Why Our Daughters Need Us To Read the Classics

The longer I’m a mom the more convinced I am that we don’t need the newest book on parenting from our local Christian bookstore. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I buy and read PLENTY of books on parenting (and any other category that our local bookstore carries, because, let’s face it, I LOVE books of all kinds). But the books that have made the greatest impact on my mothering journey aren’t M Is For Mama by Abbie Halberstadt, Mama Bear Apologetics by Hilary Morgan Ferrer or any of Sally Clarkson’s many, MANY works (much as I love all of these). Rather, if a new mom were to ask me what books to read, I would recommend these: Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Little House On the Prairie, Pride and Prejudice, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Wingfeather Saga. Why these? Because, like all truly great novels, they don’t tell us what to think, but rather point us to the truth.

We need the truth found in these great stories, and so do our daughters. To grow up female today is a scary business. When I was a teenager 20 years ago we were dealing with an epidemic of eating disorders due to a culture that had glorified the “perfect” woman, a photoshopped image from a magazine cover who weighs under 100 pounds, with perfectly straight blonde hair, and flawless skin. Added to this, women were expected to be “successful”: get the best college education you can, find the job that pays the most money, and climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top. Today’s girls are still facing all these expectations, but added to it are struggles with gender identity (particularly scary for those girls who realize that they like Jo in Little Women don’t care about dresses, hairstyles, or makeup and are then told by our culture that maybe they’re meant to be a boy, thus affirming their insecurities rather than refuting them); an online social world where anybody can say anything they want without consequence (and share the pictures to go with them); dating relationships where they are told to seek physical satisfaction and ignore the emotional consequences; and broken homes where the parents are no longer together or they’re being raised by a single parent. And even if we do manage to shield our children from these influences, they’re going to be exposed to it through friends and the online world to some extent. Even my children who are homeschooled and are considered very “sheltered” by the world’s standards, have had conversations with us about homosexuality and blended families at the ages of 8 and 6.

So how do we prepare our girls to face these influences and emerge with a stronger character? Let me say it again: read them the classics. Expose them to the struggles of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Let them see how these sisters allowed their character to be molded and shaped for the better in the midst of difficult circumstances. Let them experience hope with Anne as she views a world that, for her, started in bleakness, yet through a vivid imagination she finds joy in each little thing. Journey across the prairie with Laura and Mary and realize that home is found with your family not in a specific building. Meet Aslan with Lucy and find the courage to do what’s right in the face of great evil. Our children’s character is not going to be formed in what is good, true, and beautiful if their minds aren’t being filled with what is good, true, and beautiful.

In the Awakening of Miss Prim, the main character Prudencia has a conversation with an elderly lady from the community, Lulu, about the problems of her generation that I think points this out clearly: “Young people today extend childhood well beyond the chronologically allotted time. They’re immature and irresponsible at an age when they should no longer be so. But at the same time they lose their simplicity, their innocence and freshness early. Strange as it sounds, they grow old early…skepticism has always been considered an affliction of maturity, Prudencia, but now that is no longer the case. Those children have grown up unfamiliar with the great ideals that have shaped people for generations and made them strong. They’ve been taught to view them with contempt and, in their place, to substitute something cloying and sentimental that even they quickly find unsatisfying and even repellent. They lose the most valuable thing– I’d say the only truly valuable thing– that youth possesses and maturity does not. It’s terrible to have to say such things, don’t think I don’t know.” (emphasis added) I hear many adults in the church lament that today’s young people are “creating their own truth,” which I completely agree with. But I think if we stop to consider why we will realize that the natural result of not being exposed to real truth (through God’s Word, great books, and mediums such as art, music, and nature) is to create your own.

Earlier in the same book Prudentia makes an argument to the Man in the Wing Chair (who is raising his 2 nieces and 2 nephews after his sister died) that he needs to include classic female authors like Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott in his nieces’ education. She says “In a way we are the product of our reading… I can’t speak for you, but for myself I can say that my personality has been molded to a large extent by the books I’ve read.” I can attest to this: I grew up reading most of the classics listed above and they formed my character over time: I wrestled with introversion alongside Beth in Little Women, I worked to understand my overactive and often misunderstood imagination just like Anne, and struggled with comparing myself to others like Laura compares herself to Mary in Little House. These books showed me that I wasn’t alone in these struggles and helped me know how to process through what I was feeling. As I’ve reread many of these books as a mom, I’ve been struck by what I can learn from the mothers in these stories, like when Marmee shares with Jo her own struggles with anger and points her to the ultimate source of her help, the Source who will never fail her. I sympathize with Marilla as she gets frustrated with Anne’s dreamy ways and penchant for trouble, and also find myself being molded and shaped by my children’s creativity in the same way that Marilla is by Anne’s. I wrestle with fear of the unknown like Ma does when she faces the Native Americans in their little cabin in Kansas, my unknowns are just a little less tangible. I hope I will leave such a powerful legacy that it will impact my children even after my death, like Harry Potter’s mother does when she sacrifices herself for him against Voldemort.

As I leave you to ponder how you can incorporate more of the great books into your children’s lives as well as your own, let me leave you with a final quote from The Awakening of Miss Prim on the merits of Little Women (and others like it): “No education is complete without visiting that little corner of Concord. I’m sure its literary merit doesn’t stand up next to many other books but, as we both know, this is not what it’s about. It’s about beauty, delicacy, security. When they grow up and life treats them badly- as it certainly will– they’ll always be able to look back and take refuge for a few hours in that familiar sentimental story.”

**Note: I am NOT encouraging you to replace Scripture with great books as you seek to influence your children’s character; rather I’m working from the assumption that most Christian parents would agree that reading the Bible to your kids is absolutely ESSENTIAL, and want to encourage you not to neglect great works of literature in ADDITION to God’s Word. Also, I’m not writing just to homeschool parents here: If your kids are in public school I want to encourage you all the more to add these books to your daily life with your kids, because they are NOT (and I’m speaking with experience as a former public school teacher) going to get much, if any, exposure to these types of books in public school.