Midcoast Senior College
A word from the faculty--Susan Beegel
Our introduction to Susan Beegel was her superb program last February in our Winter Wisdom series, entitled How Nantucket Women Changed America: What Feminism Owes to Quakers, Whales and Slaves. Susan holds a Ph.D. in English from Yale University. A 20 year resident of Nantucket Island, and now a resident of Phippsburg, Maine, she is a Research Associate of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program. She is also Editor in Chief of The Hemingway Review.
The Midcoast Inquirer asked Susan to reflect on what it is she feels seniors may derive from reading, and re-reading, great literature.
from Susan Beegel:
The first and best reason seniors should study literature is because they are better equipped than any other age group to comprehend and appreciate our culture's literary masterworks. ;Great literature, by definition, spans the full range of human experience: birth and death, love and marriage, friendship and enmity, good and evil, war and peace, friendship and enmity, coming of age and growing old. The broader one's experience of life itself, the deeper one's understanding of art that holds a mirror up to life.
To be young and to read is sometimes like listening to a symphony while being unable to hear half of the instruments or many of the themes. When I was in high school, Moby Dick was completely incomprehensible and therefore hopelessly dull to me. These days, it is still an immensely challenging book but one that unfolds new ideas, beauties and mysteries each time I return to it. I've loved Jane Austen from the start. But when I was young it was all about romance and the dishy Mr. Darcy.
These days, as I incline more towards sense than sensibility, the divine Jane's comedy of manners and her thoughts on moral education are more meaningful to me, and Austen grows both funnier and more serious each time I return to her wonderful novels.
We've all had similar experiences of finding a book that was opaque when we were younger suddenly become clear, or of returning to an old favorite to find new and unexpected sources of stimulation and pleasure. This is a tribute to the power and richness of great literature. But it is also a tribute to the power of seniors. It seems fitting to exercise that power, and to celebrate our growth and development as readers by studying literature together.