Monday, June 25, 2007

More Caddie Woodlawn

I just finished Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink - the 1936 Newbery winner, which I'd never read before (so no nostalgia about a childhood favorite here!) - and I found myself with very mixed feelings as I put it down. There were several parts that I really enjoyed, and I can see why Caddie Woodlawn remains a "much loved classic" over seventy years after its publication.

Caddie, the main character, is a strong, likable heroine. She has a close and loving relationship with her family, she enjoys being outdoors in the rivers and fields of her western Wisconsin home, and she is clever, passionate and generous. And Caddie has a dog (actually, a couple of dogs are featured in CW), and I'm a sucker for dog and horse stories. Furthermore, I like historical fiction, and I think CW really captures life on a frontier farm, in language that seems relatively fresh and modern, unlike some of the other older Newbery winners. And I thought Caddie's adventures were interesting, even the ones that weren't particularly hair-raising.

However, several things bothered me in Caddie Woodlawn. It was like eating a really fine salad and finding a slug in it. Or maybe biting down hard on a cherry pit in this salad (and then finding your filling in your hand along with the pit).

Minor issues first: Why the heck did Mrs. Woodlawn let her feckless brother take Nero? What was she thinking, giving away the family pet like that, and to Uncle Edmund of all people?

If a boy's lifestyle was so much healthier than a girl's, why didn't Mr. Woodlawn let Caddie's younger sisters run wild "instead of making samplers and dipping candles" (p. 15), too? Poor Hetty, it's a wonder that she wasn't more of a brat than she already was. It was interesting, though, that women's work (which was by no means exclusively indoors in the 19th century) was associated with weakness and fragile health, while men and their outdoor tasks, like plowing, were identified with strength and well-being.

There's a relatively well-known academic paper (described in this Salon article on the American Girl dolls) by Anne Scott McLeod that describes the "Caddie Woodlawn syndrome" - in which girls who had a fair amount of freedom as children are finally required to assume the responsibilities of adult womanhood, donning the restricting clothing of the time along with adult women's more sedate behavior and work ethics. "How about it, Caddie, have we run with the colts long enough?" says Caddie's father (p. 245) - to which I couldn't help answering "No! Or at least not until the colts are ready to settle down, too".

But the racism was the real sticking point (see some earlier debate about race in CW here and here). It's not always overt, which perhaps makes it more insidious, but CW contains all of the most common offenses when it comes to stereotyping American Indians, and I was more than a little shocked that there was so little commentary about this online.

No particular tribal or ethnic group is ever identified in Caddie Woodlawn - it's just generic Indians, as if a person from one time and place and very, very different culture could be easily swapped out for another (imagine if there were no English and French people, but only Europeans!). One character actually mentions that Indian John (the only Indian that is ever named or described in CW, apart from the Hankinson kids and their mother) isn't from the same tribe that "killed a thousand white people" near New Ulm, Minnesota a few years before (p. 118), but we never find out who "Indian John's people" actually are.

Indian John is not so much an individual but a cardboard figure representing "the Indian brave", complete with buckskin, horse, dog, and scalp belt. He doesn't actually say "Ugh", but he is a stoic and mysterious figure, and little else. Does he have a family? What does he really think of Caddie and her brothers?

Anyway, Indian John and the other Indians are curiously clueless, until they are rescued by the courageous young Caddie. They are also clearly doomed, not so much as individuals or as families, but as symbolic remnants of the American past, like the passenger pigeons described in Chapter 3. It is rather fitting that CW concludes with Caddie facing west, "a pioneer and an American," with manifest destiny clear in the sunset.

One of the passages that some people probably see as an endearing example of Caddie's generosity made me the most uncomfortable, because of the children involved. It's a description that isn't overtly racist (except for the use of the word savage), but the feeling of condescension is hard to miss :
Caddie examined her protégés with maternal eyes. Certainly their noses needed attention as well as their hair.

"I guess handkerchiefs had better come next," she said thoughtfully. "thirty cents' worth of nice, cheerful, red handkerchiefs, if you please."

Mr. Adams had the very thing, large enough to meet any emergency, and of a fine turkey red. Caddie was satisfied, and the little Hankinsons were speechless with delight. The red was like music to their half-savage eyes. They waved the handkerchiefs in the air. They capered about and jostled each other and laughed aloud as Caddie had never heard them do before.
"Now you can go home," said Caddie, giving each of them a friendly pat, "and have a good time, and mind you remember to have clean noses and tidy hair on Monday when you come to school."

Dazed with good fortune, they tumbled out of the store, whooping with joy and entirely forgetting (if they ever knew) that thanks were in order. (p. 163-4)
To me, this passage conveys the idea that these kids are dirty, wild, thoughtless, uncared-for, and easily satisfied with some colorful trinkets. I couldn't help thinking that candy, combs, and handkerchiefs were small compensation for the loss of a mother - although of course Caddie wasn't to blame for the community hysteria that drove the local Indian families away. I also wondered how any kid that was the recipient of such charity would feel - I imagine it would be excruciating, no matter how poor you were.

Now, these shortcomings can be (and often are) excused as a product of the time - after all, the stories were told to the author by her grandmother, Caddie Woodhouse, who grew up in Dunn Co., Wisconsin in the mid-1800's. And author Carol Ryrie Brink herself was born in 1895 and published CW in 1935, which was not an era well-known for political correctness.

But when I Googled "teacher resources" and "Caddie Woodlawn", I didn't find that the portrayal of Native Americans in CW was even raised as an issue, unless I really dug a lot. It certainly didn't turn up as a discussion question or "point to consider" on any of teacher guides I found (and I plowed through at least ten pages of Google hits). In fact, "savage" was matter of factly listed on the vocabulary lists (would other racial epithets be so casually listed?), and the only question about Indians at all was this one: "How did the encroachment of the settlers on American lands create conflict?", from one relatively detailed list of discussion questions.

Despite the fact that CW is touted as part of a history lesson, and many historical activities are suggested to accompany its classroom use, I didn't uncover any resources that linked Caddie's story to actual (real and important) historical events. In fact, in several places I found that Caddie's story is actually incorrectly described, in a manner that is completely opposite of what happened in CW: "the story of a fun-loving tomboy who saves her family from an Indian massacre". In Brink's story, Caddie saves the Indians from being killed by fearful settlers. Probably this mistake has been re-copied countless places on the internet, but really, you have to ask why it was made in the first place. Perhaps because "Indian massacre" stories are such a staple of American story-telling?

Anyway, I did some research of my own, and learned that the "Indian massacre" near New Ulm, Minnesota was part of the U.S.-Dakota Conflict of 1862 (aka Sioux Uprising or Dakota War of 1862). Now this is was an important conflict, where hundreds of innocents and soldiers on both sides were killed, and it is something that had huge historical ramifications for Minnesota and Wisconsin and several different Native peoples (including different Chippewa or Ojibway or Anishinabeg peoples of Minnesota and Wisconsin, which would be likely candidates for "Indian John's people").

It really would be worthwhile to talk about this (or the Civil War, or Methodist circuit riders, or class in the U.S. vs. Great Britain) in the context of Caddie Woodlawn. And it would be really worthwhile to examine how race is portrayed in CW with an older elementary school class, not because it's "politically correct", or because it's fun to tear down a classic of children's literature, but because Caddie provides the perfect opportunity to examine our casual assumptions about race and how its descriptions in our children's stories support (or explode) our own stereotypes.

9 comments:

Sandy D. said...

And yes, Louise Erdrich's book (set just a few years earlier and a couple hundred miles north of CW) - The Birchbark House - would be an amazing follow-up read. Several of the themes in Caddie Woodlawn - like sibling rivalry, taking on adult responsibilities, and dealing with two very different parents - are also beautifully portrayed in Erdrich's book.

Melissa said...

"To me, this passage conveys the idea that these kids are dirty, wild, thoughtless, uncared-for, and easily satisfied with some colorful trinkets."

Yes, they were dirty and wild and uncared for because their white father was a jerk. They only became dirty and uncared for after their mother left because of the prejudices of the community, and her husband (there's nothing like that before she left). I saw it as Caddie's attempt to do something to help, even if it's trivial. She could have spent that dollar on herself on candy or a trinket or something she really loved. But, she spent it on someone else. I don't think that it's racist that she spent it on a half-blood, rather than some poor white child.

As for receiving such charity (having been on the receiving end at a time in my life when my family had little), if they're humble and accepting at all, they'll recognize it for what it is -- a gift given in good well -- and be thankful for it. Besides, they're just kids: stuff is stuff no matter how poor or rich you are.

Sandy D. said...

I didn't think that it was racist that Caddie spent the money on these kids, it's the capering, turkey red, etc. in the description that made me wince. I don't think we really know what they were like before their mother had to leave; there's very little detail in the descriptions for either these kids and Indian John and what there is fits many of the stereotypes of the time.

It would have been nice if there was something positive written about the Hankinson kids - one little thing that made them something other than "poor half-breed", you know? Just like I wanted something more than "noble warrior" for Indian John's character. Though him giving Caddie a doll did hint at something more, that was a nice touch.

It was generous and good-hearted of Caddie to buy them stuff, I'm not arguing it wasn't, but the way it is described made me uncomfortable. It yanked me out of my "in the story mode" and made me realize, yes, this *is* dated (and a bit tainted), which bothered me perhaps more than it should have, because I liked the characters and the rest of the story so much.

Framed said...

CW was my favorite book while I was growing up. I'm planning to re-read it for the Newbery Challenge. Thanks to your review, I will definitely take a deeper approach to it this time.

Benjie said...

I'm looking forward to this one as part of the Saturday Review challenge. It's in my list. I'm familiar with the story, but have not read the book.

LolaDiana said...

Here's a link to the Caddie Woodlawn musical, which deals sensitively with the Native Americans:
http://sleeptillnoonproductions.blogspot.com/

Swaniecat said...

I'd like to respond to the comments about Caddie buying some trinkets for the Hankinson boys, as well as the lack of development of Indian John's character.

Before Caddie buys the combs, handkerchiefs, etc. for the kids, Carol Ryrie Brink mentions that Mr. Hankinson felt awkward about his Native American wife. Apparently he had married her prior to the wave of European settlers that inhabited the area where the Woodlawns lived and Brink makes clear that Mr. Hankinson purposely kept his wife as an outsider in the community. Brink further comments that Caddie knew that if her father had married an Indian woman, he would never restrict her to the periphery of the town's social activities in the mean-spirited way that Mr. Hankinson does with his wife.

But I think we need to remember Brink's reference to the kids as "half-breeds" was simply the way people talked at the time that the story took place. No, it was not a very fair or courteous way to describe a person of mixed races but that was the way things were.

There is always a temptation to apply a 21st Century lens to sensitive topics that were broached in various art forms--fiction, poetry, music, etc. relating to our nation's history. For some reason, few people seem to realize how futile and anachronistic it is to criticize bygone eras for issues that humankind had to evolve its way through--which includes the culture clash between Native Americans and Europeans, Whites and Blacks, men and women, and so on.

While I would agree that the Indian John character is flat and lacks dimension, he is no less under-developed than the Irish farmhand, Robert Ireton, Katie Hyman-who is Tom Woodlawn's heartthrob, or the Woodlawns' silly, affected cousin, Annabelle, who visits the Woodlawns from her home in Boston. Brink does resort to modeling Indian John after a popular cliche persona that depicted male Native Americans as tacit and brave; but chances are Brink did not personally know any Indians. So she was limited by her imagination and the information provided by her grandmother when it came to shaping Indian John's character. Naturally Brink's description of him sounds dated and as close to flesh-and-blood as a cigar store Indian; but is also quite clear that she was trying hard to present him in the fairest most sympathetic light she could manage for the period in which she was writing.

Oh My Gawd said...

A favorite in the late 50s and 60s of school girls, it was part of the validation of unladylike girls (as well as independent Nancy Drew), and part of the dreamy Back to the Land movement of the 60s. It also was part of Civil Rights - in this case whites had no right to kill the indian off. This went along with the movie Giant's equality for hispanics and MLK's freedom for blacks of which Norman Rockwell's front cover of 6yr old Ruby Bridges between two guards influenced the American consciousness out of a prejudicial stupor.

Little things can mean a lot - Caddie Woodlawn is one of them.

Equality of any kind happens like stepping stones. When looking back they may look insignificant, or not big enough, they may even get hidden under the earth, but they are part of evolvment. We should be thankful for those who were not prejudiced at the time to want to save the indians, to be abolitionists or help blacks vote in AL even if they would not marry one - and especially even if they didn't use the tiresome PC words of today.

Another issue is fabric. There is a great run down of fabrics used in the 1860s in CW. These were precious and scarce commodities in the frontier and a reason any frontier person would speak about them (as someone now would speak about differences of a favorite latte). Denim might be handed down with fittings for two generations of kids. Every scrap, every button, every piece of thread or string saved. Impossible to imagine now. So those red hankerchiefs that were criticized by Sandy D were more expensive because first that fabric was more durable (not like the ones sold in dime stores until recently) and 2nd it mainly came in red - red because, as one example, people used them a markers on paths to find a way back and forth.

It is sad that academia has evolved into a nihilistic Dark Cloud School of Thought which "yanks people out of the story mode." There is a Then and Now that can be discussed, but the Then is just as valid as a way to equality as Now. It has been said, and I think true, that the Boomers are the last generation to have had a true education and not an indoctrination. CW played a part in it, even if subconsciously, for that very proactive generation when it was young adults.

popsicle said...

They're capering because they're happy, and "turkey red" was the name of a dye and color back then (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_red). I've been reading the book, which I loved as a kid, with my 11-year-old. We discuss the language used (indian, half-breed, savages) and why those words are unacceptable today -- but they're the way people thought and talked then. We've discussed many issues while reading. When I was a middle school teacher, I would have discussed the same. It's still a great book.