“Nostalgia is a particularly appropriate emotion to invoke in establishing one's innocence and at the same time talk about what one has destroyed" (page 430).
This quotation from this section really made an impact on me because it is something that I’ve always thought about. I’ve often gone back to a moment in my mind and thought about how spectacular a certain event was in my life only to discuss it further with my parents where I was told just how absolutely different the entire occurrence was in reality. It’s sort of an amazing human feature: the ability to delete what is bad from our memories with little to no effort. It is our own personal historical bias.
I believe that perhaps Brontë had this issue with the moors. Perhaps all of her supposed happiest memories were truly there, and she really did love the setting and the atmosphere the entire time she lived there. But isn’t it possible that she only remembered the greatest of the goods from that setting?
For most people nowadays, it is assumed that someone would be much more in love with the idea of growing up on a beach than in a moor, but seeing as everyone has a unique mind and idea of living, it would make sense that there would be people out there who enjoyed the moors a lot more than a beach. However, if you prefer the beach, are you forgetting all the bad things about the beach like getting sand in your shoes? Salty, frizzy hair? Year round unbearable sunlight? Or are all these things wiped from our memories at the thought of just how much fun we used to have at the beach as children?
2 comments:
I've thought about way memory works as well, and I'm equally amazed by our ability to erase negative aspects of our memories. I think you make a really good analogy between what Bronte's perception of the moors might have been, and the way people think of the beach today! As outsiders, we hear "moor" and think "doom and gloom," but who are we to say that Bronte did not think "adventure and family?"
On a side note, I grew up at the beach. My family lives in Brunswick, which is the mainland of St Simons Island in south Georgia. Living at the beach certainly does have its pros and cons, just as you pointed out. Personally, the tourists are the con that bothers me the most.
I have also had this occur many times during my life. Except a lot of the time you cannot tell who is right and who is wrong. Sometimes I remember things a lot better than my parents do from when I was little. It is still very interesting to hear different accounts of the same story. Sometimes you never can figure out what really happened because there is no proof left.
I also can kind of relate to Bronte and her love of the Moors. I would much prefer to be in the mountains or country, than on a beach.
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