A little more about being prevented from reading

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! 

Acting out of concern for the reader
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.”"

Something about being interrupted while reading

While looking for more information about Frances Hodgson Burnett, I came across a previously overlooked short paragraph in her classic children's novel A Little Princess that resonates very strongly:

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett was writing about her young heroine Sara Crewe here, but she was surely speaking for herself – and for many other avid readers, including me, who hate being interrupted while engrossed in a book. Some people do indeed react with annoyance when abruptly dragged out of a book they were immersed in: being brought back to reality in this way is often very jarring and disorienting. 

This extract has inspired some thoughts on the subject of being interrupted while reading. This article includes extracts from another classic children's book and has something to say about the motives of the interrupters.

Reading 'is not an occupation'
Some people devalue reading; it is not seen a worthwhile activity. They equate reading books with idling, with doing nothing useful, so they interrupt because they want to see the reader doing something else.

This scene from Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes is a good example of this attitude:

“...Petrova was sitting on the table in the window reading a book...

The bell rang again.

“Ought to be answered.’’ Cook spoke firmly, partly because her word was law in the kitchen, and partly because whoever answered it, it would not be her. She looked round, but everybody seemed busy; then her eye fell on Petrova. Reading was not an occupation. It came in her view under the heading of “Satan finds....”

“Petrova dear,” she said, “we’re all busy; you run up and see who it is.””