Guernsey, Clara F(lorida)

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GUERNSEY, Clara F(lorida)

Born 1 October 1836, Pittsford, New York; died 20 June 1893, Rochester, New York

Daughter of James T. and Electa Guernsey

Clara F. Guernsey, sister of Lucy Ellen Guernsey, lived all her life in the Rochester area of upstate New York. Her father was well known in the area as a friend of the Seneca, including chiefs Red Jacket and Corn Planter. When the Senecas traveled east from their homes, they would often spend the night at the Guernsey place in Pittsford. Guernsey followed her father in befriending the Senecas, and she is remembered for organizing wagonloads of food to be taken to the reservation during a period of famine. She also wrote many articles for periodicals about the Senecas and was eventually adopted as a member of the tribe.

Guernsey wrote initially for periodicals. Her first publication was in Gleason's Pictorial of 1850, and she was later a contributor to the Atlantic, Lippincott's, and Cosmopolitan. Her book-length publications include collections of fairytales (Christmas Greens, 1865; The Merman and the Figure Head, 1871), domestic fictions (Aunt Priscilla's Story, 1867; Elmira's Ambitions, 1875), and adventure stories (The Silver Rifle, 1871; The Shawnee Prisoner, 1877). All of the aforementioned are for children and almost all of them were published by the American Sunday School Union.

One tends to think of American Sunday School Union publications as pamphlets, but Guernsey's form is most often the novel, and her books usually run to about 200 pages. The defining characteristic of ASSU publications, whether short or long, is the turning of the story so that it illustrates a clearly enunciated spiritual principle, i.e., they are clearly didactic.

Elmira's Ambitions is representative of both Guernsey's strengths and her weaknesses in this form. It is primarily a story about spiritual pride. Elmira, about fifteen, has learned at school to think of herself as "superior" and as "called" to a life of philanthropy. She tries to train her younger sister by bullying her to give up sewing for her dolls and to take up sewing for the poor, though of course Elmira herself does not sew. She tries to entertain and comfort their invalid mother by carrying on "intellectual" conversation, but succeeds only in giving her mother a lecture and a headache. Finally, she adopts a child whose mother has just died, but finds herself incapable of managing either its care or education. It is not until her youthful foolishness allows the child's ne'er-do-well father to rob a house and kidnap the child that Elmira realizes her limitations and sees she must learn before she can teach.

The major weakness of Elmira's Ambitions is that it is too long, rambling, and repetitious for the slight plot. Every episode makes the same point about Elmira's pride, so that the theme is much too mechanically tacked onto the action. The strengths of the novel are present in the cleverly sketched supporting characters—the younger sister, the grandmother, the adopted child and her mother—and in the natural-sounding dialogue, Guernsey's most effective means of creating character.

Clearly didactic in purpose and rather limited in their literary achievement, Guernsey's novels are perhaps most important as reflections of the values and attitudes the American Sunday School Union and its supporters wished to inculcate in American children in the latter years of the 19th century.

Other Works:

The Drifting Boat (1860). Lucy and Her Friends (1865). The Silver Cup (1865). Berty's Visit (1867). Chip and Kitty (1867). The Coveted Bonnet (1867). The Hem-Stitched Handkerchief (1867). Mark's Composition (1867). Stingy Lewis (1867). The Stone House (1867). The Sunday School Picnic (1867). Theodora's Trouble (1867). Dulcie's Lonesome Night (1868). Out of the Orphan Asylum (1869). Perverse Pussy (1869). Out in the Storm (1870). Scrub Hollow Sunday School (1870). Alice Fenton (1871). Boys of Eaglewood (1872). The Mallory Girls (1875). A Spirit in Prison (1875). Washington and Seventy-Six (with L. E. Guernsey, 1876). Betsey's Bedquilt (1878). Sibyl and the Sapphires (1879). The Trying Child (1886).