Marilynne Robinson describes herself as a Calvinist.  An image of John Knox hectoring his congregation on their evil ways and their imminent consignment to hellfire and damnation if they fail to amend their lives has been my view of Calvinism.  There is the cry of the damned, “Lord, have mercy, relieve us from this torment; we did’na ken”, with the Calvinist God’s reply, “Well, ye ken the noo”!  It seems I have been misled about Calvinism or, more likely, not understood.  Marilynne Robinson is someone who has a deep feeling for her fellow man or woman and a strong belief in the essence of community.  She does not come across as someone who would recommend anyone for the fiery furnace – though she might make an exception for the defenders of Austerity!

Lila is a story about understanding and love.  By modern standards, I had a deprived childhood, with a lack of stability and few personal possessions, yet I couldn’t begin to understand how someone like Lila really views the world.  This may also be true of Marilynne Robinson, but her portrayal of Lila’s insecurity and lack of trust rings true to me.  Lila’s ‘family’ – if that’s what they are – cares not a jot for her and she is literally carried through her childhood in the arms of Doll, living with itinerant labourers and gaining a modicum of education before finding herself in a whorehouse following Doll’s disappearance and probable death.  We discussed whether Lila was vulnerable or confident and it seemed to me that these were not mutually exclusive.  I felt she was desperately vulnerable, yet had a confidence in her views of what was right.  She lacked trust, yet was prepared to face uncertain and potentially dangerous situations, and was remarkably open.  She didn’t hesitate to tell Reverend Ames that she didn’t know her real name and had worked in a whorehouse, perhaps to test whether he was serious about wanting to marry her.  Maybe she felt that if she held anything back, it would give him a reason to abandon her, as Doane had done, but she still kept mentally preparing herself for having to move right until her baby was born.

Lila also looks at community and what it means.  The first community that we are introduced to at the start of the book reads like a bunch of no-hopers camped out in a shack.  Doll is the only one of the group prepared to make any effort and, for no apparent reason, decides to take off with Lila.  They fetch up with the itinerant labourers led by Doane, who has a definite sense of honesty and that a job should be done properly, but he has no time for education or religion, or any real sense of communal responsibility.  The whorehouse is a community based on obligation to Mrs, from which Lila manages to escape and finds herself in the community of Gilead, in which Reverend Ames is the leading character.

Marilynne Robinson’s strong belief in the importance of community becomes clearer in When I was a Child I read Books.  This set of essays includes a strong religious flavour that deal with interpretations of passages in the Bible.  However, Robinson also deals with contemporary issues, such as austerity, the value of money and education.  The essay entitled Austerity as Ideology is a ferocious assault on the economic policies of Western governments, more especially since the financial debacle of 2008 and how the perpetrators have been able to transfer the consequences so that people’s livelihoods and education have been sacrificed while they have been able to increase their own wealth and influence.  There is a hint of the conspiracy theory in Who was Oberlin? where Robinson talks about C Street where “… men active in the national government … (are) … apparently devoted to the project of putting political power to the uses of an authoritarian or theocratic version of Christianity.”  This was written before 2012 and it seems that recent events may have borne this out.

I would like to comment on two aspects of the Pilgrim’s Progress workshop. Bob Owens implied that the characters who tried to divert Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress were meant to represent aspects of the establishment, particularly the Anglican Church. I could see what he meant by that, but I have always thought they represented Christian’s internal conflicts. The second aspect concerns the differences in mind-set between the England of the 17^th century and today. We talked about today’s secularism, but didn’t really explore how Pilgrim’s Progress might have been read at the time. Religion formed the background to much of daily life and I see a strong millennial flavour in the idea that Christian, and later Christiana, were ‘fleeing from the wrath to come’ towards the Celestial City. It took the 18^th century Enlightenment to really question that and two World Wars to significantly affect people’s views on Heaven and Hell.

I am trying to get my head around the idea of different types of reader. As someone with scientific training, I tend to look for definitions, yet I am not sure that is particularly helpful here. I read an online article just now by Jane P. Tompkins in which the ‘mock reader’ is described as “… another ‘author’ whose existence was entirely a function of the text.” who “… directs attention away from the text and toward the effects it produces.” To me, this implies that the effects produced by a particular text are consistent, but surely that is not the case. I have read the same passage in a book at different times and have discovered a different meaning. My response has varied with mood and even surroundings, and different people certainly have a different response to the same book. My question is, what do we make of this?