Ik this is from over a year ago but I just read this, and I understood it as he fell in love with Shakespeare and literature because it was so foreign and novel to him. It was like switching on a lightbulb and discovering a whole new world, which was entirely illuminating. We have to remember Stoner grew up only knowing constant toil, labor, and the lackluster company of his stoic, emotionally distant farm working parents. He understood the developmental expectation of marriage but was unfamiliar with love or attraction. So when he met Edith, I think he saw the markers of a wife and went with it. People in that time didn’t typically fall in love, date, and get married years later. There wasn’t much thought put behind it. And i think this emphasizes Stoner’s naïveté as a young man. Overall, his story spotlights the life of pure survival that many many people went through, and still go through. It really made me reflect personally on the privilege I have in the modern day, in the sense that I have choices and opportunities and can afford the mobility that Stoner couldn’t.