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| Mary Elizabeth Young Class of 2016 |
The McConnell Scholars Program often boasts that it provides an Ivy League education at a state school.
Through seminars and lectures on philosophy, politics, history and literature, through interactions with local, national and global leaders, and international studies abroad, they fulfill this promise. However, it is always interesting to see the ways in which the ideas and concepts we are exposed to in the discussions and interactions in the McConnell Seminar Room translate to our formal education in the university classrooms. I think I speak for most McConnell Scholars when I say instances like these—when the education we are receiving as McConnell Scholars crosses with the education we are receiving as University students—cause us to “geek out.” We “geek out” because—well, we are nerdy—and because making these connections is exciting and oftentimes revealing of a deeper, broader meaning.
While reading and analyzing the works of Elizabeth Gaskell this past semester as part of a class on Victorian literature, I found one such connection. In our study of Gaskell’s Mary Barton, a novel depicting the oppressions of industrialization in nineteenth century England, I found that Gaskell seemed to be proposing a solution similar to that Russell Kirk proposes in his work, The Conservative Mind a century and a half later: the solution of the individual. In Mary Barton, the most viable solution Gaskell provides to the oppressions of industrialization is the work of the individual—the members of the working class helping others struggling or the once-distant factory owners learning and subsequently taking it upon themselves to address the struggles of their factory workers—implying that it is through the work of individuals that a solution will be brought about. In the Conservative Mind, Kirk writes, “If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you must first have order in the individual soul,” proposing a similar answer for societal improvement.
This connection between the authors of different centuries not only provided me a theme about which to right my paper (and a quotation for the hook of my introductory paragraph from Dr. Kirk), but the connection, which would not have been possible without the supplemental education of the McConnell Center, allowed me see a “truth” that transcends centuries and political ideologies. With this connection, I certainly “geeked out”—but also was reminded of the invaluable education with which the McConnell Scholars Program at the University of Louisville have provide me.
Mary Elizabeth Young is a senior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is an English and Spanish major with a minor in political science.