Stratton-Porter,
Gene. A Girl of the Limberlost.
Illustrated by David Hendrickson. Triangle Books, 1909.
Gene Statton-Porter was
a woman who lived in the woods and loved moths, birds, and trees. I read a bit
about her biography since I read this book for my inquiry project. It turns out
that she was a non-fiction writer who wrote fiction books to pay the bills and
make her publishers happy. I think it’s interesting that she is so well known
for her fictional books, yet her true passion was ecology and non-fiction
writing. Her personal passion is very evident in her writing as a reader learns
as much about moths from a story like this as they would reading a non-fiction
moth book – maybe even more since moths are a central part of the plot in this
story.
The story is about a
country girl, Elnora Comstock, who decides to go to school. Her mother is very
harsh, cold, neglectful, and unloving. Elnora struggles as she goes to school
and is teased for her poor clothes and she almost has to quit when she finds
out that people outside of town have to pay tuition and book costs in order to
attend school. However, she finds a woman (the Bird Lady) who will pay money
for moth specimens and she becomes self-sufficient as she puts herself through
school collecting natural items to sell. In the climax of the book Elnora’s
mother, who has never helped her with anything, destroys a rare moth specimen
that Elnora needed to complete a set which would sell for $300. At this, Elnora
finally confronts her mother and the relationship is broken and then restored
as her mother realizes what a fool she has been to treat her daughter so
poorly. There is also a romance in the book, Elnora falls in love with a
naturalist she meets in the woods on one of her nature walks.
A
Girl of the Limberlost is a very old-fashioned story, written in 1909. I think
the style is very modernistic and may not appeal to a current-day audience, but
for others it will remain a timeless classic. Re-reading this story for the
first time as an adult was a wonderfully nostalgic experience for me, and I was
glad to find that I still really enjoyed it. It reminds me of other book series
such as the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell and the All Creatures Great and
Small series by James Herriot. They are books which a nature lover would love,
but others might find boring.
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