This chapter anchors the third and last interconnected tenet in support of Emerson as a reading theorist: reading as a social and relational enterprise. Emerson’s ideas suggest that there is value in shared reading experiences among students, and these shared reading practices are seated in a practice of ethics that emphasizes the importance of sustaining healthy minds and bodies through reading transactions. Such caring for oneself discourages readers from self-indulgence and instead asks that readers see the health of others as of equal importance to their own. This social component to reading transactions is integral to Emersonian reading practices, and communicating to students that they are responsible to themselves as well as to each other can build trust in the literature classroom. When the social and relational aspect of reading is engaged during reading transactions, readers can be encouraged to make the shift from maintaining their self-health to recognizing not only their self-worth but that their lives are as meaningful as the literary works of art they study and to envision their own lives as works of art. This shift affords students the power to read creatively and communally, and it builds confidence in their abilities to grasp their roles as critical readers and compassionate community members.