A Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton-Porter

I read A Girl of the Limberlost in conjunction with the Reading to Know book club. For those of you who are participating and reading along with us this month, the link up post will go up next Friday, June 29th. You have one week from today to complete your reading and write up a post!

Personally, I was glad that Stephanie from Simple Things selected this book for the book club as I had never read it. Having always heard such wonderful things about it, I felt deficient in some way and was happy for the excuse to rectify the situation. One afternoon a few weeks back I settled in to read it, feeling in the mood for a good piece of fiction and therefore I expected I'd plow right through it. Not so! I found it difficult to meander through. In the end, I believe I spent about two weeks reading this book (where I'd say something of this size and sort would normally only take me a few days). It took me a long time to engage with this story in a positive way.

If you are unfamiliar with the story of A Girl of the Limberlost, as I was, the basic plot is as follows:

Elnora Comstock is a poor high school student when this book opens. She lives in a cottage in the woods with her mother, who does not love her. Elnora can find no comfort or support from her mother when it comes to supplying for Elnora's financial needs as they relate to her going to school and so the girl begins to collect moths in the swap to sell to The Bird Lady. In this way, Elnora is able to finance her own way through high school. It is her plan to go straight from high school to college but various circumstances conspire against her and she is unable to go. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise as it is through her post high school struggles that she comes to realize that her mother really does love her. Furthermore, a young man enters the picture and Elnora predictably falls in love.

I had a very difficult time with this book, initially, due to the writing style of Gene Stratton-Porter. Before I began reading it, I was informed (I can't remember by who or where) that the author, born Geneva Grace Stratton, used a male pen name, as female writers were not as well accepted at the time this book was published (in 1909). I can't find any evidence online (in my quick perusals) that this was, in fact, the case. However, I can't imagine that anyone at any point in history would have been fooled into thinking that this book was authored by a man, given the vocabulary and dialogue within the page. (Let's face it, men don't typically use the word "goody!" when talking about anything.)

The dialogue between the characters went on endlessly, in my opinion. Each character shared too many of their inmost thoughts with one another. I felt like Stratton-Porter didn't trust her readers to catch on to the obvious relational difficulties and avoided any attempt at subtly in telling her story. Every relationship issue between Elnora and her mother, for example, had to be spelled out in nitty gritty detail in conversations with other characters. Most people do not casually drop references to the fact that they feel unloved by others, for instance. Elnora did this quite a few times in an unnatural way and it made it very difficult to take the book remotely seriously. However, by the second half, Stratton-Porter seemed to have gotten into her writing groove and Elnora spoke less frequently. A little more of the intricacies of various relationships were left to be inferred by the reader. By the end of the story, I found myself being able to relax and enjoy it for what it was. (However, this is not going to go down in history as my favorite story.)

What I find most interesting about this book, is learning about the lady who wrote it!

Fun facts:

* Geneva Grace Stratton was the youngest of 12 children.

* She hailed from Indiana.

* She never completed high school, but went on to become a successful novelist, amateur naturalist, photographer, as well as a movie producer! (I love that!)

* She and her husband, Charles, only had one daughter - Jeannette Stratton-Porter. Jeannette wrote and published a sequel to Freckles in 1929, after her mother's death.

* Charles and Gene purchased some land next to the Limberlost Swamp and built a FOURTEEN ROOM LOG CABIN which Stratton-Porter referred to as the "Limberlost Cabin." (I live in a log house. I'm fascinated by the idea of a FOURTEEN ROOM one. If you can't tell.) Here's a picture of it:



* Her popularity as a writer caused her to have to move from this house, in order to obtain some bit of privacy. (Sadness!)

* She eventually moved to Los Angeles (where she dabbled in the movie business).

* She was killed by a street car in Los Angeles. At the time of her death she was considered the most wealthy authoress in America and it was estimated that over half of the country's population was reading her books. (Given vocabulary words like "goody", I'm betting she was popular with the female half.) (Also, if you were a popular female author in the first half of this century, you really ought to have taken great care when around street cars. I'm thinking of Mitchell, of course.) She was buried in Hollywood, CA.

Here is a picture of Gene Stratton-Porter:



Am I glad I read this? Oh yes! I think it an important read as it relates to American literature. If I had read this when I was a teen, I bet I would have been enthralled with it! As a thirty-something year old, it just seemed a little over-the-top in the relationship-drama department. That said, it's not a story I'll soon forget and I found the authoress herself extremely fascinating. In the end, I recommend it. Thanks, Stephanie, for choosing this one!