Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan (1896–1953)

views updated

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan (1896–1953)

American writer, best known for Florida-based works, especially for the transcendental essays in Cross Creek and the realistic novel The Yearling, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. Name variations: Marjorie Kinnan; (pseudonym) Lady Alicia Thwaite. Pronunciation: KIN-nan. Born Marjorie Kinnan on August 8, 1896, in Washington, D.C.; died on December 14, 1953, of a cerebral hemorrhage; daughter of Arthur Frank Kinnan (an employee of the U.S. Patent Office) and Ida May (Traphagen) Kinnan; graduated from Western High School, Washington, D.C., in 1914; graduated from the University of Wisconsin, 1918, as an English major; married Charles Rawlings (a journalist), in 1919 (divorced 1933); married Norton Baskin (a hotel manager), in 1941; no children.

Published first story at age 13 in the Washington Post (1909); was editor of high school newspaper; father died (1913); moved with her mother and brother to Madison, Wisconsin (1914); contributed to Wisconsin Literary Magazine; worked for YWCA in New York City (1918); was a feature reporter for the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal (1920–21); was a reporter for Rochester, New York, Journal-American (1922); wrote daily feature column, "Songs of a Housewife" (1926–28), for the Rochester Times-Union; moved to Cross Creek, Florida (1928); published "Cracker Chidlings" in Scribner's Magazine (1931); received Pulitzer Prize for The Yearling (1939); lost five-year invasion of privacy suit brought against her (1948).

Novels and collections of stories/essays:

South Moon Under (1933); Golden Apples (1935); The Yearling (1938); When the Whippoorwill (1940); Cross Creek (1942); Cross Creek Cookery (1942); The Sojourner (1953); The Secret River (posthumous, 1955); numerous short stories in the Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, and Scribner's Magazine, collected in Short Stories of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1994), edited by Rodger L. Tarr.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, although primarily a writer of literature for adults, is best remembered for The Yearling (1938). As she envisioned it, the novel would appeal to both adults and children. Her expectations came true: The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 and soon became a children's classic. Rawlings was for a decade considered the protégé of esteemed Scribner's editor Maxwell Perkins, who also was the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Nevertheless, by 1950, she had become lost to critics who considered her "only" a children's writer—and a female one at that. Her literary merit has been devalued until recently, when a surge of interest in her works has promoted a reappraisal, positioning her as a champion of nature and its caretakers.

Rawlings always considered herself a raconteur. As a child, she would gather neighborhood children around her and keep them enthralled with stories of adventure and daring. Her penchant for storytelling was nurtured by her family: she would escape from housework if she could say she was writing. Her first attempts at fiction and poetry were good enough to be published in the Washington Post, to which she was a frequent contributor from 1910 to 1914. Her father Arthur Kinnan, too, provided ample stimulus for her writings, for every summer the family camped out on some rural property he owned in Maryland, paving the way for his only daughter's intense love of nature. Loving and gentle, Arthur was one of the prototypes for Penny Baxter, the inestimable father of The Yearling. His death, when Rawlings was 17, was an emotional blow from which she never fully recovered.

[T]he earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned.
—Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Rawlings then moved with her mother Ida Traphagen Kinnan and younger brother to Madison, Wisconsin, where she attended the university. As an English major, Rawlings contributed several witty stories, reviews, and poems to the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. She also garnered good notices as an actress in college productions (one of her fellow thespians was Fredric March). While at Madison, Marjorie met her future husband Charles Rawlings. After graduation in 1918, she moved to New York City, trying unsuccessfully to establish herself with a magazine, and he volunteered for the army and was stationed nearby. Marjorie worked for the YWCA and published in magazines sporadically. Despite her mother's protests, Marjorie married Charles in May 1919. Unable to support themselves in New York after the war, they moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where she began work as a feature reporter at the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1920. Here, Rawlings wrote a series of articles entitled "Live Women in Live Louisville" that revealed her feminist bent and her ability to dramatize everyday events.

By early 1922, frustrated with his floundering writing career, Charles accepted a job as salesman with his father's shoe company, and the two moved to Rochester, New York. Marjorie again worked as a journalist, this time as a feature writer for the Rochester Journal-American and Times-Union. She gave her satiric talents full play by writing for the short-lived Five O'Clock magazine in 1924, under the pseudonym of Lady Alicia Thwaite. In May 1926, Marjorie began the unusually grueling schedule of writing a poem a day, five days a week, for the soon-to-be syndicated "Songs of a Housewife." The rhymes do not, however, bear the mark of hurriedness or boredom; they are a daily invitation to look upon motherhood and domesticity with a fresh eye, arguing that being a housewife brought beauty and satisfaction, not just frustration and drudgery.

In 1928, the Rawlingses decided to move again, this time to northcentral Florida to the Cross Creek area, to become owners of an orange grove and pursue their careers as free-lance writers. Finally, Marjorie had her big break, when Scribner's Magazine accepted "Cracker Chidlings," vignettes of local Floridians, in 1931. "Jacob's Ladder" and "A Plumb Clare Conscience" followed in quick succession. All three stories were based on her observations of neighbors in Cross Creek, as she brought their world of scratch farming, moonshining, and neighborliness to a new height, seeing them as rare and noble survivors. Her "Gal Young Un," a psychological drama of an older woman married to a ne'er-do-well who brings home his latest fling, a "gal young un," was published in Harper's Monthly, and was subsequently awarded the O. Henry Memorial Prize for the Best Short Story of 1932.

Having become the protégé of Scribner's editor Maxwell Perkins, Rawlings was encouraged to write a novel, and Scribner's published her first, South Moon Under, in 1933. Rawlings did extensive research for the book, actually living with the Fiddia family, on whom the main characters were based. Like so many of her novels, the story rests on betrayal; Cleve turns in his cousin Lant for moonshining, but Cleve is punished for this duplicity. South Moon Under was praised for its description of the Florida environment and its people, whose customs and way of life Rawlings was trying to preserve.

Marjorie's growing success rankled Charles, whose career was still floundering. To no surprise, they divorced late in 1933. After his departure from the Cross Creek orange grove, Rawlings was on her own and relied on the close friendships she had developed with her neighbors for advice and extra help to maintain any crop she hoped to keep. These friends were especially profiled in her semi-autobiographical collection of essays, Cross Creek, though it was not completed for publication until 1942.

Golden Apples, Rawlings' next novel, was published in 1935. An experiment in point of view and dialogue, the story was well accepted

for a short time; if uneven in tone, it is still interesting for its perspectives. Golden Apples tells the story of the Englishman Tordell, wrongly disinherited from his family's estate, who is forced to manage a Florida orange grove. He takes advantage of the resident brother and sister, Luke and Allie Brinley, even seducing the sister, who dies in childbirth, before he finally realizes his place in the environment: "A man was a puny thing …; transitory and unimportant. When he blended himself with whatever was greater than he, he found peace."

The Yearling, published in 1938, is considered Rawlings' most accomplished novel. It is the story of Jody Baxter, his father Penny, and his mother Ory. The focus is on Jody's maturation, as he learns to take on adult responsibilities. Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake and kills a doe, using her liver to draw out the snake venom. When his father almost dies, Jody begins to feel the pressures of taking care of the family. Nevertheless, Penny allows Jody to adopt the doe's baby fawn, but the fawn is wild and, as it grows, begins to destroy the family's crops, their only means of survival. Barely enduring the stealing of their stock by a vengeful bear, and a destructive hurricane that decimates the land and the animals that could have been hunted for food, the family cannot afford Jody's deer to tip the balance. Jody is forced to shoot his pet. However, this act does not completely push him into manhood, for he flees for three days, running away from his father whom Jody feels has betrayed him. Alone, Jody grows desperately hungry and almost dies; finally he realizes his family would starve if the deer had been allowed to live. He returns home to his mother and now invalid father, ready to take over the running of the farm. "He did not believe he should ever again love anything, man or woman or his own child, as he had loved the yearling. He would be lonely all his life. But a man took it for his share and went on."

The Yearling is memorable for its affectionate portrayal of Penny Baxter, the loving father, wise environmentalist, and respected storyteller. His virtues and values are passed on to his son, although Jody cannot be as idealistic as his father was. His mother's hard practicality, confirmed by the loss of his pet, has made a deep impression on Jody. These characters are vividly described, but the drama is more their conflict with nature. Both creator and destroyer, nature is what drives us and sustains us. Penny's ability to live in harmony with the workings of nature is a primary theme of the novel.

The immediate success of The Yearling established Rawlings as the eccentric darling of the media, a position she both milked and mocked. Intrepid reporters who could find their way to Cross Creek might be treated to alligator steak or creamed crab, according to Rawlings' mood. By this time, Rawlings had become an excellent cook, and she drew on supplies indigenous to central Florida—along with her prize Jersey cow's cream. Her penchant for good liquor also was well known, so her frequent visitors ate and drank to their contentment. Among her many guests were Robert Frost and Zora Neale Hurston . Because of her literary connections, especially with Maxwell Perkins, she was also friends with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James Still, Margaret Mitchell , and other writers.

When the Whippoorwill, a collection of Rawlings' previously printed magazine stories, was published in 1940. Included were her award winning "Gal Young Un" and her other successful first short stories, "Jacob's Ladder," "A Plumb Clare Conscience," and "Alligators." Also included were three stories—"Benny and the Bird Dogs," "Varmints," and "Cocks Must Crow"—which featured the sharp-tongued, "heavy-eating" Quincey Dover and her diminutive husband. Quincey tells these stories in her own Cracker dialect with a winning sense of humor.

With the publication of Cross Creek in 1942, Rawlings reached her literary apex. Her stories were as popular with American soldiers abroad as with readers at home. The semi-autobiographical essays in this book are imbued with a definite Wordsworthian view of nature. Humans are stewards of the earth, temporary caretakers, but nature keeps on living, century after century. The stories focus on the changing Floridian seasons, and on her friends Moe, Geechee, Snow, Martha, and Dessie, all longtime residents of the Cross Creek area. The essays are unusual due to their peaceful tellings of the natural environment, but also because Rawlings used real names to describe actual incidents. One person whose name appeared in the book took exception to Rawlings' description. Zelma Cason , once a good friend, was offended by Rawlings putting in print her already public use of profanity and by being portrayed as "an ageless spinster resembling an angry and efficient canary." Cason sued Rawlings for libel, and then for invasion of privacy. The suit was unfortunate, for much of Rawlings' time was taken up with this five-year petty legal affair (she was also taking time to respond to the many letters GI's were writing to her from the war). In the end, she was ordered to pay Cason $1.00 in damages, plus court costs. As a result, Rawlings did not have another novel published until the year of her death, in 1953.

The same year that Cross Creek was published, 1942, Rawlings published a sort of supplement, Cross Creek Cookery. Not an ordinary cookbook, this relates anecdotes and histories concerning the recipes, gathered from her own mother's larder and from friends in Cross Creek. Recipes include "Ruth Becker's Creole Oyster Soup," "Mother's Egg Croquettes," and "Okra a la Cross Creek." The publication of a cookbook was for Rawlings not an oddity but a natural occurrence. She often compared writing to cooking: both were creative acts, and she loved doing both. The theme of food—planting, harvesting, cooking, preserving, eating—was present in every one of her novels, especially in The Yearling. The Baxters' menus are described in detail, and the very reason for the climactic action is that the food supply is being destroyed by Jody's pet deer. In 1941, Rawlings had married Norton Baskin, a hotel manager and well-known storyteller. Although Baskin emotionally supported Rawlings' career as a writer, she sensed that being his wife would interfere with her habit of isolation which she considered crucial to her writing. So while she did maintain an apartment with him in St. Augustine, she also kept her house at Cross Creek, to which she returned often to write. Rawlings also bought a house in Van Hornsville, New York, which served as a summer home for her for several years, and a beach house at Crescent Beach, Florida.

During her last few years, Rawlings continued to publish magazine stories, the most no table of which is "Mountain Prelude," published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947. Actually a novella, this tells the story of a concert pianist who loses both her husband and her son to plane accidents. She retreats to the mountains of North Carolina to recover, where she meets a boy her son's age who comes to work for her, which forces her to see beyond her grief.

In 1953, Rawlings' last novel, The Sojourner, was published by Scribner's. It was the first of her novels to be set in the north. Rawlings drew from memories of her grandparents' farm in Michigan, and so there are apple orchards and snow sleighs and bountiful tables. The protagonist, Ase Linden, resembles Penny Baxter in his spirituality and generosity. His mother favors her other son and wills the farm to him, though he leaves. Ase then is steward of the large farm, never owning it outright. In the end, Ase dies of a heart attack on an airplane, after having traveled to reconcile with his brother. He dies peacefully, not alerting his fellow passengers. His sojourn was ended: "He had been a guest in a mansion and he was not ungrateful." Although

not set in Florida, The Sojourner presents the same themes as in the earlier works—the betrayal that life brings, but more important the Wordsworthian stewardship towards the earth, and both an abiding love and respect for nature.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings died on December 14, 1953, at Crescent Beach, Florida. She left a legacy of works that live on, keeping vital the ideals of preserving the environment and people's cultures, be it Michigan farmers' or Florida Crackers'. Rawlings saw herself as an anthropologist, an observer dedicated to preserving the records of the daily life of a people and a place destined, because of increasing real estate development, to extinction. In this, she was successful.

sources:

Bellman, Samuel I. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. NY: Twayne, 1974.

Bigelow, Gordon. Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1966.

——, and Gloria F. Monti, eds. Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1983.

Silverthorne, Elizabeth. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; Sojourner at Cross Creek. Woodstock, NY: The Over-look Press, 1988.

Tarr, Rodger L., ed. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: A Descriptive Bibliography.

——. Max and Marjorie: The Correspondence Between Maxwell E. Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1999.

——. Short Stories of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1994.

Tarr, Rodger L., and Carol Anita Tarr. Introduction. Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. 50th Anniversary ed. Jacksonville, FL: South Moon Books, 1992.