Lover of Austen, Brontë, and Teaching
As I walk into Dr. Lorraine Eadie’s office, I am immediately struck by the pristine white walls illuminated by the sunlight streaming in from the window. Small pictures of flowers decorate the walls and cabinets of her desk amid shelves of books and stacks of papers. The office is a true reflection of the spirit of the woman behind the desk: bright, illuminated, and classically unique. Dr. Eadie teaches a number of English classes at Hillsdale College, including Great Books and Restoration and Romantic British Literature. She specializes in eighteenth-century literature, which she applies by teaching classes centered around Jane Austen and Emily Brontë. As I take my seat across from her desk, Dr. Eadie sits poised and greets me with smile. After a few quick comments regarding a class of hers that I attend twice a week, we get to business.
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First things first, how long have you been teaching at Hillsdale?
This is my fourth year, so I came in with this year’s graduating class. I think watching them graduate will be rather nostalgic. We’ve walked together through this journey, after all.
How did you end up at Hillsdale?
Well, it was always my goal to teach at a small liberal arts school with a traditional curriculum and an atmosphere of family. When I graduated in 2009, Hillsdale began advertising for an open position they had in English. So I applied, but the market crashed that year, and they withdrew the advertisement and canceled their search. So I ended up teaching at a school called Berry College in Georgia. I taught composition there full-time for two years. It was a visiting position, so when Hillsdale reopened their search in 2010-2011, I reapplied.
Hillsdale was the one that really felt like a fit. The interview process was very rigorous, but I somehow felt energized by the experience. The people here were so genuine and cared so much about what they were doing. The students were invested, and the academic community was a thriving organism where everyone believed in this common endeavor. I knew this was a great school on paper, but to experience it in person was almost unreal. You can never be too choosy when applying for jobs, especially full-time jobs, but this was my dream.
Why should students come to Hillsdale?
I’m often asked this question, but sometimes it is phrased in terms of why they should come to Hillsdale instead of Princeton or Stanford. What do we offer that those schools don’t? Our core curriculum and what goes on in the classroom are unique, but more importantly, there’s a responsibility placed on you as a student at Hillsdale College. As a student of rigorous academics, you can’t afford a bad month where you are just a slug in the classroom. Maybe a bad day … but really any more than that and you will find that professors and students begin to notice. Then you will begin to see that you really do make a difference to the atmosphere of the classroom. What you bring to the table on a day-to-day basis is important and meaningful. And I think that is a really beautiful responsibility that is unique to Hillsdale. Your effort is not just about you. It has an effect on everyone around you.
It goes back to the idea of a community that is defined by a common purpose. We have a set of goals in common. The professors, the parents, the faculty, the students: they all have this understanding that we are working towards a purpose and doing something really important. It’s often hard, but it’s okay that it’s hard because it’s good and valuable and worth doing. That belief creates a kind of electricity and energy that spills into everything and becomes infectious. From a student perspective, Hillsdale is great because you are going to know and be known. You’re going to know your classmates and your professors, and they are going to know you.
You seem to know so much and care so deeply about history and art. Why did you choose to study English?
In part, that’s the literature of the eighteenth century. It’s required me to know a lot about the history surrounding it. I certainly enjoy history, but I never really considered a history major. I was more tempted to major in Art History. But I always thought of literature in the context of those subjects. It’s not art for art’s sake. In an art museum, you walk in and it’s this giant temple to art. You can spend hours upon hours in that temple reflecting and admiring the beautiful things there, and then you can walk back out the doors and return to the world, leaving the temple behind. I don’t think literature is like that … I think we are missing something if we read that way. Literature is trying to illuminate and change the way we think, the way we see ourselves, our relationships with other people. When we close the book, we’ve been changed in some way. We have to bring in those other contexts, such as history and art, to illuminate the text. Hopefully, the text illuminates them as well.
Which works would you say had a significant impact on you?
Rasselas, Jane Eyre, Dickens…Dickens is almost a life project I have: just keep reading and re-reading Dickens! He’s not in my time period, but I think he’s just magical. I always find his works comforting. Tom Jones is a great eighteenth-century novel that I love and return to. The works of Austen, which I love and have taught many, many times, have just become a part of my mental apparatus. Mention a topic, and I can find a way to pull Austen into it.
If you could teach one book for the rest of your life, which would it be?
I wrote my graduate thesis on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and it has been a joy to teach, but it’s new to the curriculum this year so it’s yet to be tested by time. But I love the Odyssey. I think if I had to choose one, that might be it. But really, I enjoy everything I teach.
What do you find most exciting about teaching?
The interaction! I depend on that in the classroom. If I do my work to set up the context and ask the right questions, then meanings far beyond the obvious are just going to explode like fireworks. Seeing that happen and seeing students make the connections is just a joy. Then I get so much back in comments and ideas that I had never thought of, and the work almost becomes new. I just love that common conversation, and it is something I care about a lot. I can only hope that I allow my students to care about it as much as I do.
What would you say the biggest challenge in teaching is?
Grading. Finding time to grade, and finding out what kinds of comments are going to be helpful. More than that, though, a great challenge is overcoming the way that grading changes the dynamic with students. Suddenly there is an aspect of judgement in the relationship. It always tends to make students uncomfortable because they feel judged personally. I don’t like that.
What drew you to your particular time period?
An independent study. I fell in love with the seriousness of the literature, and the way it speaks to enduring truths and right to human nature. I had flirted with medieval literature and Shakespeare. But the medieval languages were a challenge for me, and I loved Shakespeare, but his contemporary drama is not my strong suit. The next thing was eighteenth century. I love how it has roots in the Renaissance but also extends into the nineteenth century. It’s transformative and so revealing, yet still manages to speak to us in modern times. I’m always eager to take that journey again and again.
What do you wish to impart on your students when they walk away from your class?
I want them to walk away with a new or deepened mode of perception. I don’t care if they forget the first ten lines of Rasselas, but I want them to walk away with a new way of reading and interpreting that they can bring to other books and other subjects. I want them to think not just, “What am I reading?” but also “Why was it constructed this way and how does that make meaning?”
Hopefully you walk out of my classroom with the reading process heightened and refined, so you are just a little more alive to everything around you, and the world can get a little more interesting after that.
What part of English are you most passionate about?
The interaction between the story in the book and my story…or the way of seeing the world as practiced in the text, and my way of seeing the world. It’s fascinating how they inevitably mix. So by the end of a novel, or book, or play, I am changed. My way of seeing the world has changed. It’s never passive. Literature is always giving and acting, so we are always learning.
Megan Polston is a junior English major from Tucson, Arizona, and a member of the Pi Beta Phi women’s fraternity. Following graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in publishing youth fiction.