A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter (March 10-12,
2004)
Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost (1912) is a lovely tale of a young girl named Elnora Comstock. Elnora is a headstrong and intelligent nature-lover. She grows from sixteen to around 23 by the end of the story, and the reader roots for her in her early struggles to pay for school and forgive her mother to her later struggles with romance.
Elnora lives with her mother by the Limberlost swamp in Indiana. Her father drowned in the swamp before she was born, and her mother shows her no affection. Her mother, Katharine Comstock, is an outstanding example of selfishness, idolizing her dead husband and blaming her daughter for his death. Elnora reminds her mother of her father at times, making Mrs. Comstock hold herself even more aloof from her child. At the same time, Mrs. Comstock does not want anyone else to love her child either, and jealously guards Elnora from her Aunt Maggie and Uncle Wesley. Maggie and Wesley give Elnora love and treat her with kindness.
Elnora succeeds through her sheer determination in the face of adverse circumstance. She learns everything about the Limberlost, collecting moths and butterflies, Indian relics, and learning about the rare plants that grow there. She excels in learning to play the violin, like her father. She graduates first in her class, paying her way through school buy selling collections of moths to the Bird Lady.
One major climax of the book is when Mrs. Comstock finally realizes her memory of her husband was false. When she realizes how she has punished her daughter for so many years, Mrs. Comstock’s transformation is remarkable. From the evil and misunderstood villainess, she becomes the mother Elnora always dreamed of having. Understanding Mrs. Comstock’s motivations is one of the highlights of the novel. She has a wicked acidic tongue and sense of humor and is consistent in her views.
Elnora is the other character the reader hopes will succeed, and she does. The latter part of the story involves Elnora’s attraction to Philip Ammon, a man engaged to another woman, and who shares her love of nature. She is attracted to him, not in a romantic sense at first, but as a kindred friend who understands and shares her love of nature. When Philip’s fiancée Edith Carr humiliates him at a ball, he thinks of Elnora in a new light and he returns to the Limberlost to win her heart. Elnora is much more cautious since she does not know Edith’s side of the story. Through many twists and turns, Elnora and Philip end up together, but in the meantime, many of the earlier characters of the story are pushed to the sidelines.
My favorite aspect of this book is the understanding of nature and setting that Porter has. She knows what she writes of, and portrays her setting in a way that engrosses the reader. All too often, I skim over settings as I read stories because what I read does not appear in my mind’s eye. If I cannot see the setting, the descriptions are useless to me. In reading this story every word that described the setting was outstanding. I was left with a vivid picture of the Limberlost.
This book may be read as an electronic text.
