Passages from Silent Spring

Here’s a list of passages from Silent Spring I’d like you to read:

Chapter 1:  “A Fable for Tomorrow” (entire chapter)

Chapter 2: “The Obligation to Endure”

1^st section, from “The History of Life on earth” to “along with the insects” and the final three paragraphs of the chapter, from “It is not my contention….” to “gives us the right to know.”

Chapter 3: “Elixirs of Death”

Beginning from” For the first time” to end of first section:  “are dispensed.”

Middle of the chapter from paragraph “Aldrin, like most of this group….” to end of this section “that any useful degree of recovery will occur.”

Skip next section, move on to the section thereafter, beginning with “In Greek mythology the sorceress Medea” to end of section, “Perhaps this is the next step.”

Chapter 4:  “Surface Waters and Underground Seas”

Beginning of the chapter, “Of all our natural resources” to end of first section, “is pollution of water everywhere.”

Paragraph in the middle of the next section:  ‘Water must also be thought of…” to end of paragraph, “cycles of nature.”

Chapter 5:   “Realms of the Soil”

Beginning of the chapter from “The thin layers” to 14^th paragraph, ending with “has been largely ignored.”

Chapter 6:  “Earth’s Green Mantle”

Read chapter from beginning to end of 8^th section, ending with “drenching of the landscapes with chemicals.”

Chapter 7: “Needless Havoc”

Read the entire first section, from the beginning (“As man proceeds….”) to the end (“a science project) and the last section of the chapter, from “Incidents like…” to “diminished as a human being?”

Chapter 8:  “And No Birds Sing”

Read the end of the chapter, from “As the habit of killing grows” to “deep and imperative.”

Chapter 9: “Rivers of Death”

Read paragraph in the middle of the chapter, from “There are ways to solve this problem” to “the only way nor the best way.”

Chapter 10:  ‘Indiscriminately from the Skies”

Beginning of the chapter, “From small beginnings” to “Neither program has achieved its goal.”

Chapter 11: “Beyond the Dreams of the Borgias”

Beginning of the chapter:  ‘The contamination of the world” to end of section: “small children tumbling over the grass with a dog”

Chapter 12: “The Human Price”

Beginning of chapter:  “As the tide of chemicals” to end of second section, "vast amount of research in widely separated fields”

Chapter 14: “One In Every Four”

Read the last section in the chapter, from “Human exposure…” to the end of the chapter,
“prevention is the imperative need.”

Chapter 15, “Nature Fights Back”

Read the first section, from “To have risked” to end of section, “by insecticidal drift.”

Chapter 16:  “The Rumblings of an Avalanche”

Read the final section, from “Darwin himself” to end “conceit here.”

Chapter 17:  “The Other Road”

Final section, “Through all these new” to “against the earth.”

Three propositions regarding A Girl of the Limberlost

Hi everyone,

I found my questions in this section centering on three main ideas: education, and what the novel thinks a good education looks like; love/marriage/gender relations; and Billy and his status as a "real" boy.  Christoph suggested I draft three propositions about these topics which we can then discuss, so here they are (with a few page numbers for places to turn):

1) The novel argues that Elnora’s education, taking place both in “the School of Hard Knocks” and “the School of the Woods” (374) is the ideal education for a young person.

p. 374: Philip describes Elnora’s education to his father

p. 455: Freckles, the Angel, and Elnora discuss the relative merits of Mackinac and more “wild” places, like Limberlost, for the education of children

p. 469: Edith attributes her own education in “frivolities” as the cause of her difference from Elnora (and thus her estrangement from Philip)

2) Romantic love and marriage in the novel seem to resemble pragmatic business decisions more than emotional affairs of the heart.

p. 375: Philip describes his relationship with Elnora as one between “two wholly congenial men”

p. 400: Philip describes the change in his thoughts about love as due to the influence of the Limberlost

p. 474: Edith gives a job description of “the other kind of a girl,” which she believes is more congenial to men (Philip, primarily, but also Hart)

3) Billy is a “real” boy, and his mischief and pranks are not only what one should expect from “real” boys, but also have an admirable quality to them.

p. 390: Billy relates a train of mischief which leads up to the drunken pigs incident

p. 462: Billy and the O’More children “play Indians”

I'm not super-attached to any of these propositions, mainly because I find the end of the novel so bizarre and (at times) infuriating.  I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts!  

I'll also bring in a couple short sections from an article about nature study written by Wilbur S. Jackman (he has a wikipedia page!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_S._Jackman) at roughly the same time as A Girl of the Limberlost.  Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Reverse Bildungsroman?

I have been thinking about our discussion of A Girl of the Limberlost as Bildungsroman, and I'm wondering if it isn't just the reverse.

Kate Comstock is, as Travis pointed out, is certainly pathologized for her refusal to participate in commodity culture - but she is also pathologized as a parent for failing to conform to newer,  more "civilized" standards of how one should raise a child - a failure that appears to have saved Elnora from insignificance by making her everything she is. There is a way in which Kate is not a monster, therefore, but merely an outmoded  model for motherhood. Kate's treatment of Elnora appears reprehensible to us primarily because it is placed in contrast with burgeoning city life and its new "civilized" standards - but in what way is Elnora permanently damaged by it? I would argue that she is vastly benefited, and Margaret Sinton agrees with me:

"S'pose we'd got Elnora when she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living along, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?" (74).

The answer, though Wesley objects, is of course "no." Kate Comstock is thus figured as a more natural kind of mother. Margaret persists: "Maybe Kate Comstock know what she's doing. Sure as you live, Elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love" (75). So perhaps S-P is directing our attention to a "civilized error" we're making in these more advanced (less "natural") times?

This is also the case with Billy, whom every character acknowledges as more deeply good than most other children: "He minds what you tell him, and doesn't do anything he is told not to. He thinks of his brother and sister right away when anything pleases him. He took that stinging medicine with the grit of a bulldog. He is  just a bully little chap" (141).

These things, doubtless, would not have so had Billy not been forced to shift for himself - there is even a suggestion in this passage that a "naturally" harsh upbringing like this one forges stronger, deeper connections between people (i.e.: Billy's brother and sister, who share a bond unlike anybody else in the novel). This puts me in mind of Charley from Bleak House - another "old" child who became morally exemplary through an upbringing that is "natural" in the same way, though in London.

In this case, there is a way in which Billy and Elnora, like the swamp and its creatures, are on the verge of extinction themselves - that their acceptance into "culture" is somewhat of a reverse Bildungsroman in which they unlearn, somewhat, how to be. I can't help but read Elnora's tantrum about her dress in this light, as well as her accumulating desire for "stuff."

I wonder what others think of this...

Gene Stratton-Porter (Notes, Class 1)

 

Gene Stratton-Porter (Chronology)

 

1863    b. 17 August on a 240-acre farm, Lagro, Wabash County, IN.  Youngest of twelve children
            of Mark Stratton (farmer and Methodist minister) and Mary Schallenberger Stratton.  Mark 
            and Mary were married for almost thirty years.

1874    After the death of her elder brother, Leander, the Strattons sold their farm, and moved to
           Wabash IN.

1875    Mary Stratton died four months after the move to Wabash.

1881    Traveled with her sisters Ada and Florence to Rome City on Sylvan Lake for her first
            Chautauqua meeting (i.e. a cultural event at which lecturers and entertainers addressed a
            variety of subjects that included natural history, religion, and literature).

1886    (21 April)  Married Charles Darwin Porter (pharmacist).  

1887    b. 27 August--Jeannette, their only daughter.

1895    Construction of Limberlost Cabin completed.  This 14-room cabin was the most elaborate home in Geneva IN, situated on the edge of Limberlost Swamp.  Limberlost Cabin provided a space where Gene S-P could focus on writing, photography, and natural history.

1903    First book, The Song of the Cardinal: A Love Story published by Bobbs-Merrill.

1904    Freckles published by Doubleday, Page (became bestseller).

1909    A Girl of the Limberlost (Doubleday, Page; sequel to Freckles).

1911    The Harvester (Doubleday, Page; dedicated to Thoreau; most copies sold of all her books).

1919    (October)  Journeyed to Los Angeles CA for a six-month rest after her health suffered from the influenza epidemic of 1918.

 1922    Formed own film production company, Gene Stratton-Porter Productions (i.e. her books were being made into movies by this time).  G. S-P Productions resulted from dissatisfaction that Paramount ignored all the directorial suggestions they had initially solicited form her for Freckles (1917).  

1924    (6 December)  Stratton-Porter died in an automobile accident, Los Angeles.

 1928    The Lady of the Limberlost: The Life and Letters of Gene Stratton-Porter published by Doubleday, Doran (biography and correspondence compiled by her daughter Jeanette).

 Other Interesting Facts:

 • Stratton-Porter trained herself in photography.  She developed such fine prints that the Eastman

Kodak Company sent an executive to observe her methods. 

• She eventually served as photographic editor of Recreation for two years and worked for four years

as a specialist in natural history photography forPhotographic Times Annual Almanac.  She

frequently endured discomfort and physical danger in the process of photographing her subjects.  For

example, she would walk with heavy photographic equipment through the swamp, at times sinking

into the mire while being severely bitten by insects every day for three weeks to take pictures of a

black vulture nest.

• She rhapsodized thus re. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855): 

“If you believe in God; if you love the green grass, flowers, and trees; if you know
what the leaves whisper and the waters murmur and the birds sing; if you love God's
creation above man's manufacturing--read the book. If in your heart there is the throb
of universal love and pity; if your hand has lain on the bare body of man and it has not
frightened you, read the book. You will be better for it.”

• She claimed that women were more suited to study nature in Friends in Feathers by saying that “in the matter of finesse in approaching the birds, in limitless patience in awaiting the exact moment for the best exposure, in the tedious and delicate processes of the dark room, in the art of winning bird babies and parents, it is not a man's work. No man ever has had the patience to remain with a bird until he secured a real character study of it.”  

•  She deplored the methods of naturalist John James Audubon, who clubbed his subjects to death before studying them.  In the article “The Camera in Ornithology” (1903), she noted that Audubon's drawings looked “as if they had been cut out with a scroll saw.”

Writings by Gene Stratton-Porter:

BOOKS

• The Strike at Shane's: A Prize Story of Indiana, attributed to Stratton-Porter (Boston: American Humane Education Society, 1893).
• The Song of the Cardinal: A Love Story (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1903; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1913).
• Freckles (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1904; London: Doubleday, Page, 1904).
• At the Foot of the Rainbow (New York: Outing, 1907; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1913).
• What I Have Done with Birds: Character Studies of Native American Birds (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1907); revised and enlarged as Friends in Feathers (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1917; London: Curtis Brown, 1917).
• A Girl of the Limberlost (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909; London: Doubleday, Page, 1909).
• Birds of the Bible (Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham / New York: Eaton & Mains, 1909; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910).
• Music of the Wild: With Reproductions of the Performers, Their Instruments and Festival Halls (Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham / New York: Eaton & Mains, 1910; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910).
• The Harvester (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1911; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911).
• After the Flood (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1911).
• Moths of the Limberlost (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1912; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912).
• Laddie: A True Blue Story (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1913; London: Murray, 1913).
• Birds of the Limberlost (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1914).
• Michael O'Halloran (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1915; London: Murray, 1915).
• Morning Face (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1916; London: Murray, 1916).
• A Daughter of the Land (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1918; London: Murray, 1918).
• Homing with the Birds: The History of a Lifetime of Personal Experience with the Birds (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1919; London: Murray, 1919).
• Her Father's Daughter (Garden City, N.Y. & Toronto: Doubleday, Page, 1921; London: Murray, 1919).
• The Fire Bird (Garden City, N.Y. & Toronto: Doubleday, Page, 1922; London: Murray, 1922).
• The White Flag (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1923; London: Murray, 1923).
• Wings (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1923).
• Jesus of the Emerald (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1923; London: Murray, 1923).
• The Keeper of the Bees (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1925; London: Hutchinson, 1925).
• Tales You Won't Believe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1925; London: Heinemann, 1925).
• The Magic Garden (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1927; London: Hutchinson, 1927).
• Let Us Highly Resolve (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1927; London: Heinemann, 1927).
• Euphorbia (Berne, Ind.: Light and Life Press, 1986).
• Coming through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton-Porter, edited by Sydney Landon Plum (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1996).

OTHER

• “The Camera in Ornithology,” in The American Annual of Photography and Photographic Times-Bulletin Almanac for 1904, edited by W. I. Lincoln Adams (New York: Scoville Manufacturing, 1903), pp. 51-68.

SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS-- UNCOLLECTED

• “A New Experience in Millinery,” Recreation (February 1900): 115.
• “Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie,” Metropolitan (September 1901): 416, 421.
• “How Laddie and the Princess Spelled Down at the Christmas Bee,” Metropolitan (December 1901): 739-753.
• “The Real Babes in the Woods,” Metropolitan (August 1902): 201-213.
• “Why I Wrote ‘A Girl of the Limberlost,’” Recreation (February 1910): 145-147.
• “The Gift of the Birds,” Youth’s Companion (19 March 1914): 147-148; (26 March 1914): 159-160.
• “My Work and My Critics,” Bookman (London), 49 (February 1916): 147-155.
• “My Life and My Books,” Ladies’ Home Journal, 33 (September 1916): 13, 80-81.
• “Why I Always Wear My Rose Colored Glasses,” American Magazine, 88 (August 1919): 36-37, 112, 114-115, 118, 121.
• “My Ideal Home,” Country Life in America, 60 (October 1921): 40-43.
• “Books for Busy People,” McCall’s (January 1924): 2, 28, 74.
• “What My Father Meant to Me,” American Magazine, 99 (February 1925): 23, 70, 72, 76.
• “Shall Girls Pay Their Way?” McCall’s, 52 (August 1925): 2, 48.
• “Making Your Vote Count for Something,” McCall’s (November 1925): 2, 67.
• “A Message to the Working Woman,” McCall’s (July 1926): 2, 68.

MOVIES/MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

·         Michael O'Halloran (also see below), Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, 1923, Republic Pictures, 1937, Windsor Pictures, 1948.

·         A Girl of the Limberlost (also see below), Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, 1924, Monogram Pictures, 1934, Columbia Pictures, 1945.

·         Keeper of the Bees, Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, 1925, Monogram Pictures, 1935, Columbia Pictures, 1947.

·         Laddie, Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, 1926, RKO Pictures, 1935, and 1940.

·         Any Man's Wife (based on Michael O'Halloran), Republic Pictures, 1937.

·         Romance of the Limberlost (based on A Girl of the Limberlost), Monogram Pictures, 1938.

·         Her First Romance, Columbia Pictures, 1951.

·         Freckles, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1960.

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Bakerman, Jane S., essay in American Women Writers, four volumes, edited by Lina Mainiero, Ungar, 1979-82.
• Brunswick, Kenneth, Map of the Limberlost, Limberlost Swamp Remembered (Geneva, IL), 1993.
• Finney, Jan Dearmin, Gene Stratton-Porter, the Natural Wonder: Surviving Photographs of the Great Limberlost Swamp, Indiana State Museum, 1985.
• Hart, James D., The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 4th edition, Oxford University Press, 1965.
• Long, Judith Reick, Gene Stratton-Porter: Novelist and Naturalist, Indiana Historical Society (Indianapolis), 1990.
• McGrath, Joan, essay in Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, 2nd edition, edited by Leslie Henderson, St. James Press, 1990, pp. 525-26.
• Meehan, Jeanette Porter, The Lady of the Limberlost: The Life and Letters of Gene Stratton-Porter, Doubleday, Doran, 1928.
• Morrow, Barbara Olenyik, Nature’s Storyteller: The Life of Gene Stratton-Porter, Indiana Historical Society Press (Indianapolis), 2010.
• Plum, Sydney Landon, ed., Coming Through the Swamp: The Nature Writings of Gene Stratton Porter, University of Utah Press (Salt Lake City), 1996.
• Stratton-Porter, Laddie: A True-Blue Story, Doubleday, Page, 1913.

Biographical Source for Hand-Out

Literature Resource Center.  Gale Cengage Learning.  Accessed 14 Apr. 2013.

Fig. 1  Limberlost Cabin

                                         

Fig. 2  Title page, A Girl of the Limberlost, early ed.

 

Points for Discussion (Chapters I-VII, pp. 1-121):

• Significance of naming/name change:  “Comstock” à “Cornstock” à “Cornstalk” (pp. 10-11, 49).  Elnora’s family name is signifier for her unfixed status at this point in the novel.  How does this name change phenomenon compare with the mutability of “Queequeg” in Moby Dick?

• The Limberlost swamp as a hybrid, ambiguous locus of multiple meanings:

-          Elnora’s inheritance from Freckles (18).

-          Source of income (87).

-          Locus of death (i.e. for Robert Comstock, “I hate it like death,” 101).

• Country vs. city as recurrent oppositional motif (former is idealized): 
Country = locus of innocence where nature promises holistic regeneration.

City = locus of greater unhealthiness and corruption.

“We Limberlost people must not be selfish with the wonders God has given to us.  We must share with these poor cooped-up city people the best we can.  To send them a beautiful book, that is the way, is it not, little new friend of mine?” (Bird Woman, p. 50).

• Elnora as subject of female bildungsroman vs. Elnora as object of male gaze.

Latter first occurs with the voyeuristic Pete Corson scene (Chapter IV, pp. 78-81). 


Points for Observation (p. 121+):

As narrative progresses, Elnora is increasingly idealized (i.e. in Victorian “Angel of the House” terms).  Thus the nature that she personifies is proportionally idealized (i.e. the value/danger opposition of the Limberlost swamp is uneasily resolved in her one person). 

Edith Carr emerges as Elnora’s alter ego, especially in garments recalling the Yellow Emperor moth (pp. 355-56).  The valuable Yellow Emperor is the signifier for Elnora (as object of Philip Ammon’s desire) and for her college-bound aspirations—Edith Carr emerges as the personifying spectacle of this signifier.  Thereafter, the alter ego affinity between Elnora and Edith culminates when Edith presents Elnora with a captured Yellow Emperor specimen (475).

The culminating identification with the Yellow Emperor moth on the part of both women brings with it the idealized victory of country/nature over city/artifice, together with the reinscription of traditional gender ideals—i.e. of woman as supportive domestic partner and home-maker for the working man--e.g. Edith Carr to Hart Henderson:  “You find out what you want to do, and be, that is a man’s work in the world, and I will plan our home, with no thought save your comfort” (474).