Introduction
When I was in third grade, I dressed up as Felicity on a family trip to Colonial Williamsburg (pictured, left). Felicity is the 9-year-old feisty and anachronistically feminist main character of a series of six American Girl books set in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the onset of the American Revolution. Felicity is also an 18-inch, overpriced doll for which there are many overpriced accessories, and the books were written to get 9-year-old girls like me to beg their parents to buy them said dolls and accessories.
Though the fact that these books were born of marketing strategies may shed a questionable light on their literary merit, they succeeded in getting me to want not only to dress up and play with Felicity (the doll), but also to be her (the character). Like Felicity, I was something of a tomboy who had trouble fitting in and living up to others’ expectations of me as a little girl. Like Felicity, I would much rather ride horses than learn stitchery. And like Felicity, I thought taxation without representation was simply not fair. My family had recently relocated to Richmond, Virginia, from the midwest, and looking back, this must have contributed to my empathy with Felicity; as she grappled with the confusing political climate of her day, I struggled to navigate my new surroundings.
The fact that I wore what had been my Halloween costume on the family trip shows that I wanted to experience Colonial Williamsburg as Felicity herself might have. This is indicative of the lived-through, or aesthetic, experience I had when reading the Felicity books. Having connected with literature on such a personal level, it is no wonder that I went on to develop the love for “getting lost in the book” that many dedicated readers (including most English teachers) describe as among their motivations for reading fiction.
Based on this self-knowledge, as well as conversations I have had with others who have chosen to devote their lives to the study of literature, it seems that one's ability to form a personal connection with reading precedes any investment in analytical skills. Why, then, do we as English teachers so often approach reading in the classroom from an analytical angle before any engagement with the text has occurred? Especially when it comes to fiction reading, it seems not only useless, but also inauthentic to try to get students to analyze a book in a meaningful way if they cannot bring themselves to even finish reading it, and the most effective way to get students to finish reading a book is to get them to connect with it. Because this connection is the result of an aesthetic reading stance, I have set out through this inquiry to explore the factors that go into taking an aesthetic stance toward fiction within an English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum, as well as the ways in which students demonstrate an aesthetic stance.
Though the fact that these books were born of marketing strategies may shed a questionable light on their literary merit, they succeeded in getting me to want not only to dress up and play with Felicity (the doll), but also to be her (the character). Like Felicity, I was something of a tomboy who had trouble fitting in and living up to others’ expectations of me as a little girl. Like Felicity, I would much rather ride horses than learn stitchery. And like Felicity, I thought taxation without representation was simply not fair. My family had recently relocated to Richmond, Virginia, from the midwest, and looking back, this must have contributed to my empathy with Felicity; as she grappled with the confusing political climate of her day, I struggled to navigate my new surroundings.
The fact that I wore what had been my Halloween costume on the family trip shows that I wanted to experience Colonial Williamsburg as Felicity herself might have. This is indicative of the lived-through, or aesthetic, experience I had when reading the Felicity books. Having connected with literature on such a personal level, it is no wonder that I went on to develop the love for “getting lost in the book” that many dedicated readers (including most English teachers) describe as among their motivations for reading fiction.
Based on this self-knowledge, as well as conversations I have had with others who have chosen to devote their lives to the study of literature, it seems that one's ability to form a personal connection with reading precedes any investment in analytical skills. Why, then, do we as English teachers so often approach reading in the classroom from an analytical angle before any engagement with the text has occurred? Especially when it comes to fiction reading, it seems not only useless, but also inauthentic to try to get students to analyze a book in a meaningful way if they cannot bring themselves to even finish reading it, and the most effective way to get students to finish reading a book is to get them to connect with it. Because this connection is the result of an aesthetic reading stance, I have set out through this inquiry to explore the factors that go into taking an aesthetic stance toward fiction within an English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum, as well as the ways in which students demonstrate an aesthetic stance.