epic worlds of which they read that they would find no beauty or joy in the real world. In other words, women would be unable to feel at all unless moved by the impossibly great things of which they read. I found this very interesting. I was taught literature from the completely opposite view. To borrow shamelessly from another's blog post,

"Tolkien and Lewis believed that poetry restores reality to its mythic proportions, that we are living an epic, a lyric truth, a narrative where every action has vast consequence. Reading a myth or a poem causes the enchantment of the daily to come forth, making us conscious of it anew.”
-Christine Perrin

Literature, to me, brings out the greatness of the seemingly mundane. I personally have consistently found the above principle to be true. However, I can certainly see the founders' point. For example...
The Twilight series irritates me considerably. Partly because I can no longer use the beautiful word twilight in normal conversation, but mostly because it has raised up a generation of embarrassing female fanatics. Girls idolize Edward Cullen. They complain that real men are not good enough, because no man can meet the impossibly high standards that girls take from this fictional character. I have seen far too many young women become so enamored with a sparkling vampire that they overlook the goodness and beauty and powerful chivalry that can be found in the character of real human men. This repulsive breed of Twilighters is exactly what Rush and Jefferson feared. Their fear was certainly justified, but I don't think that they addressed it appropriately. I propose (though really it is my excellent literary training proposing through me) that women should read, and read extensively. However, they should approach literature with the correct mindset. My mindset. Actually, the mindset of Lewis and Tolkien, outlined above. They are far more weighty personalities than I am. Without using literature as a tool to bring out the epic in everyday life, thousands of girls will become blind to what is real because they see only the epic as something detached from real life. They will reject a man because he is not Edward, rather than using the Edward to see the good in a man.