Abstract
This chapter examines the red-headed orphans that abound in children’s literature across the Western world, from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), Little Orphan Annie comics (1924), Madeline (1939) to Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking (1945). This chapter considers these girl-children who have been ostracized for their dual differences as gingers and as orphans. Life’s difficulties are brought into focus through perceptions on how such prejudices and stigmatization is reflected in the literature about these characters but also explores how their characters become even stronger in the face of such unfair adversity.
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Notes
- 1.
See Peters 2013.
- 2.
Juliet McMaster’s point about Anne’s connection to the land is an excellent one; Anne’s “red hair connects her deeply with the island of her adoption. ‘What does make the roads red?’ she asks Matthew on that first journey to Green Gables, as well as drawing attention to the colour of her ‘glowing braids.’… We are meant to recognize a propitious kinship between Anne’s red braids and Prince Edward Island’s red roads” (2002, 63).
- 3.
A “Barnardo Boy” referred to children brought from England to Canada under the auspices of a program created by a social reformer, Thomas John Barnardo (1845–1905) or, according to the OED, “used attributively, as Barnardo child, Barnardo orphan, etc., and in the possessive to designate any of the destitute and homeless children brought up in the homes founded by Dr. Barnardo.” See Devereux in Montgomery (2004, 58n1).
- 4.
“Street Arab” was a term “used for a homeless child or young person living on the streets” (OED); according to Beverly Crockett, they were perceived as “illegitimate, degenerate children and adolescents of unknown parentage and inferior genetic stock” who survived on the streets through “criminal habits learned in the gutters in some city” (59).
- 5.
Mavis Reimer discussed the many children who were released from “institutions for young people to help with field and domestic labor” (533) including the Barnardo boys and other non-Canadian immigrant children “who were available for placement” (534).
- 6.
Beverly Crockett notes that, in her journal, Montgomery “recorded reading in an 1895 newspaper clipping about a couple who requested a child to work on their farm and were sent a girl, instead of a boy they wanted” (2004, 57).
- 7.
Irene Gammel discusses the beauty images of the early twentieth century, including hair tonics as well as remedies to fade freckles with iodine or lemon juice (2008, 175).
- 8.
For an excellent discussion of the historical context of the “trials,” see Stacy Schiff (2015).
- 9.
Heckert and Best comment that one positive stereotype was mentioned by those redheads who participated in their study: “Redheads were described as superior intellectual beings” (375) with a consideration that since there is only a 3% genetic probability of red hair, it must be created from intrinsically more intelligent genetic material.
- 10.
William H. Young (1974) makes this point about Annie but he also argues for Annie’s overall conservatism. For example, see Lyle Shannon’s comments that some critics think Little Orphan Annie in the 1930s and 1940s represents social idealism while others say it supports “the symbols which have traditionally represented good in our society” to reflect “the conservative social idealism of the middle class” (1954, 170) contra to President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Also see Stella Ress (2010).
- 11.
Some critics refer to the house as a boarding school; that said, the stories themselves give no indication of whether it is an orphanage or a school. Bemelmans says the “beginnings can be traced to stories my mother told me of her life as a little girl in the convent of Altoetting in Bavaria. I visited this convent with her and saw the little beds in straight rows, and the long table with the washbasins at which the girls had brushed their teeth” (1954).
- 12.
For a discussion of disruptive possibilities, Perry Nodelman shows how child heroines, through shock and delight, restore both other children and adults (1979, 148).
- 13.
Erol makes this point about “Pippi Goes to the Circus” (chapter seven) when she participates in the fun of the circus without realizing that her own appearance mimics that of the clowns (117).
- 14.
For a discussion of comedy in the novel, see Laura Hoffeld (1977).
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Maier, S.E. (2021). Tough Little Red-Headed Orphans: Anne (of Green Gables), Little Orphan Annie, Madeline, and Pippi. In: A Vindication of the Redhead. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83515-6_9
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