An Excellent Read — 2 years ago
This was an extremely interesting and fairly prophetic book by one of my favorite turn-of-the-last-century authors, G. K. Chesterton. (Chesterton, by the way, was one of the primary influences on the spirituality of C. S. Lewis.) This is the first “political” book of Chesterton’s that I have read—most of his other texts are primarily religious, or at least theological.
Chesteron has a great deal to say in many of his books about social justice and he reprises his emphasis on distributivism here. I’ll leave it to minds smarter than mind to weigh in on Chesterton’s economic ideas (Adam, my brilliant boyfriend, seems extremely skeptical). He does, however, pose some arguments about female nature with which the twenty-first century woman is quite unfamiliar. Some of these, especially those against suffrage, cause me to raise my eyebrows in discomfort. Others, however, are quite compelling. For example, a woman should not have to work because she does not see that man’s working world is a joke she will take too seriously. Woman should not be forced to specialize because men need a partner who is an amatuer (from the Latin word, amare, to love—someone who does something simply because she loves it).
This is an overall interesting read, even if read merely as a period piece.