Harry Potter to Jane Austen: 4 Quotes to Bridge Our Turbulent Times

Beyond the rhetoric: Finding empathy in an age of division

Photo by anotherxlife on Unsplash

Thank you for checking this essay out. Many wonderful people are new subscribers, so I started out intending this post to be a polite welcome.

Introduce myself like the “young lady” my grandma aspired me to be.

But what’s really comfortable here in Substackville is you can jump right from the “hey,” toss aside the weather commentary (though it’s a lovely 82 degrees in Sedona today) and dive right into “here’s what makes me tick” and “what about you?”

Build a bridge. Find common ground. Listen to your stories so I can understand where you’re coming from and how your life’s shaped you so far. It feels important to do this when relationships feel more fragile these days.

In that spirit, I’ll share a few tales that have molded me in hopes one sparks a memory for you. And, naturally, since I’m an author I’m going to ask a few brilliant lines from literature to tee us up. The first one’s from Harry Potter who inspires me to bring up Muggles (my parents) at the get-go.

Lit Lines to the Rescue

“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors not his equals.” – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

This quote could have been my parents’ motto. I grew up as a faculty brat with three siblings; our dad was an econ professor and our mom taught kindergarten. While the intellectual culture of their liberal arts college—set in the middle of an Illinois agricultural breadbasket—could be a bit snooty, my parents actively rejected that divide. Dad was an enthusiastic member of the county Rotary Club, flipping catfish at fish fries and ringing the bell for the Salvation Army, while Mom made her own sticky-hand connections as a beloved local teacher. We grew up feeling we could belong in more than one world.

Of course, they never would have used a word like ‘inferiors.’ Their philosophy was simpler and more profound. They were pure “democrats” (with a lower-case “d”), ardently asserting that “all people are children of God.” This egalitarian acceptance became embedded in us through their example.

• You can imagine, then, my soul’s disconnect with any political rhetoric that labels people as less than.

  
  

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

I’m a Jane Austen Fan Girl. So it’s super-fun for me to reinterpret her famous opening for myself: “. . . a single person in possession of a curious mind, must be in want of a new horizon.” That sentiment defines me. I get a charge out of new experiences and far-flung travel.

One of the first signs of this drive was when I was 14 and my parents took our family on a six-week summer camping trip across Europe, armed with the book Europe on Five Dollars a Day (!). I was at the perfect age to absorb it all: the solemnity of cathedrals and battlegrounds; the taste of Austrian goulash and luscious Italian gelato and freshly boiled shrimp on a Danish pier; and the nuanced cadence of languages as they shifted from Italian to German to French when our VW camper bus crossed borders. Above all, I saw the unfolding of histories and societies, which I inevitably compared to my own American experience. By comparison, I saw the uniqueness of the American democratic experiment.

• You can imagine, then, why that feeling, rising from deep in my memory, is why I have such a personal objection to seeing democratic freedoms attacked today.

  
  

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others. . .” – The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois

Du Bois wrote about racial identity, but his words give a name to my own rude feminist awakening when in my early 20s. For the first time, I was shocked into looking at myself through the male gaze and being measured by its limiting standard.

The evidence was everywhere: Being talked over in meetings. Being sexually propositioned at company events. Being grossly underpaid.

As one of the first non-administrative women in my corporate circle, I was breaking new ground, but the experience was corrosive. The unfamiliar treatment was unsettling, confusing, and it burned a hole through my sense of self-worth. It has been a mountain climb to reclaim my inherent value.

• You can imagine then, my anger at present-day efforts to push women and their rights back into that old restrictive box.

  
  

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. . .” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. Dickens could have been writing about this very moment, right? This paradox took root for me as a teenager. In my small high school, a generous benefactor donated copies of The Christian Science Monitor for every student. Each weekday, I would grab a fresh copy for the hour-long bus ride home and read an article or two. Over time, I became familiar with global geography, cultures, and histories. That gift broadened my awareness of the world: its tragedies and triumphs, and the work and sacrifice of humanity trying to be better.

• You can imagine, then, that I hold unshakeable conviction in the possibility that our world—with all its complexity, scale, contradiction and mistakes—can move forward.

  
  

Ok, your turn. What about you? Have any of these vignettes stirred a memory of what’s shaped how you view the world? How you are walking through these times? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Warmly,