Quote 1
"You could loan it to me. I'd pay it all back… every penny of it. Please, Aunt Josie?" I spoke those last words in a whisper.
My aunt didn't reply right away; she just looked at me in such a way that I suddenly knew just how Hester Prynne felt when she had to stand on that scaffold. (12.UriahtheHittite,stinkpot,warthog.59-60)
Even though Mattie thinks that the literature she reads doesn't necessarily relate to her, there are moments when it clearly does. And when Aunt Josie refuses to give Mattie money to go to Barnard, Mattie connects how she feels to how a character in a book feels. Notably, when Mattie compares her life to literary characters in A Northern Light, it's usually to characters who are undergoing stress or conflict.
"I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just ... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay."
Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry." (22.glean.82-83)
Mattie has just finished communicating to Miss Wilcox and her sister Lou that writers are liars and talking about how they need to be talking about topics closer to their readers' hearts. And Miss Wilcox pushes the importance of literature again: writing is meant to make people care about the common people. This interaction becomes more meaningful when we think about Miss Wilcox as Emily Baxter, revolutionary feminist poet.
Quote 3
I saw Frank Loomis's hairy behind in my mind's eye and Emmie bent over the stove. "Royal, you ... you know?"
"For god's sake, Mattie. Everyone in the whole damn county knows."
"I didn't know."
"That ain't hardly a surprise. You're too interested in what Blueberry Finn and Oliver Dickens and all the rest of them made-up people are doing to see what's going on right around you." (40.ideal.16-19)
Is Mattie's ignorance of her reality due to her nose in a book, or is it due to something else, perhaps her responsibilities to her family? Is it fair for Royal to make this accusation of Mattie, or is he right in some ways that Mattie forgoes her community for the community of literature? And how does he feel about Mattie's love of and involvement with literature?