I’m learning that a cheerful orphan marveling at the sky is a repeating image in literature. (See last week’s Bedtime Stories about the sunset in “A Little Princesss”)
I just re-read the Swiss novel “Heidi” from 1880. Heidi is a good-natured and clever young girl who is orphaned as a baby and is raised by her Aunt for a few years before being unceremoniously delivered to her Grandfather, the crotchety recluse “Uncle Alp” on the top of a mountain in the outreaches of a small rural town. He seems as though he doesn’t want to take care of her (for about 2 sentences) and then immediately makes her a bed and a chair and begins to send her up the mountain every day with Peter the goatherd. This scene takes place when she sees the sunset in the mountain for the first time.
Heidi is about 5 years old in this scene and I suppose that’s why she thinks the mountains are on fire. She is very disappointed when the sunset is over but is reassured that it happens every day.
It seems that I’m revisiting all of the cheerful turn-of-the-century, girl orphans I read and watched in my childhood. Who’s next? Pollyanna? Anne of Green Gables? It is an interesting phenomenon perhaps worth studying. Heidi (1880) is 5, Sara (1905) is 7 at the beginning of the book, and 13 when it ends, Anne (1908) is 11, and Pollyanna (1913) is 11. All orphans, all going to live in a strange place, all have plucky attitudes, above-average intelligence and ingenuity, and relentless friendliness. Sara seems to be the rich outlier, whereas all the other girls come from, or remain in relative poverty. Anne’s exposure to the reader is the longest and the only one that we follow into puberty, the rest of the girls remaining forever children. Which one is your favorite? And more importantly… do they all like the sky?
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