Либерлост қызы: Индиана романı

Novel by Gene Stratton Porter

A Girl of the Limberlost, a novel by American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton Porter, was published in August 1909. It is considered a classic of Indiana literature. It is the sequel to her earlier novel Freckles. The story takes place in Indiana, in and around the Limberlost Swamp. Even at the time, this impressive wetland region was being reduced by heavy logging, natural oil extraction and drainage for agriculture. (The swamp and forestland eventually ceased to exist, though projects since the 1990s have begun to restore a small part of it.) Patricia Raub (Senior Lecturer of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston) notes that Stratton Porter was "one of the most popular woman novelists of the era, who was known for her nature books and her editorials on McCall's 'Gene Stratton Porter Page' as well as for her novels." Raub writes, "At the time of her death in 1924, more than ten million copies of her books had been sold – and four more books were published after her death."

The novel is set in northeastern Indiana. Most of the action takes place either in or around the Limberlost, or in the nearby, fictional town of Onabasha. The novel's main character, Elnora Comstock, is an impoverished young woman who lives with her widowed mother, Katharine Comstock, on the edge of the Limberlost. Elnora faces cold neglect by her mother, a woman who feels ruined by the death of her husband, Robert Comstock, who drowned in quicksand in the swamp. Katharine blames Elnora for his death, because her husband died while she gave birth to their daughter and could not come to his rescue. The Comstocks make money by selling eggs and other farm products, but Mrs. Comstock refuses to cut down a single tree in the forest, or to delve for oil, as the neighbors around them are doing, even though the added income would make their lives easier.

Elnora is just beginning high school, where her unfashionable dresses add to her difficulty in blending in with the other students. She is determined to earn an education, which her mother derides as useless; Mrs. Comstock wants Elnora to remain at home and work as a drudge on their farm. Lack of money for tuition and books nearly derail her continued enrollment. Her few comforts are the fact that she knows she can excel in school, especially in math and her study of nature; the kindness of her neighbors, Wesley and Margaret Sinton; that Freckles left her a valuable specimens box in the swamp; and that she succeeds in her enterprising scheme to gather and sell artifacts and moths from the Limberlost, which she can store in Freckles's box without her mother's knowledge. Elnora is smart and witty, and she loves the outdoors; her heart aches for returned love. She soon makes many friends at school. Eventually, Elnora wins her mother's love, but only after a few emotional disasters have stricken the Comstock women. Firstly, after succeeding in high school for some years, she feels a yearning to play the violin, as her father had done. Margaret Sinton is able to procure for her the very same violin that Robert Comstock used to play, and Elnora becomes proficient at it. She knows that her mother hates the violin, without knowing why, so she must conceal her proficiency. Secondly, when Elnora is in her final year of high school, Wesley and Margaret insist that Katharine accompany them to the high school play. Katharine has no interest in seeing "what idiotic thing a pack of school children were doing." But Katharine is curious about the high school; she enters it to deride it, then finds she admires it; when she hears a violin playing, she enters the school play and discovers Elnora playing "as only a peculiar chain of circumstances puts it in the power of a very few to play." Katharine Comstock undergoes, and suffers, a true change in character. Margaret Sinton turns from a sweet, timid woman into a rightful avenger when she discovers that Mrs. Comstock struck Elnora in the face; the Sintons have lost two small girls to disease, and they treat Elnora as another child, or at least as a niece. Maggie Sinton furiously tells Mrs. Comstock what Katharine has never wanted to know: that her husband, Robert Comstock, was preparing to cheat on her the night that he died. Philip Ammon has always assumed that he must marry his childhood sweetheart, Edith Carr. After meeting Elnora, he realizes that there are many forms of love, and that he has never asked what he might want in a marriage for himself. Edith Carr has always assumed that she will marry her childhood sweetheart, Philip, but she loves to tease him and make him jealous. She knows that she is much beloved by a strong man, Hart Henderson, but she enjoys jeering at his love for her. In the end, she confesses that Elnora is a stronger and more lovable woman than she herself is, and decides that she will stay with Hart.