A previous article has something to say about the pain of being interrupted while reading. It contains an extract from Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Princess that describes very well how annoying such intrusions can be.
Being interrupted while immersed in a book is bad enough; being discouraged or even prevented from reading it in the first place is even worse!
Just as some of the people who interrupt readers are well intentioned, so are some of the people who try to discourage others from reading. As this further extract from A Little Princess shows, they may be trying to enhance the reader's life:
"I am not in the least anxious about her education," Captain Crewe said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara's hand and patted it. "The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books—great, big, fat ones—French and German as well as English—history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much. Make her ride her pony in the Row or go out and buy a new doll. She ought to play more with dolls."
Captain Crewe buys a doll for his daughter Sara:
The head of the girls' school in Charlotte Brontë's Villette is concerned about the detrimental effect that the amount of reading Lucy Snowe does might have on her health:
“Madame Beck...often and solemnly used to warn me not to study too much, lest “the blood should all go to my head.”"
The previous article gives examples of well-meaning people who interrupt and of nuisances who are merely selfish and inconsiderate. In other cases however, the interrupters may, consciously or otherwise, be trying to prevent someone from reading altogether. They often have a sinister motive for doing this.
Some interrupters and book blockers are just enemies of reading in general; they will do all that they can to prevent others from indulging in this bad habit. Others may hate to see people getting enjoyment from books in a way that they themselves can not.
More seriously, the interrupter may be trying to sabotage the reader's attempts to better themselves and further their education by reading and learning: mean-spirited people don't like to see others going where they can't follow.
Some interrupters and anti-reading activists behave like prison guards who are trying to prevent an escape. Reading helps some people to get away from a bad situation; this is not acceptable to the reading-prevention police, so the prisoner must be recaptured and brought back to reality.
In the most extreme cases, it may seem to some would-be readers that they are in the power of someone who is trying to cut off their lifeline and prevent them from doing the only thing that makes their life worth living.
It is encouraging to learn that some of the people mentioned in the previous articles didn't let the early discouragement stop them from later leading lives in which reading and writing played a key role.
It is also good to know that some people have experienced nothing worse than the annoyance that comes from being prevented by thoughtless people and outstanding duties, responsibilities and tasks from immersing themselves in a good book.
