Heart vs. Head: And so what have we learned, children?

For the last week this blog has looked at the dichotomy between the heart (emotions, passions, intuition) versus the head (logic, reason, thought). But is there anything to be learned from these books about how we should balance our own head and heart?

From The Fall of the House of Usher: Don’t kill off your emotions (or your sister, for that matter*) or they’ll come back with a vengeance…literally. 

From Sense and Sensibility: Don’t give a lock of your hair to just anybody. 

And if you keep writing to the guy who left you suspiciously without sealing the engagement formally, a) that’s stalking and b) maybe he’s just not that into you. 

Besides, what’s wrong with Alan Rickman anyway? Tons of Snape fangirls just don’t get it.

As for you, Elinors of the world: If you keep your secret love a secret, even when his other secret love keeps inexplicably dumping her confidences on you, eventually you will prevail. Except that she’ll also prevail, having heir-hopped to the brother that is much more her type and also has recently been made the sole inheritor to the family fortune. Ugh. 

From Jane Eyre: Don’t compromise your principles even for love. But don’t compromise your love for anything else.

Also, always check your fiance’s attic before going up the altar. 

From Middlemarch: If you’re marrying for education, maybe it’s time to reevaluate that “I don’t want to go to college” mindset. 

Marry a mean old man, and odds are his hot young cousin will show up just after the “I Do’s” and make you regret it.

Don’t marry a dude named Casaubon. Seriously, Dorothea, Casaubon? You gotta take the surname into consideration if it’s going to become your surname. Bad move. 

From Great Expectations: When your guardian is teaching you to be a bully, making you play poker, and has a rotting wedding cake in her parlor, maybe you shouldn’t take her lessons of “how to be my weapon of revenge against all of Mankind” so much to heart.

From Hard Times: You can suppress your emotions, but you can’t root them out completely. And if you suppress them too much, they’re going to erupt unexpectedly and uncontrollably, and you won’t know how to deal with them. 

*Which is illegal by the way.