At one of my recent virtual book discussions, we talked about Harper Lee’s widely read novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Many of the participants had previously read it as part of their high school curriculum. And those who hadn’t yet read it were aware of the plot from a collective cultural memory of the novel.
It’s a courtroom drama.
It’s a coming-of-age story.
It’s a portrait of a father-daughter relationship.
This is where it gets interesting! Participants in both camps had ideas about what they would find in the plot of the novel—both from their own memory and from the larger societal one. This included ideas about how Atticus is upheld as a moral compass and the size of the role Boo Radley plays in the novel (to say nothing of glossing over his violent actions!).
But no matter if they were re-reading the novel or experiencing it for the first time it became clear quite quickly in the discussion that personal and cultural memory of the novel didn’t exactly matchup: Scout is younger, Atticus is flawed, and even the notorious Boo Radley only really bookends the story.
When I began hosting virtual book discussions in 2020, I focussed solely on classic novels (adding modern novels to the schedule in 2022) for a number of reasons:
Often, we’re taught classic literature in classrooms when we’re young and might not appreciate the nuances of them. If readers want to engage with these novels later in life, especially with others, there is limited opportunity to do so. Also, the classroom experience can be a turnoff for many readers who feel the pressure of being graded as detrimental to enjoying the reading experience.
But from the recent experience with To Kill a Mockingbird, it really reinforced an additional question: Does the cultural representation of a classic novel actually reflect the contents between the pages or are we misremembering them?
Here are some additional concrete examples:
Society tends to uphold Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre as a romance. But Rochester is really quite creepy and conniving when you read the novel. We tend to remember that he’s locked his first wife up in his attic (which we somehow excuse?), but collectively forget how he manipulates Jane (hello dressing in a disguise to tell her fortune)! He calls to mind all kinds of sinister fairy tale references, from Bluebeard to the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.
Many remember Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 as being just about book burning, which it is… to an extent. We’ve conveniently forgotten the message that it is a book about turning away from education (reading) and being enthralled with our giant TVs that dumb-down information for consumption. Bradbury would be appalled at the micro-sized videos on Instagram and TikTok! In a letter, he wrote: “Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention’… This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people.”
The often quoted “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful” from Mary Shelley’s incredible 1818 novel Frankenstein shows up on all kinds of bookish goods completely out of context (although I will admit to owning sweatshirts and pins with it). This quote is uttered (spoiler alert) by the Creature after Victor destroys the female companion he is building. The Creature is now powerful because he has nothing to lose in the entire world! The quote is much more heart-wrenching than empowering and leads to violent actions. Combine this with the cultural representation of the Creature as a square-headed and nearly silent being (based on Boris Karloff's image in the 1931 film) and there isn’t any nuance or empathy for the Creature.
This disconnect between what we have culturally cherry picked as important from these classic works and what appears in the plot is a fascinating lens to examine classics we’ve hailed as canon. This leads to rich discussions about classic works: Why do we hold up certain facets of a novel? Are those pieces misleading? Who might have chosen to highlight certain plot points over others? Has how we see the novel changed over time? And, is it a classic still worth reading? If these are the kind of book discussion questions that fire you up, see what other classics are coming up for discussion on the schedule here.
Just like when it comes to news sources, it is so important to read the source material and decide for yourself what a classic novel is telling us, instead of relying on what has been upheld by society.
I'd love to know if there is a classic novel you re-read that wasn’t what you remembered? Do you think we do a disservice to these books by picking/choosing their memories and not their content? Whose agenda(s) is served by these narrowing interpretations?
