***100 Days of Summer Reading 2023***
Prompt: Book that was published before 2000.
12 sided dice roll: 2
A little research revealed this book to be largely autobiographical. The author has my sincere sympathies. I can't imagine sending a nine year old to a convent school to be taught by nuns! Children are so sensitive at this age, believing all kinds of magical things. Religion is just another magical system to them. And they crave approval, are willing to do all kinds of extreme things to get a kind word.
I know a thing or two about competitiveness between kids too. I remember being 5 or 6 when my parents first took me to church and sent me off to Sunday school for the first time. Here were all these children who knew all the stories and could do all the crafts! They'd been doing this for years. I recall setting my little jaw and vowing to get caught up! I had zero desire to be the ignorant little girl in class.
One of my friends was shipped off to boarding school in England as a girl and told me that it resulted in suicidal ideation. There are always students and teachers who amuse themselves by tormenting those around them. Religious schools seem to have granted a sense of impunity to their teachers—they borrowed authority from their institutions for their misdeeds. Sadly, bullying and teasing happen in all schools. Why are humans so congenitally unkind to one another?
White obviously knew from an early age that she would be a writer. Her avatar, Nanda, is writing a novel which gets her expelled from the convent school, just as happened to White as a girl. Nanda's appreciation for literature, music, theatre, and art often gets her in trouble with the nuns for being worldly. This is one thing that Nanda just can't give up, though, and White's valuation of the arts stands out in bold relief.
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