Pollyanna E-Book

Eleanor Hodgman Porter

• Herausgeber: DigiCat
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

In her seminal work, "Pollyanna," Eleanor Hodgman Porter introduces readers to the indomitable spirit of a young orphan girl whose unyielding positivity illuminates the lives of everyone she encounters. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century America, the novel employs a classic narrative style, blending rich characterization with themes of optimism and the transformative power of perspective. Through Pollyanna's unwavering belief in finding the silver lining in every situation, Porter deftly critiques societal norms and explores the implications of happiness and hope in a world often marred by despair. Eleanor Hodgman Porter was an influential figure in American literature, her experiences as a teacher and a writer deeply informing her narrative choices. Born in 1868, Porter faced personal and societal challenges that shaped her understanding of optimism and resilience. Her own life experiences, coupled with a keen observation of human nature, prompted her to craft a character like Pollyanna, who symbolizes the strength of positivity in overcoming adversity, thus resonating profoundly with readers during the era of the Progressive Movement. "Pollyanna" is not merely a children's tale but a powerful reminder for individuals of all ages about the importance of hope and positivity in navigating life's challenges. This timeless classic invites readers to reflect on their outlook, making it an enduring selection for anyone seeking inspiration and a fresh perspective on life's uncertainties. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.

Leseprobe

Eleanor Hodgman Porter

Pollyanna

Enriched edition.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Ursula Caldwell

EAN 8596547719724

Edited and published by DigiCat, 2023

Table of Contents

Introduction

Synopsis

Historical Context

Pollyanna

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Notes

Introduction

Table of Contents

Pollyanna explores the stubborn friction between hardship and hope, asking whether joy can be a discipline rather than a distraction. Eleanor Hodgman Porter’s beloved novel takes a child's buoyant outlook and sets it against adult weariness, civic propriety, and the quiet griefs of a small town. From this tension arises a narrative that is gentle in manner yet insistent in purpose, testing the boundaries of kindness, duty, and the stories people tell themselves to keep going. Rather than sentimental escape, the book offers a study of optimism practiced as habit, modeled by a child who refuses to surrender curiosity or care.

First published in 1913, Pollyanna is a children’s novel grounded in domestic realism, set in the fictional New England town of Beldingsville, Vermont. The early twentieth-century milieu shapes its manners, class expectations, and civic institutions, while the narrative confines itself largely to homes, porches, local gatherings, and everyday encounters. Porter’s prose is accessible and restrained, relying on direct scenes that feel theatrical in their staging yet intimate in their stakes. The result is a book at once regional in detail and broadly American in temperament, alert to community ties and the quietly persuasive power of habitual good will.

At the story’s outset, the recently orphaned Pollyanna Whittier arrives to live with her aunt, Miss Polly Harrington, whose household is orderly, comfortable, and ruled by a sense of correct behavior. Pollyanna brings with her a simple game of reframing disappointment into gratitude, a practice she learned in leaner years and shares without calculation. The narration follows her encounters with neighbors, tradespeople, and townsfolk, letting conversation and small favors accumulate into a portrait of a community under gentle revision. The voice is warm, the humor light, and the pacing episodic, with chapters that operate like linked vignettes rather than a single driving ordeal.

In its scenes of visiting, mending, and mutual obligation, the novel considers how attention can be ethical: noticing what can be praised, not to deny pain, but to make room for action. Pollyanna’s approach contrasts with adult anxieties about propriety, scarcity, and reputation, prompting questions about the line between genuine cheerfulness and social performance. The book also probes the limits of charity, suggesting that relief given at a distance is different from companionship offered up close. Always the hinge is choice: what facts to foreground, which possibilities to cultivate, and how an outlook can become a daily practice.

Porter achieves her effects not through grand reversals but through accumulation, returning to motifs of windows, doorways, letters, and errands that gradually widen or narrow a character’s sense of the world. Dialogue carries much of the narrative weight, and the author’s measured irony gives even stern figures enough interior weather to avoid caricature. Scenes unfold with a stage-like crispness, emphasizing entrances, misunderstandings, and small revelations over melodrama. Readers experience change as a series of workable adjustments, the literary equivalent of tuning rather than overhauling, which suits a novel committed to ordinary life as the proper arena for moral courage.

For modern readers, the book offers a counterpoint to cynicism without endorsing denial, modeling a form of cognitive reframing that now echoes through everyday advice about resilience and mental health. The word Pollyanna has entered common speech to mean uncritical optimism, yet Porter’s story gives that stereotype more shading, locating hope in attention, service, and the slow repair of relationships. Its early-twentieth-century context foregrounds class, gendered expectations, and civic duty in ways that remain recognizable, making the novel a useful lens on how communities calibrate care. In classrooms and book clubs alike, it prompts discussion about the ethics of optimism in public and private life.

Approached as a children’s classic, Pollyanna rewards patient adult readers as well, especially those interested in how small-scale narratives carry durable philosophical questions. Its language is accessible, its scenes clear, and its emotional palette intentionally bright, yet it invites scrutiny about motive, power, and responsibility. Without relying on shock or spectacle, the novel sustains attention through the steady consequences of a chosen attitude. To read it now is to test the viability of hope in ordinary circumstances and to consider how, even in constrained settings, kindness can operate as a principled, practical craft.

Synopsis

Table of Contents

Eleanor Hodgman Porter’s 1913 novel Pollyanna introduces Pollyanna Whittier, an orphan sent to the New England town of Beldingsville, Vermont, to live with her wealthy, austere Aunt Polly Harrington. Raised by a minister father who encouraged a habit of finding reasons to be glad, the girl arrives with disarming goodwill that clashes with her aunt’s emphasis on discipline, propriety, and emotional reserve. Assigned to an attic room and a strict schedule, Pollyanna navigates grief and unfamiliar rules with resourceful cheer. The opening establishes a central tension between institutional correctness and spontaneous kindness, setting the stage for encounters that test whether optimism can function as more than naïve brightness.

Exploring her aunt’s house and the town, Pollyanna befriends household maid Nancy and gradually meets residents whose routines are framed by duty rather than delight. Through visits arranged in the name of charity, she encounters shut-ins and critics alike, including the bedridden Mrs. Snow and a reserved town minister. By applying the playful discipline she calls the glad game, she nudges people to notice small freedoms and comforts they already possess. What begins as a child’s coping method filters into civic life, challenging a culture of somber obligation and inspiring tentative shifts in tone, from household kitchens to parlor conversations and church gatherings.

Pollyanna’s rapport with Aunt Polly advances cautiously. The aunt enforces rules meant to produce refinement, while the niece interprets constraints as puzzles to be met with gratitude. The origin of her practice—a childhood lesson to seek something to be glad about even when a hoped-for gift turns out to be unusable—anchors her approach to clothing she dislikes, rooms she did not choose, and chores she has not mastered. As misunderstandings arise, Pollyanna’s literalness collides with adult decorum, but her sincerity complicates easy dismissal. The household begins to register subtle shifts, revealing where formal charity falters and where genuine attention might take root.

Beyond the Harrington house, Pollyanna encounters figures who personify the town’s guardedness, notably John Pendleton, a wealthy recluse who avoids neighbors and community obligations. A chance need for help opens his door to the girl’s visits, inviting cautious conversation across social and emotional distances. Elsewhere, Mrs. Snow’s sickroom routine acquires new rhythms when she is prompted to choose preferred foods rather than accept charity as mere duty. The local clergy find their tone gently reframed by Pollyanna’s insistence on locating hopeful texts alongside admonition. These episodes map the novel’s pattern: small, relational adjustments that expose the difference between condescension and companionship.

As Pollyanna’s influence spreads, the narrative threads tie back to Aunt Polly’s exacting household. Servants who once tiptoed adopt a more open warmth, and the town physician, Dr. Chilton, reenters the Harrington orbit with professional steadiness and a history that the adults keep largely unspoken. The novel quietly asks what truly aids the vulnerable: distant benefaction, or sustained presence that lets people articulate their own wants. Pollyanna’s cheer is not portrayed as magic but as a discipline that invites others to participate. The community’s gradual softening, however, leaves unresolved questions about durability—how long kindness can thrive when tested by pain or pride.

A pivotal accident interrupts the book’s gentle cadence, confronting Pollyanna with physical limitations that strike at the heart of her creed. The child who once found gladness in every setback must face circumstances in which cheerful reframing feels inadequate. The crisis compels Aunt Polly, John Pendleton, and others to reckon with the responsibilities they have deflected or postponed, and it brings the doctor’s expertise into urgent focus. The town’s people, altered by the girl’s earlier visits, begin returning attention in her direction, revealing how influence can circulate. The question becomes whether a shared ethic, and not only a child’s example, can sustain hope.

Pollyanna endures as a key text of early twentieth-century American children’s literature, notable for turning optimism into a practiced habit rather than a mere mood. The book’s depiction of small-town hierarchies, charitable rituals, and guarded adult histories offers a portrait of social life that is as critical as it is comforting. Its title entered the language as shorthand for unshakable, sometimes excessive optimism, yet the narrative is interested in limits as well as uplift. Without disclosing later turns, the novel’s lasting resonance lies in its invitation to weigh kindness against convention and to consider how communities might share the work of consolation.

Historical Context

Table of Contents

Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920), a New Hampshire–born American novelist trained at the New England Conservatory, turned from music to writing after marriage and settled in Massachusetts. Published by the Boston firm L.C. Page & Company, Pollyanna appeared in 1913 amid a flourishing market for juvenile and domestic fiction. Porter had already found readers with Miss Billy (1911) and would continue to write widely read novels. The book’s brisk sales and broad appeal situated it within a national conversation about character formation, cheerfulness, and civic responsibility that animated American middle-class culture in the Progressive Era.

Beldingsville, the novel’s fictional Vermont town, reflects small New England communities of the early twentieth century: compact, church-centered, and linked by rail and post to regional markets. Town life revolved around congregations, schoolhouses, a few professionals, and voluntary associations. Ladies’ Aid societies, common in Protestant churches, organized sewing, fundraising, and local relief. New England’s traditions of town meeting governance and neighborly oversight provided informal social regulation, while emerging services—doctors making house calls, small shops, and occasional factories or mills—anchored the economy. This setting foregrounds institutions and habits through which moral lessons, charity, and reputations were negotiated in pre–World War I America.

Pollyanna was published at the height of the Progressive Era, when reformers reshaped child welfare. The 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children urged family placements over orphanages whenever possible, influencing courts and charities nationwide. Compulsory schooling had spread, and states were tightening child labor laws. Social work was professionalizing, with charity casework manuals and municipal boards standardizing relief. These changes inform the novel’s emphasis on guardianship, oversight by respectable adults, and the belief that a child’s environment could be deliberately improved. The story’s domestic focus mirrors reform-era confidence in structured nurture as a remedy for misfortune.

Women’s civic influence frames much of the book’s world. The women’s club movement and church auxiliaries, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, mobilized middle-class women for education, public health, and moral reform. In 1913, suffrage activism was highly visible, though nationwide enfranchisement would not arrive until 1920. In New England towns, unmarried or widowed women frequently managed households and exercised authority over kin, reflecting both necessity and expanding public roles. The prominence of female committees and charitable oversight in the novel echoes how women organized community life, dispensed aid, and policed respectability before they possessed formal political power.

Religious currents also shaped the book’s moral universe. The Social Gospel, influential among Protestant clergy and laity, framed Christianity as a mandate for social uplift and compassionate reform. At the same time, Charity Organization Societies promoted “scientific” philanthropy that distinguished between types of need and discouraged indiscriminate almsgiving. Local benevolent groups tried to balance sympathy with discipline, a tension visible in debates over how, when, and to whom assistance should flow. Pollyanna’s language of gratitude and ethical encouragement engages these currents, highlighting the era’s conviction that personal attitude and community fellowship could transform lives alongside institutional relief.

Turn-of-the-century advances in medicine and public health reached even small towns. Vaccination campaigns, visiting nurses, and better sanitation reduced mortality, while general practitioners remained pillars of community care. Hospitals and specialized clinics expanded rapidly, and nursing professionalized through training schools and national associations. Progressive educators and reformers promoted recreation and wholesome environments as aids to physical and moral well-being. These developments provide context for the novel’s respectful treatment of doctors, ministers, and teachers as trusted authorities. The expectation that coordinated care—emotional support, medical attention, and neighborly help—could restore individuals reflects widely shared early twentieth-century faith in organized expertise.

Porter wrote within a popular Anglo-American tradition of sentimental and domestic fiction that includes works by Frances Hodgson Burnett and L. M. Montgomery, where resilient youth catalyze community renewal. Pollyanna became a best-seller, and Porter followed it with Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). The story quickly migrated to other media: a successful stage adaptation premiered in 1916, and a widely seen film starring Mary Pickford appeared in 1920. By the late 1910s, “Pollyanna” had entered American usage to describe unflagging optimism. This reception history situates the novel as both entertainment and a cultural touchstone in debates about optimism and reform.

Read against its moment, Pollyanna reflects Progressive Era optimism while gently critiquing social distance and rigid charity. Its small-town networks—church groups, benevolent committees, and a few influential patrons—model how reform-minded Americans imagined change: through personal influence harnessed to civic institutions. The novel affirms the power of kindness and neighborliness but also exposes how pride, reputation, and cautious philanthropy can inhibit help. In presenting cheerfulness as a social catalyst within recognizable New England structures, Porter captures her era’s faith in moral suasion and community stewardship, offering a portrait that both mirrors and tests early twentieth-century American ideals.

Pollyanna

Main Table of Contents

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

I.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER IMISS POLLY

Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But to-day she was hurrying—actually hurrying.

Nancy, washing dishes at the sink, looked up in surprise. Nancy had been working in Miss Polly's kitchen only two months, but already she knew that her mistress did not usually hurry.

"Nancy!"

"Yes, ma'am." Nancy answered cheerfully, but she still continued wiping the pitcher in her hand.

"Nancy,"—Miss Polly's voice was very stern now—"when I'm talking to you, I wish you to stop your work and listen to what I have to say."

Nancy flushed miserably. She set the pitcher ​down at once, with the cloth still about it, thereby nearly tipping it over—which did not add to her composure.

"Yes, ma'am; I will, ma'am," she stammered, righting the pitcher, and turning hastily. "I was only keepin' on with my work 'cause you specially told me this mornin' ter hurry with my dishes, ye know."

Her mistress frowned.

"That will do, Nancy. I did not ask for explanations. I asked for your attention."

"Yes, ma'am." Nancy stifled a sigh. She was wondering if ever in any way she could please this woman. Nancy had never "worked out" before; but a sick mother suddenly widowed and left with three younger children besides Nancy herself, had forced the girl into doing something toward their support, and she had been so pleased when she found a place in the kitchen of the great house on the hill—Nancy had come from "The Corners[1]," six miles away, and she knew Miss Polly Harrington only as the mistress of the old Harrington homestead, and one of the wealthiest residents of the town. That was two months before. She knew Miss Polly now as a stern, severe-faced woman who frowned if a knife clattered to the floor, or if a door banged—but who never thought to smile even when knives and doors were still.

​"When you've finished your morning work, Nancy," Miss Polly was saying now, "you may clear the little room at the head of the stairs in the attic, and make up the cot bed. Sweep the room and clean it, of course, after you clear out the trunks and boxes."

"Yes, ma'am. And where shall I put the things, please, that I take out?"

"In the front attic." Miss Polly hesitated, then went on: "I suppose I may as well tell you now, Nancy. My niece, Miss Pollyanna Whittier, is coming to live with me. She is eleven years old, and will sleep in that room."

"A little girl—coming here, Miss Harrington? Oh, won't that be nice!" cried Nancy, thinking of the sunshine her own little sisters made in the home at "The Corners."

"Nice? Well, that isn't exactly the word I should use," rejoined Miss Polly, stiffly. "However, I intend to make the best of it, of course. I am a good woman, I hope; and I know my duty."

Nancy colored hotly.

"Of course, ma'am; it was only that I thought a little girl here might—might brighten things up—for you," she faltered.

"Thank you," rejoined the lady, dryly. "I can't say, however, that I see any immediate need for that."

​"But, of course, you—you'd want her, your sister's child," ventured Nancy, vaguely feeling that somehow she must prepare a welcome for this lonely little stranger.

Miss Polly lifted her chin haughtily.

"Well, really, Nancy, just because I happened to have a sister who was silly enough to marry and bring unnecessary children into a world that was already quite full enough, I can't see how I should particularly want to have the care of them myself. However, as I said before, I hope I know my duty. See that you clean the corners, Nancy," she finished sharply, as she left the room.

"Yes, ma'am," sighed Nancy, picking up the half-dried pitcher—now so cold it must be rinsed again.

In her own room, Miss Polly took out once more the letter which she had received two days before from the far-away Western town, and which had been so unpleasant a surprise to her. The letter was addressed to Miss Polly Harrington, Beldingsville, Vermont; and it read as follows:

"Dear Madam:—I regret to inform you that the Rev. John Whittier died two weeks ago, leaving one child, a girl eleven years old. He left practically nothing else save a few books; for, as ​you doubtless know, he was the pastor of this small mission church, and had a very meagre salary.

"I believe he was your deceased sister's husband, but he gave me to understand the families were not on the best of terms. He thought, however, that for your sister's sake you might wish to take the child and bring her up among her own people in the East. Hence I am writing to you.

"The little girl will be all ready to start by the time you get this letter; and if you can take her, we would appreciate it very much if you would write that she might come at once, as there is a man and his wife here who are going East very soon, and they would take her with them to Boston, and put her on the Beldingsville train. Of course you would be notified what day and train to expect Pollyanna on.

"Hoping to hear favorably from you soon, I remain,

"Respectfully yours,

"Jeremiah O. White."

With a frown Miss Polly folded the letter and tucked it into its envelope. She had answered it the day before, and she had said she would take the child, of course. She hoped she knew her duty well enough for that!—disagreeable as the task would be.

​As she sat now, with the letter in her hands, her thoughts went back to her sister, Jennie, who had been this child's mother, and to the time when Jennie, as a girl of twenty, had insisted upon marrying the young minister, in spite of her family's remonstrances. There had been a man of wealth who had wanted her—and the family had much preferred him to the minister; but Jennie had not. The man of wealth had more years, as well as more money, to his credit, while the minister had only a young head full of youth's ideals and enthusiasm, and a heart full of love. Jennie had preferred these—quite naturally, perhaps; so she had married the minister, and had gone south with him as a home missionary's wife.

The break had come then. Miss Polly remembered it well, though she had been but a girl of fifteen, the youngest, at the time. The family had had little more to do with the missionary's wife. To be sure, Jennie herself had written, for a time, and had named her last baby "Pollyanna" for her two sisters, Polly and Anna—the other babies had all died. This had been the last time that Jennie had written; and in a few years there had come the news of her death, told in a short, but heart-broken little note from the minister himself, dated at a little town in the West.

​Meanwhile, time had not stood still for the occupants of the great house on the hill. Miss Polly, looking out at the far-reaching valley below, thought of the changes those twenty-five years had brought to her.

She was forty now, and quite alone in the world. Father, mother, sisters—all were dead. For years, now, she had been sole mistress of the house and of the thousands left her by her father. There were people who had openly pitied her lonely life, and who had urged her to have some friend or companion to live with her; but she had not welcomed either their sympathy or their advice. She was not lonely, she said. She liked being by herself. She preferred quiet. But now—

Miss Polly rose with frowning face and closely-shut lips. She was glad, of course, that she was a good woman, and that she not only knew her duty, but had sufficient strength of character to perform it. But—Pollyanna!—what a ridiculous name!

II.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER IIOLD TOM AND NANCY

In the little attic room Nancy swept and scrubbed vigorously, paying particular attention to the corners. There were times, indeed, when the vigor she put into her work was more of a relief to her feelings than it was an ardor to efface dirt—Nancy, in spite of her frightened submission to her mistress, was no saint.

"I—just—wish—I could—dig—out—the corners—of—her—soul!" she muttered jerkily, punctuating her words with murderous jabs of her pointed cleaning-stick. "There's plenty of 'em needs cleanin' all right, all right! The idea of stickin' that blessed child 'way off up here in this hot little room—with no fire in the winter, too; and all this big house ter pick and choose from! Unnecessary children, indeed! Humph!" snapped Nancy, wringing her rag so hard her fingers ached from the strain; "I guess it ain't children what is most unnecessary just now, just now!"

For some time she worked in silence; then, her ​task finished, she looked about the bare little room in plain disgust.

"Well, it's done—my part, anyhow," she sighed. "There ain't no dirt here—and there's mighty little else. Poor little soul!—a pretty place this is ter put a homesick, lonesome child into!" she finished, going out and closing the door with a bang. "Oh!" she ejaculated, biting her lip. Then, doggedly: "Well, I don't care. I hope she did hear the bang—I do, I do!"

In the garden that afternoon, Nancy found a few minutes in which to interview Old Tom, who had pulled the weeds and shovelled the paths about the place for uncounted years.

"Mr. Tom," began Nancy, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure she was unobserved; "did you know a little girl was comin' here ter live with Miss Polly?"

"A—what?" demanded the old man, straightening his bent back with difficulty.

"A little girl—to live with Miss Polly."

"Go on with yer jokin'," scoffed unbelieving Tom. "Why don't ye tell me the sun is a-goin' ter set in the East ter-morrer?"

"But it's true. She told me so herself," maintained Nancy. "It's her niece; and she's eleven years old."

The man's jaw fell.

​"Sho!—I wonder, now," he muttered; then a tender light came into his faded eyes. "It ain't—but it must be—Miss Jennie's little gal! There wasn't none of the rest of 'em married. Why, Nancy, it must be Miss Jennie's little gal. Glory be ter praise! ter think of my old eyes a-seein' this!"

"Who was Miss Jennie?"

"She was an angel straight out of Heaven," breathed the man, fervently; "but the old master and missus knew her as their oldest daughter. She was twenty when she married and went away from here long years ago. Her babies all died, I heard, except the last one; and that must be the one what's a-comin'."

"She's eleven years old."

"Yes, she might be," nodded the old man.

"And she's goin' ter sleep in the—attic more shame ter her!" scolded Nancy, with another glance over her shoulder toward the house behind her.

Old Tom frowned. The next moment a curious smile curved his lips.

"I'm a-wonderin' what Miss Polly will do with a child in the house," he said.

"Humph! Well, I'm a-wonderin' what a child will do with Miss Polly in the house!" snapped Nancy.

​The old man laughed.

"I'm afraid you ain't fond of Miss Polly," he grinned.

"As if ever anybody could be fond of her!" scorned Nancy.

Old Tom smiled oddly. He stooped and began to work again.

"I guess maybe you didn't know about Miss Polly's love affair," he said slowly.

"Love affair—her! No!—and I guess nobody else didn't neither."

"Oh, yes they did," nodded the old man. "And the feller's livin' ter-day—right in this town, too."

"Who is he?"

"I ain't a-tellin' that. It ain't fit that I should." The old man drew himself erect. In his dim blue eyes, as he faced the house, there was the loyal servant's honest pride in the family he has served and loved for long years.

"But it don't seem possible—her and a lover," still maintained Nancy.

Old Tom shook his head.

"You didn't know Miss Polly as I did," he argued. "She used ter be real handsome—and she would be now, if she'd let herself be."

"Handsome! Miss Polly!"