Pretty Cobwebs

Walter Blythe - a Hero?

2008-05-09T13:33:00.001-07:00

Re-reading Rilla of Ingleside has left me wondering about Montgomery's view of war and heroism. This is the last Anne novel, which barely even mentions the original protagonist as the focus is shifted onto Anne's youngest daughter, Bertha Marilla "Rilla" Blythe. This book is completely different from all other Anne books. It's all about the first world war and how it affects Anne's happy family. Understandably, the carefree tone of the other books is gone. As a child, I felt Rilla was dull and depressing. As an adult, I must say I find it one of the better Anne novels.

All of Anne's sons go to war as World War I breaks out. One of them had to die, I guess. It's really a must in a novel like this. The obvious choice is Jem, the masculine eldest son. To add tragic effect, it could be the youngest son Shirley (who was given a girl's name, which always bugs me). Or it could be all sons, to make it even sadder, but this is perhaps too much for a "girl book", and there would have been problems with the publisher. But the choice of Walter as the dead hero is interesting. It shows that Montgomery liked Walter the best and also wants the readers to feel the same. Losing him is the biggest tragedy, much bigger than losing the fairly cardboard Jem or the vaguely described Shirley. Perhaps this is obvious from the start, with Walter being the sensitive poet. Rilla, too, is closest with Walter who never treats her like a little brat, and always listens to her worries.

What's more interesting, though, is what happens before he dies. Walter initially doesn't go to war. He feels it would be too ugly and anxiety-inducing. As he feels beauty and ugliness stronger than other people, this would hurt him more than other boys. Others don't understand him, and he is seen as a coward by others, which also hurts him. Someone puts a white feather between his notebook at university, and this makes him go to war. He dies a hero, after receiving a medal for bravery. In the end, the coward was the bravest one of all.
...or was he?

Is going to war an act of courage, winning his fears? Or is it cowardly, not sticking to his guns? Is it giving up his own values to be a more acceptable traditional man? He sacrifices his life for his country, but he also sacrifices his possible poetry, and it's implied that he has great talent for it. Isn't he, in fact, sacrificing his poetry just to appear brave in front of his society?

I'm a bit confused by this depiction. Is Montgomery saying that traditional masculinity, complete with going to war, is the way things should be, even if you're a sensitive artist? Or is she saying that sensitive men should be allowed to be sensitive and effeminate, while others go to war? It's hard to say, but I'd lean on the former reading. In Rainbow Valley, the previous book in the series, a younger Walter beats up a bully who makes fun of his friend. He's scared to death of the fight, but when the time comes, he's consumed by a violent rage and has surprising strength as he beats the other boy up. Again, it seems like Montgomery's saying this is chivalry - defending a maid's honour. The implication seems to be that Walter has what it takes to be "a real man", but this quality only comes out in him when it's absolutely necessary. It also suggests that, to some extent, sensitivity to beauty and ugliness don't mix well with traditionally masculine traits.

Before his death, Walter writes to Rilla that he is free of fear and that he's fighting to make the world a better place for future generations. I'm bugged by this because it sounds like a glorification of war, as if that was his highest calling and not poetry:

I've won my own freedom here--freedom from all fear. I shall never be afraid of
anything again--not of death--nor of life, if after all, I am to go on
living. And life, I think, would be the harder of the two to face--for
it could never be beautiful for me again. There would always be such
horrible things to remember--things that would make life ugly and
painful always for me.

...
I'll never write the poems I once dreamed of
writing--but I've helped to make Canada safe for the poets of the
future--for the workers of the future--ay, and the dreamers, too--for
if no man dreams, there will be nothing for the workers to fulfil--the
future, not of Canada only but of the world...
...
It's the fate of mankind. That is what we're fighting for. And we shall win--never for a moment doubt that, Rilla. For it isn't only the living who are fighting
--the dead are fighting too. Such an army cannot be defeated.
(Rilla of Ingleside, p.146, taken from Project Gutenberg)

I'm not sure what to make of all this. Typical Montgomery, always the romantic. But is it true? Is that what they did in the war? Did they save the world for the future poets? Is that a more valuable goal than Walter living and writing? Is Montgomery, in fact, glorifying war as something necessary and even admirable?

It's not a dissertation, so I will leave it at that. But I think that if it were my story, I would have resolved the dilemma differently. I would have had Walter stay at home and question the war, something that none of the other men could do. I would have had him say out loud that war is mindless, pointless and ugly, and that anyone who glorifies it is out of their minds. That would have made him a hero in my mind.

Mimicking Montgomery - "The Garden of April"

2008-05-09T13:29:00.000-07:00

Many authors have quoted L. M. Montgomery as a source of inspiration, including famous Canadian authors such as Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood, as well as Swedish Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking is inspired by Anne).

However, there are also those who have mimicked Montgomery's style and content in a pretty irritating way. One of these is Finnish author Leena Leskinen, whose book Huhtikuun Puutarha (The Garden of April) sounds like a pretty clumsy attempt to honor Montgomery. The anthology Uuden Kuun ja Vihervaaran tytöt: Anna ja Emilia suomalaisten naislukijoiden suosikkeina (The Girls of New Moon and Green Gables: Anne And Emily as Favorites of Finnish Female Readers), she quotes excerpts from the novel. I'm going to translate them into English here, and the clunkiness is very intentional, because it's there in the original text also.

"The New Moon garden is soon at its best," K said without guessing my thought of the snake in paradise.
"Yes, my Dean Priest," I said and K gave a laugh: "Wasn't he lame, clubfooted?"
(Uuden Kuun ja Vihervaaran tytöt, p.106)

No, he wasn't. He had a problem with his back. Also, no teenage guy (which K is supposed to be) would say something like that or even know the books that well. The thought of the snake in paradise is also not so subtle.

I lay down on my bed and reached for one of the Emily books in my book shelf, the middle one. The book opened on a chapter entitled April Love. That on top of everything. But then I remembered that this was only a completely unromantic scene between Emily and Andrew in the Land of Uprightness, where the moon makes fields silver like in a fairy tale, the shadows of ferns flutter at the edge of the forest, so that you can imagine that anything could happen. Something mysterious and wonderful, but not Andrew Oliver Murray proposing to Emily. The whole thing becomes pathetic, at least for Andrew. I laughed out loud and and felt a twinge of pity at the same time: Andrew was just like Tero in one of our scenes, where I talk to him like a b-class lover.
(Uuden Kuun ja Vihervaaran tytöt, pp.106-107)

The recap of the scene sounds an awful lot like she's mimicking Montgomery's style here. Let's look at what it says in Emily Climbs, chapter 25, April Love, page 313:

Yesterday evening I went to the Land of Uprightness for one of the last rambles I shall have in it. I climbed the hill of firs and looked down over the fields of mist and silver in the moonlight. the shadows of the ferns and sweet wild grasses along the edge of the woods were like a dance of sprites.

And now for the impossible feat, translating back from the Finnish translation. This is how I. K. Inha translated this same passage in 1948:

"Last night I went for a walk in the Land of Uprightness, and it was one of the last trips I will take there. I climbed onto a hill with a fir thicket on it, and looked down at the misty fields glowing silver in the moonlight. The shadows of the ferns and grasses were flailing at the edge of the forest."

So yes, the Finnish writer is mimicking the translator's word choices, thinking she's mimicking Montgomery's word choices. Look at the difference - dance of sprites, flailing. Not really the same thing, is it?

My point is - it's OK to mimick Montgomery's word choices if you want to make a reference to her writing. But flat out mentioning this is from Montgomery's Emily is a bit disturbing. And mentioning what chapter you are talking about and then outlining the plot of said chapter is really disturbing. It's like saying, "Dear reader, I hope you have read Emily Climbs by L. M. Montgomery. If you haven't, please go read it NOW, specifically the final chapter, and then come back so I can make a labored comparison to a character of mine."

If you want to refer to a text, you do it subtly and with style. I'll use Montgomery herself as an example. Elizabeth Epperly, in her book The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass: L. M. Montgomery's Heroines and the Pursuit for Romance, discusses how the Emily books are a reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem Aurora Leigh. The poem also has a young girl who is a poet, whose cousin proposes to her, who leaves a dominating man for his art, etc. See, this is a good comparison. It's findable for someone who knows of Aurora Leigh and becomes blatantly obvious for someone who's read it properly. It's a stylish reference to classic literature, done in a veiled enough way that it's incorporated into the very plot of the novel. It's not an over-the-top mention: "Emily was like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, nudge nudge wink wink!! Haven't read it? Read it now!"

Montgomery was good at subtlety. Too bad some of her fans aren't.

Heidi

2008-04-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

On some birthday or Christmas I can't remember, I've gotten a book containing the two novels about Heidi written by Johanna Spyri. I've read them many times since and loved them throughout my childhood.

Heidi has a long history in Finland. My mother, who went to school in the 1950's, has told me that hearing the book read on the radio was the highpoint of her Saturdays. Her generation grew up admiring Heidi, and it probably sounded like a very exotic story to poor girls in rural Finland at the time. As a result, the name Heidi skyrocketed among little girls in Finland. From 1247 in 1940-59 to 8774 in 1960-79 to 13,564 in 1980-99. I've known lots of Heidis both my age and a bit younger. In fact, my parents considered the name for me, but settled on the even more popular Hanna. The name is pronounced like "hay" here, and therefore loses its German connotation; it sounds downright Finnish. But the origin of the fad was in my mother's generation's love of the Heidi books.

I originally hadn't thought of Heidi as one of the "girl books". I suppose to me, "girl books" had come to mean books from either the US, the UK, or Canada, and Heidi was written in Switzerland. The book is much more children's book in style than something like Little Women or Anne books. Educational like Little Women, but much more clearly Christian in tone, and somewhat simpler in a narrative sense.

However, on a closer look, there are many similarities. Heidi is an orphan, and she lives with her aunt who doesn't care about her. The aunt takes her to a mountain to live with a grumpy old grandfather that people in the village are afraid of - hardly a promising beginning, and reminiscent of the stories of both Anne and Emily. After finding a pleasant home on the mountain, Heidi is taken to the city against her will, and she has to live with a family in a polluted city where there's no nature to speak of (reminiscent of the London of A Little Princess).

Heidi soon acquires a loving non-nuclear family: a father figure (grandpa), two possible mother figures (Peter's mother and grandmother), and a brother (Peter). In the second book, she gets another, slightly younger father figure, the village doctor, to care for her in case something happens to Grandpa. This kind of acquired family is actually a common occurence in girl books. Little Women is an exception, but many of Alcott's other books (Eight Cousins, Little Men) depict families made up of either "adoptive" parents and schoolboys or cousins and their aunts. Anne and Emily, Montgomery's heroines, both find a home in a non-nuclear family - in both cases in the home of grown siblings. Burnett's heroines also find loving families in surprising places and usually outside their kin.

There's also a case of miraculous healing which I had forgotten. Clara Sesemann, whose family Heidi lives with in the city, comes for a visit on the Alps. In a fit of jealousy, Peter throws her wheelchair down the mountain and it breaks. As a result, Clara learns to walk again. This sounds a little ludicrous to a modern reader. But again, it can be compared to other girl books. What Katy Did features a similar recovery as wheelchair-bound Katy learns to walk again.

The weird thing about Heidi is that sequels were later written to it by other writers. This came to me as a shock as I was browsing the young adults' section in my library once. In the books, Heidi and Peter escape from the war after Grandpa's death and get married. I think there was also one where Heidi attends some sort of girls' seminar outside of her home town. The worst part is that these aren't the only sequels - Wikipedia reports that the English translator (!!) Charles Tritten wrote two sequels, Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children. They sound horrible. I really think the character of Heidi should stay forever 6-8 years old. It just doesn't make sense to have her grow up. The story in the first two books is concise and creates a sense of closure; it doesn't need sequels. I must say I think sequels ruined Anne of Green Gables.

Then there's this cartoon, which is baffling to say the least. What is that swing attached to? Since when does she float on clouds? Nothing wrong with imagination, but it goes so far from the original, pretty grounded story that it doesn't seem the same anymore. I also remember a TV series where all the Christian stuff was turned into superstition - instead of praying to get back home, Heidi wished upon a star. She even had some kind of rhyme for that - "starlight, starbright.." something something. I found that disturbing. You can make a show about it, and you have to change some things to make it suitable for television, but don't take away one of the key features of the story and turn it into something more digestable for modern viewers. Heidi is a religious story, and that should be respected.

Maybe this is the most distinctive feature about her story as opposed to other girl books - there are Christian values in most of them, but this one features a pretty straightforward conversion story of all main characters. As a Christian, it doesn't bother me that much, even if it does seem a bit heavy-handed. Coming to think of it, this might be the reason why I've always considered this more of a "children's book" and less of a "classical girl book". I must admit this happens in Alcott's books and Elsie Dinsmore too, though. Maybe I should just give up and admit it - Heidi has its place among the other classical girl books. It's certainly been loved by mothers and daughters alike.

Carefree Girl Books?

2008-02-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

When I was seven and reading Anne of Green Gables for the first time, I shivered with pleasure in the most dramatic parts. I mean specifically the last sentence of chapter three:

And upstairs, in the east gable, a lonely, heart-hungry child cried herself to sleep. (p.29)

This was so beautiful I had to go read it out loud to my mother. But to my surprise, she didn't seem as excited by it. "That's terrible!" she exclaimed. "How can you enjoy it when Anne is so miserable and alone in the world?" I couldn't explain it, but I did. And I must admit that her disgust at it made it even more pleasurable.

This is, of course, the difference between a child reader and an adult reader. For a child, it's all exciting: being an orphan. Living in poverty. Going hungry. Having no proper clothes. Having nowhere to go and no one to love you. It's all a part of great drama, not real problems that happened to real people.

Anne's story is really pretty cruel. She became an orphan as a baby, was tossed around big families where they needed a babysitter more than anything, spent a long time in the orphanage, and then was finally adopted. But to arrive at a house where she thinks she will be loved, and be told she should have been a boy and might be sent back - that's the cruelest part of all. OK, it's a great story, and a part of me still shivers thinking about it. But how could I not realize that a child in that position would be miserable? Why didn't I come to think of my own loving parents and the possibility of losing them?

The same goes for Emily by the same author. She's treated horribly by her relatives. Who in their right mind would let a child draw the name of her future guardian from a hat? Elizabeth Murray is sometimes pretty cruel to Emily - locking her in a dark, scary room during a thunderstorm, for example. Some of her punishments border on child abuse. Yet, while reading this book as a child, what did I take away from it? Emily's joy of writing and seeing the nature; her love of New Moon and books. Everything I could relate to, in other words. As a grown up, you learn to see the tragedy.

This is true of basically all girl books I read. Did I ever think about how awful it would be if my Dad went to war, like the dad in Little Women? Did I ever consider how miserable Sara Crewe was when she was lonely and hungry in her attic room? Did I ask what Mary felt when she was shipped to England and had to live with her grumpy old grandpa in Secret Garden? Did I think that Katy Carr in What Katy Did had lost her mother and had to suffer paralysis? No, I just found the books enchanting and captivating. Even "I wish that happened to me" romantic. For a while, I really thought being an orphan is the most exciting thing that could happen to a little girl.

A Finnish anthology called Uuden Kuun ja Vihervaaran tytöt - Anna ja Emilia suomalaisten naislukijoiden suosikkeina (The Girls of New Moon and Green Gables - Anne and Emily as the Favorites of Finnish Female Readers), which contains writings by Finnish women who either read Montgomery now or used to read her books as children, contains many similar opinions. Montgomery lived in a more innocent time. People barely knew about sex, and Anne and Emily were pure for waiting until marriage (when Montgomery herself said in her journals that in real life, Emily would have had many love affairs, and it was ridiculous that you couldn't write about something like that in a girl book).

Then there are those who say that these books are respectful to God (?? Montgomery was an agnostic and criticized Christianity and the Presbyterian church in particular both in her diaries and her novels), or, like my mother said, "women knew their place in society and were happy with it" (which goes totally against my feminist reading of Ilse as the real female role model in the Emily books, and Laura and Elizabeth as the rigid, stifled women).

The one thing that Montgomery's books probably do have over our time is the closeness and respect of nature. But the social problems were all there. When Rainbow Valley came out, a critic said that Montgomery unintentionally, like he thought, made the village community seem gossipy and like everyone's watching their neighbors. Montgomery had saved this critique and written under it: "That was exactly the impression I wanted to give."

There will always be readers who want to see all Montgomery books - even Rilla of Ingleside, which hello, war, brother dying tragically - as carefree depictions of another, more innocent time where no one was rude to others and people lived happily ever after. I guess there's nothing you can do about it. But I intend to blog more about the darker aspects of girl books, because it bugs me when people discount them based on their carefree or "flimsy" nature. There's more to those books than just cobwebs.

What Became of the Ingalls Family?

2007-12-26T16:18:00.001-08:00

Even if Little House on the Prairie isn't strictly in the same category with books like Little Women, Laura Ingalls Wilder is usually categorized as a fiction author. No autobiography is ever complete and unedited, containing the whole truth and nothing but the truth. However, I'd say the Little House books are so simplistic and seem so true to life that I'd have a hard time believing they're fiction. The same cannot be said for the TV show, which made something completely fictitious and strange out of the simple story of the books. I'll blog about it another time. Now for some tidbits I found on Wikipedia about the real people behind the books.

The girls' full names were Mary Amelia, Laura Elizabeth, Caroline Celestia, and Grace Pearl. Pretty nice names and not too dated, even if Celestia seems odd (it was a family name, of course). The only one that screams "old lady" to me is Pearl.

Laura's life was apparently pretty active until the end. She wrote her books at age 64 and on, and got lots of fans. I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of fans driving up to see her. Imagine coming out of such a humble background and being used to just a few people on the farm, and then having to talk to a bunch of strangers who read a book you wrote. And having to deal with them on a daily basis. I think I would have moved. Laura sounds like a gutsy and talented woman. It's strange how she came from living in the woods in the middle of nowhere and became one of the best-known children's authors in the world. It's a pretty unusual thing to happen to a person, especially a woman, of her time.

My favorite part of the article is the stuff on her death. Laura, who was very competitive, basically decided to live to be 90 like her husband Almanzo Wilder who died at age 92. She died just a three days after her 90th birthday. Quite surprising for a woman of her time. If you think about it, she was probably undernourished for much of her youth, had little to no medical care during her childhood years, and suffered some pretty serious illnesses, and still lived longer than most people do today. It's probably genetic though - her mother lived to be 84, and Carrie was 75 when she died, old for the era.

The story of Mary is a lot sadder. Even if she was able to find education for blind people, she was less lucky with love, and couldn't get a profession or her own home. In those days, maybe being an "old spinster" who lives with her parents was the only option for a blind woman. She had to live with her parents as long as they lived. When her mother died, she moved in with Grace, and when Grace died, moved in with Carrie. She died relatively young (although perhaps not young for the era), at age 63.

She looks so sad in the picture, but I do hope she had some happiness in her life. The books depict her as this good girl who did everything her Mom told her to, and I wonder what the reality behind it was. How much did her responsibilities weigh on her as the eldest sister? How much did the blindness depress her? Her life would have been completely different today. She probably would have lived on her own, had a partner and a job, and been more fulfilled. Maybe the disease and blindness could have been completely prevented. She would have gotten proper treatment for her stroke and pneumonia, and lived a lot longer.

Carrie was apparently always in poor health, yet she outlived both Mary and Grace. Interesting fact: she married a man who had a part in naming Mount Rushmore. That's a weird connection I wouldn't have expected. Like Laura, she must have had some talent for words, because she worked as a typesetter for newspapers. We get only a short account of Grace, the youngest sister who died before the others (sad especially considering they were quite a bit older than her). She got married and took care of Mary, but that's all we know about her. The picture of the two younger sisters remains a bit hazy.

The parents look nothing like they did on the show. Think of the curly locks of Michael Landon there, and the sweet blonde charm of Karen Grassle. Here you've got this solemn-looking man with an Abraham Lincoln beard and an equally solemn-looking woman with a Princess Leia hardo. They look utterly humorless, even if the books depict them as loving, joyful and likeable people. But you know, probably this was just the photo-posing style of the time: look as depressed and serious as you can, your life is no joke! The photo of three of the girls doesn't look particularly happy either. Also, I probably wouldn't be wrong to assume that both of these pictures, and the picture of baby Grace, were taken on the same day in the same photographer's studio, as the only photos ever of the family. Even the baby looks stiff and formal!

On the mother's bio page, I found something surprising. I had always thought that the little brother who died as a baby was completely made up by the show's writers, but he really existed. He just existed in between books:

only son (who died at 9 months) "Charles Frederic 'Freddy' Ingalls" (November 1, 1875 in Walnut Grove, Minnesota – August 27, 1876 in South Troy, Minnesota, of undetermined causes). In her unpublished biography "Pioneer Girl", Laura merely refers to the fact that he was frequently "sick" and that "one terrible day, he straightened out his little body and died".

It must have been a tragedy for the parents, their only boy - even if they had four girls they loved. On the show, they had Pop really wish for a boy and get really excited about it, much to Laura's dismay. I don't know if Laura was that dismayed in real life. I mean, in those days, people wanted boys. End of story. Boys to carry on the name, boys to bring money to the home, boys to take over the the farm. A girl of Laura's age would have known that and perhaps accepted it in that society. One might wonder if they had Grace to have a boy, and she just ended up being a girl; but in that time, they probably had no way of preventing a pregnancy either. The death of Laura's own son soon after birth is probably completely unrelated, but still comes to mind as a similar tragedy. The sons of the family all died.

But the most striking thing of all - four surviving children and only one grandchild, Laura's daughter Rose. I find that almost impossible to believe, considering the time they lived in. Laura apparently had some trouble conceiving later on, or perhaps she suffered more miscarriages that were never told to the public. On Carrie's bio page, there's nothing about children. On Grace's, it states she never had them. Carrie perhaps married too old (42 years old) to have children, but what is Grace's story? Could there be a genetic problem in this area, even if their mother had five children? Or was even five children a small family for the time and they always wanted a bigger family of ten?

Of course, I could always do more than a Wikipedia search, like say a Google search. I did find a more detailed bio on Grace, and a sad-looking formal picture. There's also a detailed timeline of Laura Ingalls' and her family's (also the Wilder side) important events, side by side with important world events of the time.

This all makes the books a bit more alive to me. It's weird that my mind almost doesn't bend to think about the life Laura and her sisters had after the events of the book, as if they should have stayed children forever. The last book in the series is pretty much all about Laura, and her sisters' lives are left outside of it (although, if the facts are correct, nothing very interesting happened in her sisters' lives at that time). It feels good to know that they were real people with actual lives.

What Makes a Little Princess?

2007-11-22T04:07:00.001-08:00

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a charming book. It was one of my favorites as a child - a rags-to-riches story about an imaginative, kind girl, with a bit of exotic Indian stuff in the mix. Sara Crewe is an easy role model, and this is the ultimate survival story. I still return to the book sometimes and re-read the exciting passages where Sara's dreams become true and she's rescued from a life of poverty.

As an adult, though, I've hit upon a problem: the idea of Sara's nobility, her status as "the little princess", which goes unquestioned throughout the book. There's something classist about the setup of the novel.

The story offers two definitions of "a little princess".
Definition 1: a girl of noble origin, i.e. the daughter of a gentleman with fine upbringing and lots of money.

Definition 2: anyone who wants to be as good as they possibly can, and who rises above the circumstances in her life.

In the beginning Sara is a princess by the first definition, in the middle by the second definition, and in the end she encompasses both. The second definition is something I'd accept as a good lesson, and is the lesson I took away from the book when I was younger. However, on re-readings, I've started to wonder if the first definition isn't actually more lasting in the book.

Sara spends a short time in her life as poor as a beggar, but starts out rich and returns to being rich as soon as justice is done. Even if her utter loneliness and misery is heartbreaking, it really doesn't last very long. Compared to all other characters in the book, Sara is privileged: she has been loved, pampered, and revered beyond anything the others could imagine. When she loses that status, it's a tragedy - but with her imagination, her talent, the memory of her father's love, and the feeling that this is all a big injustice, she survives the difficult years. What's more, she has her friends still. Ermengarde and Lottie still sneak up to see her, and the little girls she has to teach still like her a lot. She hasn't lost everyone's respect.

In the end, Sara is much better off than poor Becky, the other servant girl. Becky has spent her entire life doing hard physical labor. She's an orphan from the start, probably doesn't remember her parents at all, has never had enough to eat. Not only has Becky been deprived of a childhood, she hasn't received any formal training, which would make it difficult for her to ever have any other profession. Most likely she would be a servant for life. She doesn't have ay friends or self respect. Compared to Sara's confidence even in the face of aversity, she has nothing.

No one really sees Sara as a poor servant like Becky. The happy rich family she watches calls her "the little girl who isn't a beggar", because she acts too educated and confident to be one. Instead of simply running errands, she gets to teach the youngest children. This would never be bestowed upon Becky. Even if Miss Minchin is cruel to her, she is forced to show some respect because of Sara's steady gaze and impudently self-confident airs. As Sara imagines herself to still be a little princess, she can't be treated like a beggar even if she is one.

Now, if Sara had remained poor at the end of the book and perhaps died from the poor food and hard work, this book would be more realistic, but it wouldn't be held as a classic for children, and might have become an adults' classic instead. But she gets her fairytale ending, her happily-ever-after with a rich friend of her father's. Which is all well and good. But does she need to end up insanely rich all over again? Can't her father show up, alive and well, and tell her he can't offer her riches anymore, but she doesn't care because she's no longer used to luxury?

Becky, who starts out poor, doesn't end up rich; she is lifted out of her peril at Miss Minchin's academy, but instead of becoming Sara's adopted sister or equal-status friend, she becomes her chambermaid. Once a servant, always a servant. This always struck me as an odd ending. Why can't Becky be adopted by the rich businessman? Why does Sara, who has spent the last few years running errands, need a chambermaid anymore? Isn't it Becky's turn to rest and be waited on?

I understand that Becky can't serve as the true role model of this story, because she is way too downtrodden and self-loathing to offer any positive ideal for young girls. But she is humbler than Sara in a way; she doesn't imagine herself to be a little princess of noble origin. In the end, is being a little princess a good thing or a sign of an overinflated ego? If I went around pretending I'm a little princess so your words can't hurt me, would you respect me more or think me delusional? Even if her belief in being a princess helps Sara through the most difficult time in her life, it still makes her think she's better than everybody else, and perhaps reflects the writer's idea of an educated, rich, privileged little girl more than she was meaning to write into the book.

It seems like A Little Princess doesn't want to shake up the social system of its time too hard. Yes, it says, it's wrong to use children as unpaid servants. Yes, it's wrong that there are children starving on the streets. BUT, a rich child with a fancy upbringing is still worth a better status than children who were poor to begin with. She deserves a pony, a chambermaid and expensive books. She deserves the finest education the country can offer. The servant girl is happy to have the scraps that fall from her table.

Book Covers, Part 2: Little Women

2007-11-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

OK, I finally found this. This is the cover I had when I read Little Women, or Pikku Naisia, as a child. It's not a very memorable cover and I remembered literally nothing about it until I saw it. It looks oddly cluttered, with the sisters so close to each other and yet not in a natural-looking formation. two of them are looking at the reader, which seems set up. Amy's holding her sketch book, which fits with the book, but adds to the clutter. The colors used are beautiful, but I don't think this illustrator has really captured the essence of the book.

Here are some others. And I thought the Anne ones were bad! I couldn't find one I was really happy with. The thing is, since this book is considerably older, we can see different eras of illustration styles here. Maybe that's why some of these covers looked very odd to me.

The first thing I noticed was that almost all covers have all four sisters, sometimes with Marmee. But it seems like all illustrators have a different idea of how the sisters look, and even how old they are. Amy is the only easily recognizable one in all of these, but that's only because she has blonde hair.

Let's start off with two nice singing pictures, done in very different styles.

Classical, nostalgic, sappy and overdone; looks like a sappy Christmas card, and this is exactly what you'd expect on a girl book cover. I said I could recognize Amy but I must take it back - in this picture I just can't see her, because the youngest child seems to have dark hair. Look how solemn the girls look, singing in praise of the Lord, as one would assume. But how about this one:

It feels like someone struck the wrong chord on the piano. This picture looks like a caricature. The exaggerated expressions, the unnaturally bright colors, the fact that there seems to be no room with any concrete objects behind the girls... It's all just weird and wrong. It's basically the opposite of what you'd expect, which isn't necessarily a good thing in this case. I'm supposing this is the same scene as in the previous cover, but where's the solemnity? I guess they sang happy songs too. I'm assuming this cover is more geared to child readers and the first one more to adults with nostalgia in mind. I still don't think I would have liked this as a child though.

This one, on the other hand, must come from the same person who did the obscure Anne cover with the male teacher and whatever. This is six girls. Not four, but six. So it's not the March sisters, unlike in the other covers. If it weren't for the little girl to the right of the piano, it could be the girls with their mother - but who is that little girl, or should I say woman, who looks like a grown up, only very short? These girls seem to be in very festive garments, so I conclude it's the party where Jo and Meg went. Or is it? I mean, how are we to know? There's no indication about who's who, so it's just confusing.

Idol worship in a Little Women theatre poster. This looks like a painting of a Biblical event, and the girls gaze at a stone-faced Marmee like she's a god. Kinda scary. Maybe this was normal in the paintings of the era, and they simply wanted to emphasize the family connection, but it looks more like Marmee is staring ahead without caring about the girls one bit.

I'm sorry, what year is this? The clothes and glasses suggest it might be 1960 or something. This book was actually published in the 1800's, so maybe we could have some accuracy in the costume department. The girls - and esp. Marmee, who looks like a 1960's grandmother - are basically wearing sweaters with skirts, not dresses. They had glasses like Marmee's back in the 1800's?

A more time-appropriate one, and Marmee actually looks a bit like I imagine her. The atmosphere is nostalgic again, and there's a warm family feel to the picture. I do like this cover, but again, it's not perfect. I know that's Amy, but I can't recognize any of the older girls. Which one is the sickly and quiet Beth? They all seem healthy and boisterous in this picture.

How rich are they supposed to be? This image of upper class ennui really doesn't depict the poor, yet charitable March family the way I see them. The too-old faces - and who is supposed to be who again? - and the sad mood don't give the right idea of the book. I guess they're supposed to be looking sad that Dad's in the war, but I think the above example where they look happy to hear from him gives a much better feel for the cover. At least they got Amy's hair color right. I guess the thin one on the floor is Beth. But who is the man behind Marmee? Is the one looking at the reader - a rather strange choice from the illustrator - supposed to be Jo, and if so, why is her hair so light?

Jo writing in her study. Nostalgia again, the color choices are sombre and the mood seems intimate and calm. I quite like this one, but it seems weird after all the pictures with Marmee and the other girls, because now it's only Jo? This would fit better as the cover of Emily of New Moon than Little Women. The solitary writing figure is a strong image, but not one that describes the family-centric book particularly well.

Back to the whole family, we now see the March sisters on ice in a very archaic-looking cover. Points for originality, but... What's with Amy's face? Why does she look like a clay animation? There's something scary about those puffy cheeks and nonexistant eyes. The image of her skating towards the reader is a bit threatening. I think this one is mainly trying to show them as more active young girls who go out and don't just sit in with Marmee. It's different from the other covers, and if Amy didn't look like that, I might like it. I like the expressions of two of the girls from the left, they look natural. The colors are much more grey-toned than in the other covers, but it seems to fit. Another picture with it, where Amy looks a lot better:

It doesn't seem to be the same cover; maybe this is more like a theatre poster made with the actresses reenacting the cover. Or could it be that in a better quality, it actually looks this good? If so, it's a very nice cover with a warm feel. However, the heads over it are just so wrong. Scary sequence of repeating faces, all with the same expression on them. Looks more like Stepford Wives than Little Women.
And - what? I mean, in the book, Meg is said to be chubby, and this is the first picture I see showing that, so points for that. But is that little Amy, and - who are the other girls? Is it actually Jo who's looking at the reader? Or is that Jo looking out of the picture, into her own fantasies of the future, while the more childish and selfish Amy is just pouting? Is that Beth looking small and sickly at the bottom? I find it disturbing that this seems to be separate heads floating somewhere, as opposed to a picture of a family interacting with each other.

I actually quite like this one (which has a stamp on it, so I don't feel like copying it here). It's old-fashioney and not as detailed as some of the other drawings, but the closeness between the girls is seen in their positions, and Amy looks cute and child-like as opposed to a teenager like the rest. I'm not really sure if that's Jo, Beth, or Marmee sitting in the chair though. The photo-like pose might suggest Marmee's taking a photo of her four girls here. I'm not usually a big fan of posing covers, but this isn't bad.

Here's another one that's difficult to link to directly. The style and facial features somehow look like modern actors playing the story. The old-fashioned clothing looks more like the wardrobe of a play or movie than any real old-time garments, and there's too much of a photo feel. However, I still like the picture aesthetically. There's something warm about the colors, and I would certainly have enjoyed seeing the realistic faces as a child more than I would have liked, say, the cover I had.

A tiny picture with lots of other ornaments. This is the first drawing that I think kind of screams "children's book!" The girls in the other covers have seemed a bit older and more oriented towards young adults or teenagers, while this one emphasizes marketing the book to children and, sure enough, it seems to be a little newer. The girls are shown talking and doing some kind of housework that I don't recognize, which is fitting for the era and creates a home-like feel. For the first time - I think I recognize the girls. Jo sitting on the chair, slim and dark-haired; a nicely plump Meg with a more grown-up body and hair on a bun; Beth looking skinny and child-like, always happy and cheerful; and Amy with her golden locks. Wow, that's pretty good.

A new cover to go with the new translation of Little Women in Finland. This style doesn't fit the book at all in my opinion. Firstly, it looks like an old-time soap opera or Harlequin romance novel. Secondly, who are the characters in the picture? Is that Laurie admired by girls, and Jo in the foreground? Impossible to tell. The cheesy grins, the whole style - looks more like a joke than anything. Ugh.

Book Covers, Part 1: Anne of Green Gables

2007-11-03T07:02:00.001-07:00

To me, this is the original cover of Anne of Green Gables, the version that was prevalent in Finnish libraries around the time I was seven and reading it for the first time. There are so many things they got right in this one: Anne looking skinny and dressed modestly, yet somehow looking pretty and charming. Diana looking plump and well dressed, with lovely black hair in a feminine do. Note the puffy sleeves! The flowers in their hands, lilies for when Anne plays Elaine perhaps? Anne is telling Diana something and Diana's listening, a normal pose for them as Anne was the more talkative and imaginative one. A very beautiful, classical cover, which has sadly since been replaced.

She is standing on a hilltop with flowers in her hands, hair fatefully blowing in the wind. It looks a little too dramatic, as if she's a war hero, but it fits Anne's dramatic way of thinking, so I think she would have liked it. Her hair is clearly red, which I like. It seems like some illustrators felt they needed to tone it down. The colors are slightly too bright in this one, as if they wanted it to look good for the children so let's have bright yellows and blues. The dress might be a bit much for Marilla's tastes, and doesn't look quite authentic.

This is a beautiful picture. An old-time girl sitting and petting a chick, looking thoughtful and wise. It looks soothing and calm. But - where's the resemblance to Anne and her story? This girl looks too young to be Anne. Her hair isn't red. I don't remember a scene where Anne was petting a chick, even if it seems like something she could have done. I'm not even sure if this has been drawn specifically for the book or if it's been taken from some other old-time illustration. Disconcertingly far from what I imagine Anne to look like.

Two very similar covers with friendship between Anne and Diana. The motif is nice and sets a positive atmosphere for a young reader. I'd rather see Anne alone though, because Diana is so vague as a character that she's really there only to be Anne's best friend. It also bugs me that in the upper one especially, Diana is drawn to be as slim as Anne, a very typical thing in both the covers and the tv versions. What I like about the detail, though, is the fact that Diana has much nicer dresses than Anne, which is true to the books.

Clearly a simplified version for children, this illustration gives us sombre nursery colors and a young, rather insecure-looking Anne. The colors are a bit much - pink and what I'd call baby green with baby blue to boot - but I like the image of Anne looking out of her window and dreaming. She looks neither too old nor too young, and her face looks a lot like what I imagine Anne to look like (which might have more to do with Megan Follows than my original idea of Anne). I wish her face looked a bit happier though. Note that this picture shows the green roof, even if I imagine it as a little darker green.

One of my favorites, unfortunately I couldn't find a lighter version. Anne with her flowers, looking mysterious and happy, like her imagination's telling her secrets she can't quite express for the rest of the world. Anne looks neither too young nor too old, and the cover doesn't look cheesy because of the somber coloring. A lovely picture.

I'm liking this one, even if again, the hair isn't quite red enough. But this is a contemplative, not overly young Anne, who's thinking of something important as you can tell from her pose. The dim lighting brings a nice, mysterious feel to it.

The exact opposite from the previous one. Childish colors, a naivistic painting-style feel and what on earth is Anne wearing? I didn't know they manufactured flowery shirts in those days (or that Marilla would have let Anne wear one anyway). Not to mention that she seems to be wearing overalls with it. At least they've drawn the red hair and freckles. This type of cover makes itlook like a cheap children's book, and not to offend childrent's books, I think Anne books can offer something to an adult reader, and a cover like this is aleritng adults that this book is suitable only for readig out loud to your kids.

What on earth is this? The style is OK, nostalgic enough, but - what scene might this be? How does this connect to the novel? Is this Anne's bad teacher telling her she's going to be punished for her hot temper? Or... I don't even know what else it could be, to be honest. A very strange choice of cover for a book where male characters are in a vrey unimportant role. Maybe it's the scene where Anne wins the scholarship when she's older, since these are all adults, but I honestly can't find Anne or any other recognizable character in this one. Strange.

An annoyingly movie-ish cover, complete with movie lighting falling on her face. We see the train and a sad Anne getting off the train in a much too nice dress. Not a very encouraging view of her, and not a particularly good style of illustrating such a classic. It looks like the photo of a pouty modern girl with makeup on. Blah.

This one's refreshingly different, albeit confusing. Who are the women in the picture? They all look like grown ups. I suppose we're looking at Rachel Lynde, Marilla and Anne, from left to right. There's something in this picture that seems to fit Montgomery's style of narration: she often uses village gossip and women's conversations to take the story forward, and in that sense it's a very fitting illustration, not necessarily for the first Anne book, but for the series at large. But what is that thing under Marilla's feet? An ottoman? Maybe I don't know enough about old time furniture, but it doesn't seem like something I'd expect to find at her house. Marilla looks rather too young; she was around sixty when Anne came in, but in this picture she looks forty.

This one amuses me. I must say the bright colors are a bit much and the optimistic look on her face belongs in a naivistic painting rather than a book cover. Other than that, her hair is way too long - those braids look like they could reach all the way to the ground. A rather strange view of Anne, although the flowers are fitting for the content of the book. They just make her look ridiculous in this picture - Flower Princess Anne?

The server I linked to doesn't like direct links, but I think it was this picture.
Very old-fashioned. This picture of Anne depicts a young woman, not a little girl. Definitely not something marketed at young schoolgirls only (or if it is, young schoolgirls of the era had a really different taste than modern ones). It might as well be a cover for Anne's House of Dreams, she looks that grown up. I should mention that the "cover girls" were made to look younger after the war when Montgomery - along with Mark Twain and some others - suddenly became billed as a children's author, and her books were taken to the children's section. Perhaps surpising, considering that Anne's over 16 for six of the seven books, and a child only in the first one.

An Asian version. Here we see a teenaged Anne sitting in her room, pondering. She looks a little sad and the illustration seems a bit too still, as if Anne is just bored out of her skull and nothing's going on in her life at all. At least they got the flaming red hair - surely a very rare sight in Asia - into the picture. The colors are warm and it looks nostalgic and old-timey, but slightly depressing. Maybe it's the sad expression on Anne's face. She just doesn't look like the happy, imaginative Anne in the book.

Anne casting adoring looks at Matthew. On the first glance, I really liked this cover. It's got that old-time charm and it's beautiflly drawn, with soothing colors to boot. However, it's utterly wrong if you've read the book. When Anne came to Green Gables, she was skinny, she had an ugly tight dress on her that she'd nearly outgrown, and she surely didn't have such a big suitcase! Also note that her hair doesn't look so much red as it looks light brown. And the look on her face implies much older than a girl of eleven. It's just all wrong, apart from the lovely apple blossoms hanging near Anne's head, which does imply the illustrator read it. Charming but too beautified.

A cover of Anne - without Anne. With just two suitcases. Wow. Interesting. It makes it look like a modern novel, a little paperback you pick up at the discount counter and then read and realize it's the best book you ever read. I do think it gives the wrong idea of Anne of Green Gables which, while a good book and a classic, is by no means something extraordinary to the modern reader. I think old classics should be made to look like old classics.

This one really annoyed me. She looks like one of the Bratz! The yellow color is ugly and cheap and makes this look more like a book just for children than I think it should be. Her face looks too grown up too. One thing they got right, though: Anne was quite starved when she came to Green Gables and the other covers have seemed to dismiss that. At least this one made her look skinny. But there's something about this drawing style that suggests she's only naturally lanky and skinny and/or this is just the style of this illustrator. The shadowy figures in the back, while looking artistic, don't really seem to belong in a book cover of this sort. Also - what is she sitting on? Is that an about-to-fall pile of boxes? It just baffles me, what this particular illustrator was thinking.

There were many other covers, but I just collected some of the most interesting ones. I actually ignored the most common link, which is the cover I have in my copy - you know, the one where a happy young Anne is clutching a book to her chest, has a hat on, and looks very happy? I do like that one, but I suspect everyone already knows it, and I wanted to present some, at least to me, rare ones.

Things That Bug Me About Little Men

2007-11-02T04:09:00.000-07:00

The pretty Finnish cover by Maija Karma captured in a very poor webcam image.

Louisa May Alcott's Little Men used to be my favorite book when I was ten. Looking at it now, I can still see my name and old address scribbled in a very childish handwriting on the first pages. There's also a drawing of a dog. It was a proud moment, when Mom bought me this book. It was a bribe, actually. I had agreed to spend one more night on a long, hot summer trip in a hotel. "If we spend the night here, and you don't complain, I'm buying you Little Men when we get home." I lay there in the dark, car lights flashing by, trying to sleep in the hot, stuffy room, thinking only of Little Men that would soon be all mine!

It amuses me now, how much I used to love this book. Why didn't I demand something I could still enjoy, like one of the Anne books? Why was this particular book so important at the time? The reason is probably simple - it's about children of ten and younger. It's about their play, joys and sorrows. I could relate. Besides, I was drawn to a more innocent time when everyone had the same morals as my mother and life was simpler and happier. I was also a hopeless sap and loved scenes where lonely, forsaken orphan children are taken home by a loving mother and father.

Alcott's literature is something I feel ambivalent about today. It was captivating for a child, and it's still captivating once I set to reading it. There are touching scenes and realistic portrayal of children; Alcott did know how to write about children playing in a way that seems true to life. However, there's a lot about this that makes me groan now. I can't read a lot of Alcott anymore, because I see so many annoying things about it in terms morals and moralizing, or the values of the time, or the classist, racist attitudes she seems to exhibit while delivering a message that we're all equal bla bla bla.

Here are some questions I have pondered on. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you had similar problems with the book.

-Why are there no black boys in Plumfield? Surely black kids had it harder back then, as they do now, yet there are only white boys in the book. The only black character seems to be the cook, "Asia". How very ethnic of them - a black servant with the name of another continent. In the Finnish edition, she's referred to as a "n***er", which was the standard way of referring to black people in the 50's and 60's (we didn't have KKK and really no black people here either, so it's not the same history). Project Gutenberg's version of Little Men just seems to say "black cook", but I'm not sure if that's the original or the new PC version.

-Some of the children, like Nat and Dan, seem to come from very poor backgrounds, while others like Tommy, Jack and George come from wealthy homes. Plumfield isn't entirely a charity organization, it seems; the amount of rich boys among the poor is fairly disconcerting, because it seems like they're there to pay the bills. There's also considerably less affection between these boys and the Bhaers. Yet the narrator makes the Bhaers sound like saints who barely get by and do their best to help these poor orphaned children. Half of them aren't even orphans.

-Ma and Pa Bhaer seem awfully attached to some children, while they tend to think negatively of others. Jack is greedy and devious, George is fat and well, greedy, and so forth. We never see any loving moments between either of the "parents" and those two. Yet Dan, who's rebellious and almost burns the house down, becomes the favorite. Black sheep appeal there, but does that mean Jack and George are irredeemable? Or that being fat is a bigger sin than burning down the house?

-Pa Bhaer tells the boys a story from his childhood: the end of his tongue was cut with scissors as a punishment for lying. Eww! That's cruel, unsanitary and just plain dangerous. He could have gotten blood poisoning, but I guess it doesn't matter as long as he doesn't lie. Making Nat hit him with the ruler as a punishment was also cruel. Lying isn't such a big deal, and OK, you gotta learn at some point that it's wrong, but it's really understandable for a mistreated kid to lie now and then. It really doesn't warrant a punishment in my book.

-Jo had ambition as a young girl. Then she turns into a mother/governess? Ehh. Not exactly the ending you'd hope for her when you read the first books. Alcott must have thought this is the best possible ending for a talented young girl: to live for others and help the children. I'm not saying it's not a good thing she's doing, but to go from dreams of becoming a writer to this is disappointing to say the least. She doesn't seem to have any privacy at Plumfield, nor any time for her own dreams.

-Daisy can't play football with the boys, so Aunt Jo buys her her own kitchen where she can learn to bake. Like a woman should. Women in the kitchen, men on the football field. This violates against the idea that they wanted to raise fit outdoor children, though of course that was mainly men's lot in the society of the time, while girls were expected to love quiet life indoos, knitting and cooking. Like Beth the perfect angel.

-Laurie and Amy, the rich and beautiful couple, are somehow admired because they're rich and beautiful. Despite all the negative talk about money, nothing wrong with rich Laurie taking his family on trips to Europe and stuff. Also, how convenient that they should have only one child, a beautiful little girl who's adored by everyone. The chapter where Bess came to visit and acted like a little princess or something and all the boys became more gentleman-like because of it was... weird, to say the least. So Bess, the little angel of two rich people, is higher in status than those poor boys they're teaching? And men need to be gentlemen to women, who in turn need to be innocent little angels? Arghh.

I know it's always easy to look back on books you read as a child and groan about the annoying things you missed. But this is a book my mother thought was really moral and educational, a book she probably wished I'd learn from. A book she thought spoke of another, more innocent time when things were better. She was a grown up. And she still thinks that of books like this. It baffles me.

My main complaint with Alcott has been that she's too moral. But maybe I should say, instead, that her morals are in fact questionable and contradict themselves. What's the one thing more annoying than moralizing? That's right, hypocrisy.

Welcome!

2007-10-26T03:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome to peruse my blog on girl books. I'm an English major who's written her thesis on Emily books by Montgomery, so I have some personal touch, if not directly expertise, on the subject. My thesis discussed the view of a Canadian female author in the 1920's, with some focus on the other artist types Montgomery draws in the novels (I'll discuss those in a later post). In this blog, I wish to discuss the topic a bit more freely and non-academically.

I have a love/hate relationship with most girl books, meaning books my Montgomery, Alcott, Burnett, Finley, and the like. Some I appreciate a lot - like aforementioned Emily series - some I have ambivalent feelings for - like the same author's Anne series -, some I downright despise - like Finley's endless Elsie books.

In this blog, I'm going to discuss "classical girl books" in a broad sense. I intend to discuss, for instance, Finnish Tiina books from the 1950's, which is a fairly late addition to the tradition, but as you will see, it bears a lot of resemblance to the older stylings of, say, Alcott whose last books came out in the 1890's. In this sense, 'classical' might have more to do with status and style than age.

"Pretty cobwebs" is a quote from L. M. Montgomery's Emily's Quest, where older man Dean Priest belittles Emily's literary efforts. It seems like the way most people view girl books: flimsy, meaningless, nice to read when you're ten or so, usable for a grown up only as a nostalgic getaway from the harsh life of an adult. I would agree with that on some of the books (Elsie!), but not on others. I think girl books can offer more than that. It depends more on the readers what meanings we give to books.

Most importantly, girl books offer us a window to the society of the olden days: what was expected of a girl, what girls read, wore and talked about, what kinds of values were imparted through literature.

The silliest thing you can do with a girl book is just toss it in the corner when you're 13 and never glance at it again. There's always something you can find there.