This Week's Miscellany (05/20/24)
Kristin Lavransdatter, Mary Wollstonecraft, St. Therese, Brideshead Revisited, and Women Reading in the Middle Ages
Hi, I’m Haley! Book midwife (editor) and author. Hello to new subscribers and welcome all to another edition of This Week’s Miscellany. TWM is full of my favorite things from around the web, typically trending literary.
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It’s been quite awhile since the last This Week’s Miscellany! Between my abdominal surgery, some big launches at work, end-of-the-year events for the kids, the tornadoes that ripped my town apart on the 10th, and writing the 4th mouse nuns book, I’ve been maxed out. But I’m excited to get back in the saddle.
Power has been restored to most of the city after the storm damage, the kids are on their last week of school, and my recovery from surgery is almost over—just still needing more naps than usual! The only other exciting news is that a bald eagle has been hanging around my neighborhood and I can see him soaring outside my office window. It’s hard to see an eagle swooping and diving and not just be grateful to be alive.
Links
This is my favorite thing I’ve read in quite awhile, a piece on how reading Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter brought this writer to the Church:
Stay in My Heart by Valerie Stivers of
I had always imagined the Church as a distant and cruel regulatory body, and suddenly I saw it as Undset did, as the place you turn with the whole unregulated mass of your life—as the only place large enough for it.
The Reason of Mary Wollstonecraft: Championing Women and Their Moral Formation by Erika Bachiochi
If ever there was a time to build a new women’s movement — as a kind of phoenix rising from the ashes of autonomy feminism’s internal combustion — that time is now.
Author Sarah Law on Literature, St. Therese, and the Sacred by
The idea simply wouldn’t let me go, although as a poet I didn’t feel qualified to write it. It really was a case of answering the writerly vocation so well put by Toni Morrison: “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
As I flipped through Brideshead Revisited yesterday, a passage from Charles about Julia stood out to me as very like St. Augustine’s Confessions: “I realized that she had regained what I thought she had lost for ever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, ‘Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”
Why Feminists Should Celebrate the Middle Ages by Solene Tadie
In terms of education, historical reality once again seems far removed from the misconceptions that would have the Middle Ages hallmarked as an era of illiteracy and obscurantism, particularly among women. In this respect, Pernoud quotes the Romanist Karl Bartsch, who reported in 1883 that “women read more than men in the Middle Ages.”
And in case you missed it, I’m hosting a brand new podcast for Word on Fire!
You can listen to the first episode here or read my post all about why and how it was created. Have you checked it out yet? I can’t wait to hear what you think about it! If you enjoy it, please subscribe, share with friends, and leave a review.
I also shared a short review of the new Flannery O’Connor biopic, Wildcat.
And I wrote about why you should join us next month in Belgium and Germany for the abbeys and beer pilgrimage with Fr. Harrison Ayre (we do still have 5 spots open!)
And below you can view the full itinerary (except one update is that we’ll be flying home from Frankfurt rather than Cologne):
Wishing you all a wonderful week! And a huge thank you to all those who upgraded to a paid subscription this week. This is a reader-supported newsletter so if you enjoy getting these emails, please consider supporting this Substack by upgrading to a paid subscription with the button below.
Thanks for reading!
Haley
(Editor of Word on Fire Votive, Author, Podcaster)
Haley’s books
Haley’s Children’s Mystery Series about Mouse Nuns
Ah, thanks so much Haley for sharing that link to my interview with Sarah Law. Her novel, Sketches from a Sunlit Heaven, really is splendid! Also, that quote you chose to highlight was my favorite bit from the interview. It really inspired me to start writing the books in my imagination that have been clamoring to be written.