A wise but illiterate woman

Her name is Dolly Winthrop and she's from Silas Marner by George Eliot. She's a simple, hardworking village mother. One of the salt-of-the-earth type who manged a large household and family when times were not easy. Dolly was always ready to lend a helping hand, and took it upon herself to befriend the lonely weaver Silas Marner and the little girl he'd just adopted.

I was wondering why Dolly appeals to me so much. I think it's partly because she's everything I used to train myself not to be. Her homespun wisdom comes straight from her own head and heart, because she's never even learned to read. We get no re-hashed book wisdom from Dolly. She doesn't even know any big words, let alone try to impress people by using them. We can be certain that she gives only what she's pondered through her own personal observations of life, human nature and changing seasons. Such a refreshing lady is hard to find for real, especially in the 21st century.

As I said, I was way different to her. Studying English at Uni in my youth scared me away from the classics for several years. A lot of the academic waffle and jargon soared over my head. It gave me a sinking feeling that the enlightened beings behind the podium must be higher mortals than the rest of us. I think I developed some sort of imposter's syndrome for even being there. So I started trying to impress each of the professors and tutors by writing the sort of essays I imagined they'd most like to read. I listened carefully to opinions they expressed in lectures and started doubting my own impressions as too simplistic, if not totally off the page. Without consciously realising I was doing any such thing, I started trying to figure out smart people's opinions to take them on board as my own. One day I realised, 'I don't know whether I'm thinking as myself, my tutors, or my text book. Will the real me please stand up?'

I knew it was time to stop regarding others as models of how to think. It took ages to train myself back to thinking for myself, which I assume is what we're born doing. I can't even say for sure that I totally succeeded, but I've been trying. An education is a great thing, but that might be one of its down sides. We aren't doing ourselves any favours by blindly trusting and admiring the self-proclaimed learned beings. That's why I loved Dolly Winthrop's way of going off to think for herself, and then putting her impressions into her own words.

There's her simple reason for going to church.
 'I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I've been and heard the prayers and singing to the praise and glory o' God, and if a bit o' trouble comes, I feel I can put up wi' it for I've looked to help i' the right quarter and gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we are, and come short o' Theirn.'

Then there's her feelings about the seasons and cycles.
'It's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the rain and the harvest. One goes and the other comes, and we know not how nor where. We may strive and scrat and fend but it's little we can do arter all, the big things come and go with no striving of our'n.

Challenged by Silas, she has a serious ponder about why things happen the way they do.
'It come to me clear as daylight, but whether I've got hold on it now, or can anyways bring it to my tongue's end, that I don't know. It come into my head that Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor what I've got, for I can't be anyways better nor Them as made me, and if anything looks hard to me, it's because there's things I don't know on; for it's little as I know. That's all as ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think of it. Eh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the right on. And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner, to do the right thing as far as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know. I feel it i' my own inside as it must be so. And if you could but ha' gone on trustening, you wouldn't ha' run away from your fellow craturs and been so lone.'

Finally, here's her attitude about things we may never understand, no matter how hard we may try to figure them out.
It's the will o' Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but there's some thing as I've never felt i' the dark about, and they're mostly what comes i' the day's work. You were hard done by that once, Master Marner, and it seems as you'll never know the right of it; but that doesn't hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me.

So Dolly is one of the literary women I greatly admire. Anybody who desires to think through the big questions, then comes up with solutions which put their hearts to rest deserves all the serenity they get. She even has a word of her own about trying to take the opinion of learned folk on board. 'It'd mayhap take the parson to tell us some things, and he could only tell us in big words.' So rather than trying to fathom them, she makes her own sensible conclusions. Good on her.