Miss Mackintosh

Miss Mackintosh

The story takes place in a library. The main character is sitting in her office crying. Her name is Lucy Mackintosh. Lucy works there as a librarian. While she is sitting there, sobbing her heart out, someone enters. It is Dawn. Dawn, who is a trainee, has called on the local historian to help Lucy.

Lucy is portrayed as a middle-aged woman with a low self esteem. All her life, she has been overprotected and suppressed by her father and older brothers. At this point where she is now, she can’t hold back the tears any longer.
“What had I done? How must I seem?” The fact that she shows her emotions openly intimidates her. She is afraid of what other people might think. After her mothers’ death, she is left behind to live with the four men of the family. Now she is alone, and has no one to turn to, in a moment of pain or sorrow.

You can say that Lucy undergoes a midlife crisis; however, I believe she is trying to rebel against her father, to become independent, and not to have to take care of him, and waste her life. Even though she is an adult, who can make decisions on her own, she is not really allowed.
Almost every day in her life is the same; she spends her time taking care of her father, and works in the library, and doesn’t experience anything exciting.
Things change drastically, when she meets Douglas Gilchrist.
After talking with him she realizes her own potential and releases her self from the torments of her family. “Where are you going?” my father demanded..... You should be getting married”

She defies her father and is able to experience real happiness with someone who has gone through almost the same as she has. Finally she has found someone who cares about her AND her opinions.

The place where Lucy accepts to travel to Venice with Douglas is the time where she really brakes out of her enclosed shell. She has finally made her own decision and doesn’t care about what people think about her anymore. She has grown up, and found herself. “I looked at myself in the mirror, the mirror that had reflected Lucy Locket in all her stages, the mirror that had reflected the shadow and the echo. But there was someone else there now. I smiled at her. I smiled at Lucy Mackintosh, single woman. Single, independent woman. “…


Translation
Hero worship is an old phenomenon; it probably goes as far back as to the time where the hunter went out into the wood and risked his life to get food for his tribe.
The hero myth has basically followed the same pattern in all cultures: the hero turns his back to the well-known and with great personal costs, brings something immensely valuable back to his people. The pattern is confirmed in the narratives about Sokrates, Jesus and Muhamed, and in more recent times by celebrities as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela; all of whom were deeply occupied by the fact that every single individual should wake the altruistic potential in themselves. The modern form of hero worship is radically more different. It is degenerated to become an enormously exaggerated eulogy of celebrities, who definitely aren’t expected to provoke us, as Sokrates did. Fame has become a goal in itself, and the fame cult possibly symbolizes the Western cultures´ selfishness and shallowness, a cultural decay.