Searching for and finding oneself in a good book

Many “Lifetime” movies (and lots of bad chick lit, for that matter) begin with a despondent and downtrodden wife who has the following epiphany about her husband: “How is it possible that I’ve lived with someone for my whole life, but I don’t even know who he is?” At many points during the last three weeks, I’ve had that same thought—but about myself.

As many of you may know (perhaps even from experience), almost all academic fellowships, such as the Fulbright, Marshall, and Rhodes, require a personal statement from their applicants—they rightly like to know to whom their money is going. The prompt is not outrageous and merely requests a short essay (1,000 words or so) recounting one’s personal and intellectual growth. I didn’t worry too much about the personal statements at first. After all, I’ve written over 25 pages on multiple people who aren’t myself and I write in my journal weekly, so 1,000 words about myself should have been a nice self-indulgent vacation.

Or so I thought. When I showed my personal statements to a professor, I did not expect her to grimace and tell me, “Lucy, this is well-written and all. But you should be more playful! Be yourself.” Another friend gave me this tidbit of advice: “This isn’t you. This isn’t sparkly.” After I came to terms with the fact that the adjectives used to characterize me—“playful” and “sparkly”—are also seen on advertisements for My Little Pony, I had to face the daunting process of first figuring out who I was and then putting that knowledge to paper. Though I have been alive for more than 21 years, I quickly arrived at the sinking realization that I could conceive neither of the events that had changed my life nor of my aspirations for the future—even my Facebook “About Me” was a quote from a friend!

Over 40 years after it was written, that Beatles lyric still rings true—“I get by with a little help from my friends”—because my friends were the ones who eventually revealed me to myself. My professor suggested that I restructure an old “Spec” column and a friend reminded me of a particularly traumatic childhood confrontation with the American Girl doll company (I waited 11 years for an Asian American Girl doll). Somehow they knew the anecdotes that best constituted myself better than I did.

In “Clarissa,” Samuel Richardson puts forth the notion that a good friend qua letter-reader can discern truths in a letter that may not even be manifest to the letter-writer. Anna Howe accuses Clarissa of denying the “glow” and “throbs” that she feels for Mr. Lovelace because she can read from Clarissa’s letter better than Clarissa can herself. At this point, a friend started referring to herself as the Anna Howe to my Clarissa Harlowe as a crack at my unawareness of self.

Perhaps there is something to this outside perspective that enables us to more accurately know ourselves. But a physical person is not necessary, because we can acquire this external view of ourselves through literature. I first read “A Doll’s House” when I was 15 and still naively idealistic. Rereading the play at 21, I no longer felt the same excitement and admiration when Nora leaves her family to discover herself as a person. Instead, I now view Nora’s action as self-absorbed and irresponsible. The moment I realized that my response to the play had drastically changed, I also became aware of an inner change.

During lecture, I suggested that Nora in “A Doll’s House” deludes herself. Her happy family life is only a narrative that she constructs, and eventually the intrusion of reality forces her to recognize that she can no longer sustain the fantasy and must leave her husband. As the words rolled out of my mouth, I understood that I, too, was in Nora’s position. Yet only after I belittled her for mythmaking did I realize that I had to turn the critique on myself.