Unfortunately, after I finished The Harvester, I made the mistake of googling Gene Stratton-Porter, and one thing led to another, and I found out that she was an out and out racist. Now being a reader of vintage books you have to be aware that sometimes some rather unfortunate things are said by authors who don’t know any better. Often no races other than white Anglo-Saxon are mentioned, and so you never really know what the author’s viewpoint is on race (but you can probably assume they held the opinions of the day). At other times when multiple ethnicities or races are mentioned, there is a strong sense in which they are “other” and not part of the dominant group. They are not fully human or individuals, but they’re also not evil. I can sort of deal with that, in the context of when the work was published. Even when ignorant or bigoted things are said rather carelessly either by characters or by the author, even if they mean it to be positive, well I can sort of look past that. You have to be able to, to be read a lot of this stuff. In fifty years time we might be surprised about some of the views we hold now, so I try not to judge a dead author by the views most people held in their time, especially since most people (of any race) are often thoughtless about these things. However, if an author is stridently and virulently racist, and has clearly put a lot of thought into their own world philosophy, it becomes somewhat harder for me to overlook it.

The work in question is Her Father’s Daughter, one of the last books Stratton-Porter wrote, set in the 20s. I have not yet read it, and I’m not sure I want to, though I feel I probably should in order to be better informed. Something to put on the list perhaps. This is part of the description of the book I read on Amazon (also, some user reviews and also here):

What could have been a typically charming and heartfelt story of personal discovery, loves and relationships by the beloved naturalist author is unfortunately marred by the strongly pronounced racist and anti-immigrant mindset of the heroine and several other characters. It must be pointed out that the racial prejudice portrayed here is typical of its time and must be viewed in a socio-historical context. Nevertheless, it is something the modern reader will find offensive.

Despite the controversial nature of the material, the novel is an interesting, albeit disturbing study, both for students of the period and fans of the author.

Now the reviewer states that the “racial prejudice portrayed here is typical of its time”. Is it really? I can accept that this was indeed the case that people were normally suspicious of races other than their own, but given that in Emily’s Quest by L.M. Montgomery, also published in the 20s, in which a young Japanese man was seriously considered to be one of suitors of Emily, the titular heroine, it suggests that other viewpoints on race were already out there and perhaps were discussed among educated people, just as questions of women’s rights were, among other issues (see Just Patty by Jean Webster, published in 1911 for instance. Incidentally there is a character who is a helpful Japanese butler in this book, and while it’s not a flattering depiction, is at least not maliciously evil as it sounds like the Japanese are portrayed in Her Father’s Daughter). Of course there is casual racism displayed by characters in that Emily’s Quest also, though not necessarily from the author’s point of view (except she’s pretty brutal about the French Canadians I guess). My feeling is, it’s one thing to have casual racism because it was typical of its day and one didn’t really think about it, but if it’s a long and thought out standpoint by an otherwise educated person it just seems like racism in any age. From Stratton-Porter’s books, it seems clear that she’s thought about a lot of things and has a personal philosophy she wants to push to the reader which makes it harder for me to dismiss her racist views, especially if it is particularly virulent or bordering on hysteria. Of course I should really read the book before I say more on the subject rather than going by reviews and descriptions. Sigh.

Anyway, whether she was or was not, for whatever reason, the knowledge of it strangely made it exceedingly hard to finish her other books, though in the past I found that one racist comment in a book didn’t stop me from reading another book of the same author’s. I haven’t gone back to read Girl of the Limberlost, so I’m not sure whether that’s been spoiled for me as well. I did push through and finish the two books, and while there was a bit of rather silly (!) racism in Michael O’Halloran, it was no more than you would find in any other work of that time. I found there were other reasons I didn’t really enjoy that book, but more on that later. I’ll be writing a review on those three books in the days to come. I usually like to read a book on its own merits, in spite of the author, but I wonder if anyone else has found they’ve been unable to stomach a book because of the personal history of its author? Or even worse, did you end up being unable to read a book that you previously loved? At least one of the customer reviews I linked said yes to that. For instance, Marion Zimmer Bradley? Orson Scott Card? I know a few people who have found it hard afterwards to read their books because of their personal views or things that happened in their past. I was never a fan of either of these two authors so it didn’t really affect me as I just read The Mists of Avalon and Ender’s Game and that was about it. I want to be able to still enjoy Girl of the Limberlost so perhaps I shouldn’t try and read Her Father’s Daughter after all.

During the hunt for this mysterious book, San Famille by Hector Malot kept cropping up, but it didn’t seem to be the right story. Finally I found it. En Famille, by Hector Malot, which was was published in English as Nobody’s Girl (translated by Florence Crewe-Jones) and also The Adventures of Perrine (translated by Gil Meynier). There’s apparently also a Japanese anime that was made called Perrine Monogatari. There seems to be loads of information on this book cropping up now that I know what it’s called, isn’t that always the way!

En Famille is a most enjoyable read. Perrine is a young girl who experiences loss and terrible hardship, but she perseveres really against all odds to survive, and earns the respect of all around her, in quite a remarkable way. The story starts off with Perrine, her sick mother, and her pet donkey Palikare. They’ve just arrived in Paris from some faraway land, further away than Greece, walking all the way, and they know nobody there. Everything costs more money than they really have to spare, and on top of all that everyone seems to conspire to rip them off. Perrine and her mother are photographers (photographers! with a little caravan pulled by a donkey), but with her mother sinking fast, they can’t really earn anymore money. Who would trust a little girl to take their photograph anyway? (Indeed, that little girl might be better off as an engineer). In between trying to handle the money they have left, and getting a doctor to see her mother, things go from bad to worse.

Eventually, not to put too fine a point on it, Perrine has to sell poor Palikare, who isn’t happy about it at all. I wouldn’t be either, if I was a donkey. Perrine’s dying mother wants her to go to Maraucourt, where her dead husband’s family lives, namely the old crotchety grandfather who can’t forgive his son for having married against his wishes (oldest trick in the book!). She tells Perrine she has no claims, but Perrine being the totally amazing little girl she is is can still try to make people love and respect her, and that’s what her mum hopes she’ll be able to do when she’s gone.

Soon, Perrine is left alone in all the wide world, and sets off on foot for this place where she is not at all uncertain of the kind of welcome she would get from a grandfather who hates her. It’s a hard road, and when she gets there, she finds out that everyone who lives in the area mostly works for her grandfather’s factory. She gets a job in the factory, and at first she boards with the money-grubbing family of a girl she meets, her first friend, but the small dormitory is noisy and stifling, and she finally finds an abandoned hut on an island that she moves to (woots!). I won’t go on too much about the story, but Perrine ends up making her own shoes, hunting for eggs, making her own cutlery and cookware out of tin cans and cooking for herself in the little hut. She fishes! She makes butter and sorrel soup! Yum!

But really the best bit is in this quote:

Do you know, that little girl would make a fine engineer!

Yes! Perrine is not only an awesome person for having survived on her own, and for having made her own shoes and cookware, but luckily being half English and able to write, she becomes indispensable at the factory since the engineers who have to fix the machines are English and she becomes their interpreter. I will say no more so you, my dear readers, can go and read for yourselves, but even if everything about this book was bad, it would have been worth reading for that line alone. But as it happens it was a terrific book.

I suppose this isn’t really a good a good candidate for what this blog is supposed to be about because it’s clear that even if En Famille isn’t terrifically well-known (at least to an English-speaking audience, and certainly all my French friends had no idea what En Famille was when I asked them about it, though they had heard of Sans Famille), it is at least well loved enough to have a tv show made about it. However, it was one of the more fun Project Gutenberg books I’ve read, so why not start off with a bang and end with a whimper.

For a number of years I’ve been on the other side of the world, away from my library of scruffy yet scrappy vintage fiction. It’s been oddly hard to find the kind of books I’m interested in (er, for cheap anyway). For exiles such as myself, there’s the delightful Project Gutenberg, and other fine online libraries with free literature. But after I hunted down and read mostly all the ones that were recommended to me, it was a little difficult to browse through and randomly choose something to read without knowing anything about the work or the author. I really wish there was some application that would just pick something out for me to read (possibly another future project I can set myself), but in the meantime, I’ll hack through the thorny forest of books myself and see if I can’t find a clearing with a cosy campfire and some friendly fellow travellers to pass the time of day with (hopefully they’ll provide the soup). I’ll nobly sacrifice myself, so you, my dear readers, don’t have to. Hurrah! Then let us begin.