Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing -Ben Franklin
Middlemarch
Below is a short section from the preface of Middlemarch in reference to Saint Theresa's life and the lives of many forgotten women. I just find this part particularly poignant and wanted to share.
That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.
If you wish to read more of Middlemarch, go here or listen here.
That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.
If you wish to read more of Middlemarch, go here or listen here.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Samuel Laurence Guzman on -
Indeed, that's the story for many. I suppose he is refferring to St. Theresea of Avila?
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Permalink Reply by Jaime on -
I was talking to someone the other night about Gustave Flaubert's Three Short Works. One of the short stories is a retelling of St. Julian the Hospitaller's tale.
The final story, A Simple Soul, is my favorite.
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