Finding Her Voice

Lou-Ellen Lewis was a quiet girl given to reading. She was not shy, but her reflective disposition discouraged her from revealing her inmost thoughts openly in class. Unlike so many of the other girls, enthusiastic and vital as they tended to be, ‘Lulu,’ as they called her, seldom volunteered to join literary discussions, although she was clearly a calm and patient listener whose clear and exceptionally compelling writing revealed unusual maturity and depths of moral seriousness. She was a part of the class, yet apart from it. She thought for herself, and  did not wear her heart upon her sleeve. The energetic and self-dramatizing personal disclosures typical of teenage girls were so much in evidence that Mr. Matthews, their senior English Literature master, was disappointed that the boys seemed tongue-tied by contrast. As it was a school for the arts, entrance to whose elite English Specialist program was limited by examination and audition, it was not traditional male indifference to the humanities that limited their contributions to classroom discussion. Perhaps they were intimidated by the girls’ disproportionate numbers: boys were outnumbered three to one. Matthews was nevertheless disheartened by their lacklustre performance. Lou-Ellen’s reticence made her seem to him a natural ally for them. For the boys, her allure was obvious, but her banter with them was always cheerfully innocent. She saved her passion for writing and for books, not boyfriends.

“Do you mind being called ‘Lulu’?” Mr. Matthews asked her one day. He had always called her Lou-Ellen.

“No, not at all. Should I?”

“I know it’s a nickname, but it seems a name for someone much younger, somewhat empty-headed, perhaps, very much what you are not.”

She smiled. “I’m glad I’m not empty-headed. No, Lulu is fine by me, Mr. Matthews. ‘A rose by any other name…’”

“’Would smell as sweet…’ “He finished the allusion for her. “Yes, very true,” he agreed.

“Adults call me Lou-Ellen…”

“Then I’ll continue to do likewise.”

She smiled her acquiescence.

As the semester wore on, Mr. Matthews became concerned about Lou-Ellen’s slow progress with her independent study project. Each student had to choose an individual literary topic, do the assigned reading, and develop an argument for a final essay based on his or her understanding of the text or texts chosen. Each was either to write two or three informal progress reports or submit to the same number of oral interviews with him. Most chose the interviews, thinking them less work, but not Lou-Ellen. She wrote well, as always, but had trouble choosing a topic. She abandoned Wuthering Heights after she found she “detested Heathcliff for his mistreatment of Cathy and others, for which there is no excuse,” called the romantic plot “melodramatic and unconvincing” and could not decide on whether to examine a comparison between two dystopian novels, 1984 and Brave New World, both of which she had read sympathetically, or study the role of women in novels by Margaret Atwood and Margaret Laurence. “I dislike the label ‘feminist,’ because I disapprove of any activist aggression and misanthropy, but I might make an exception for these two…” She gave good reasons for her indecisiveness. Matthews commended her for her work, but reminded her that time was passing quickly. “She who hesitates is lost,” he wrote. “You need to make your mind up!” He did not comment directly on her last paragraph, in which she had written, unexpectedly chattily,