Porter, Eleanor Hodgman

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PORTER, Eleanor Hodgman

Born 1868, Littleton, New Hampshire; died 23 May 1920

Wrote under: Eleanor Stewart

Daughter of Francis H. and Llewella Woolson Hodgman; married John L. Porter, 1892

When Eleanor Hodgman Porter died, the headline of her brief obituary in the New York Times read simply: "Author of Pollyanna dies." Porter had written four volumes of short stories and 14 novels, but it was the phenomenal success of Pollyanna that had made her famous.

Porter dropped out of high school to lead a more robust outdoor life. Later she studied music at the New England Conservatory in Boston, going on to make public appearances as a singer and traveling with church choirs. In 1892 Porter married a businessman. Switching her profession from music to writing, Porter began to submit stories to magazines, at first with little success, but finally, with the publication of her novel Cross Currents (1907) the tide began to turn. Porter wrote a sequel in 1908 called The Turn of the Tide. An even more significant turning point was reached in 1913, when Pollyanna appeared, an event described by one commentator as "only less influential than the World War."

Pollyanna, that incredibly cheerful champion of the Glad Game, who could find in even the grimmest situation something to be glad about (if you break a leg, "be glad 'twasn't two"), stirred the hearts and hopes of people of all ages all over the world. After selling a million copies in this country, the book appeared in editions in France, Germany, Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland, and Japan.

Critics sang Pollyanna 's praises: "It is a wholesome, charming book, moral but not preachy," said the popular Literary Digest. Even Bookman earnestly agreed: "If the Pollyanna books are read with the sympathetic comprehension they deserve, many a child's life will be made happier…" With this end in view, Glad Clubs sprang up everywhere—and not just for children. One branch, "The Pollyanna Glad Kids," was started by inmates of a penitentiary. Mary Pickford paid the then astronomical fee of $115,112 for the silent screen rights for Pollyanna.

Although Porter won instant celebrity, she was not thereby admitted to the ranks of serious authors. A growing number of readers irked by the sentimental and simplistic outlook would join in Aunt Polly's exasperated demand that Pollyanna "stop using that everlasting word… It's 'glad'—'glad'—'glad'—from morning till night until I think I shall go wild." In an early 1980s survey of girl's fiction, the authors dismiss Pollyanna as hopelessly "puerile" and "intellectually debilitating," her "imbecile cheerfulness" issuing from stupidity and an infuriating tactlessness, especially when she tells a chronic invalid to be glad other folks aren't like her—"all sick, you know"—or when she tells the elderly gardener, bent with arthritis, to be glad he doesn't have to stoop so far to do his weeding.

Some critics claim Porter's later writing was not as relentlessly cheerful as her earlier works, but evidence provided by the posthumously published Hustler Joe, and Other Stories (1970) indicates otherwise. In each of the stories a downbeat plot works itself miraculously into an upbeat ending. Hustler Joe, for instance, who shoots his father in the opening chapter, discovers in the closing chapter that the bullet didn't kill him after all. When accused of being overly optimistic, Porter was quoted as saying, "I have never believed that we ought to deny discomfort and pain and evil. I have merely thought that it is far better to greet the unknown with a cheer." That she did, and—despite her critics—there are readers of Pollyanna even today who are still cheering.

Other Works:

Miss Billy (1911). The Story of Marco (1911). Miss Billy's Decision (1912). Miss Billy Married (1914). Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Just David (1916). The Road of Understanding (1917). Oh Money! Money! (1918). Dawn (1919). May-Marie (1919). Sister Sue (1921). The Tie that Binds: Tales of Love and Marriage (1924). Across the Years (1924). Money, Love, and Kate (1924). The Tangled Threads (1924).

Bibliography:

Cadogan, M., and P, Craig, You're a Brick, Angela! A New Look at Girls' Fiction from 1839-1975 (1976). Overton, G., The Women Who Make Our Novels (1918).