Free The Small Room by May Sarton Page A

you think it’s dangerous to get personally involved?”
    The blue eyes narrowed. “Dangerous? Pish-tush!”
    â€œHow are they going to learn anything about feeling if they don’t feel?” Carryl Cope was suddenly really involved, Lucy felt, almost angry. “The trouble with all of you is that you have acquired a set of formulas that make it possible for you to reduce life to a mechanism. We are all a little in love with our teachers, and a very good thing too.”
    Lucy felt an immense gulf between herself and these two powerful and powerfully unconscious women, the gulf of the generation, and she decided it was time to go. She got up, glancing at her watch. “I really must tear myself away,” she said awkwardly, not knowing quite how to leave. “Those freshman papers …”
    â€œOh dear, must you? Just when things began to get tense,” Carryl Cope teased. “But you have to sit down for five minutes. I want to speak of Jane Seaman before you go.”
    So—that was it, the real reason behind the invitation. Carryl Cope had showed her hand at last.
    â€œWhat about Jane?” Lucy said, still nettled and prickly, “she appears to be everything one could possibly hope for in a student. And she makes no personal demands.”
    â€œWe’ve rubbed Lucy the wrong way,” Carryl Cope announced with a smile. “Jane is enjoying your course very much, by the way.”
    â€œIt’s a grand class,” Lucy responded, glad for a change of subject. “They keep me on my mettle. Jane is doing a paper on Melville’s viability as a subject for certain fashionable critical approaches. I must confess this seems to me pretty advanced stuff for her to undertake. The reading it will require is prodigious, but she seemed so very eager to have a try.” Then Lucy felt she must say one more thing about what had occurred earlier. “You don’t rub me the wrong way. It’s just that I feel overwhelmed. I don’t see how anyone can be a good teacher, let alone a great one. You can’t win: either you care too much or too little; you’re too impersonal or too personal; you don’t know enough or you bury the students in minutiae; you try to teach them to write an honest sentence, and then discover that what is involved is breaking a psychological block that can only be broken if you take on the role of psychoanalyst, parent, friend—God knows what!” This passionate sally was greeted with laughter. “You laugh, but it’s hell!”
    â€œIt’s all right,” Carryl said, still laughing. “We all feel exactly as you do. The relation between student and teacher must be about the most complex and ill-defined there is.”
    â€œAnd that’s why you’re all so alive here,” Lucy said, mollified.
    â€œOr all so dead! But I won’t let you go,” she added, as Lucy once more made a move, “without one word more. I do have the idea that Jane is pushing things a bit too hard.”
    Lucy felt baffled and tired. “Do you think then I should suggest a less difficult subject for her paper?”
    â€œNo.” Carryl Cope walked over to the windows to draw the curtains. “No,” she said thoughtfully, “I just wish you would keep an eye on her.”
    So even the brilliant student, the paragon, must be watched and tended like a plant, now stimulated by water and sunlight, now placed in the shade temporarily!
    â€œI’ll do what I can.” Lucy stood in the middle of the room, hesitating between shaking Olive Hunt’s hand and waiting for Miss Cope, who was rummaging about at her desk.
    â€œHere, let me just give you this, an advance copy of Appleton Essays . Have you seen it before? We are rather proud of this little publication. You might be interested in Jane’s analysis of The Iliad. ” The closely printed, solemn-looking pamphlet was placed in Lucy’s