Julie Unplugged

Motherhood, Friendship & Literary Grannies – May We All Have Courage ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay & Elinor Wylie

There is creative fire in friendships, just as there was between Elinor Wylie and Edna St. Vincent Millay

It has taken me longer than I thought to this experience on paper.

Sometimes it works like that for me: I find something too evocative to put into words, so I don’t. I wait for the right words to come. I wait longer. What I have discovered about myself is sometimes I never get to writing them down. I wait and then forget.  

Slowly and meanderingly, the memory and the core feeling it brings up in my belly stops itching like it once did.

It was several weeks ago I sniffed out a place that has haunted me for at least eight years. Since the first time I “got to know” Edna St. Vincent Millay – because she haunted me and wouldn’t let go – I have had a yearning to visit her home at Steepletop.

The Home at Steepletop

In 2008 I wrote of her haunting:

“Someone from history will start tapping on my shoulder and over time I hear the name enough times that it becomes like a familiar song on the radio, the one you didn't know but all of a sudden could sing along quite well without even thinking about it. Edna St. Vincent Millay comes to mind as another woman who haunted me, as did Martha Graham for a time.”

I noted back then there was an artist’s colony there, but no tours of the home or grounds for literary travelers such as I. I tabled the thought, although the idea of an artist’s colony stuck with me. I still haven’t responded to that yearning: an artist’s colony for multi-generations so that parents and/or grandparents and caretakers who are responsible for their children could come and so could the children.

This is how my writing camp idea was initially born and now has been thriving for several years both virtually and in person.

So Lovely! The office across the street from Steepletop.

I also became a fan of Elinor Wylie via my series on Literary Grannies from 2012. I noted her friendship with Millay and I bought her poetry  collection Trivial Breath. I was fascinated by her history as a mother and then, her many children that never came to be. I felt an odd kinship with her as I suppose was her haunting.

I literally stumbled and then tenaciously stalked Steepletop that day in April. I was so close I simply could not leave the Berkshires without a visit.

What I got was better than a visit.

I backtracked after reaching Auesterlitz and couldn’t find my way to Steepletop. I drove back to the hamlet and telephoned, expecting to get an answering machine. Instead, I got the warm voice of Peter Bergman, the Executive Director of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, although I didn’t know at the time to whom I was speaking. He gave me simple directions and invited me to tour the grounds “anytime”. With my heart pounding and my passion guiding the car’s forward movement, I found myself able to experience the grandeur and silent wonder of a place I have dreamed of visiting not on my own or with a crowd. I was blessed to experience Millay’s home on a one-on-one tour with the curator. When I found more of Elinor Wylie’s work on the shelves in the store I literally shouted, “Elinor!” as the reality of their friendship wasn’t at the forefront of my mind until I took her book off the shelf.

Millay was the more famous of the two women, but she loved Elinor with a strength beyond what many ever come to know. In the home at Steepletop there is a bottle of wine meant to be shared with Elinor but instead shared by her widowed husband and Millay shortly after Wylie’s death. It has been left empty on the mantel ever since as a forever altar in honor of their friendship.

I cried several times during the tour. There were times my feet seemed to be glued to the floorboards as I didn’t think I could take another step. When we arrived at the doorstep of Millay’s library, I literally thought I couldn’t go inside.

I’m not sure when you are reading this, but I am writing to you on Mother’s Day. It seems fitting I share this poem written by a woman who was never a mother – Millay, and her friend – who left her three-year-old son with his father and only faced stillbirth, miscarriage and infant loss after she left.

Mr. Bergman recited this poem as he stood next to the spot Millay was found dead on October 19, 1950.

“The courage my mother had," by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Poems (Harper Collins). 

The courage that my mother had

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she'd left to me
The thing she took into the grave!-
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

Motherhood and friendship, friendship and motherhood weave through the lives of women whether their art form is poetry or mommying or quilting or being a book keeper.

May we all have courage like a rock – to remember our literary grannies and our sisters, mothers and friends of today with a similar passion as these remarkable women shared.

 

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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott

"You are my deepening skies; Give me your stars to hold” & Other Quotes from Literary Granny, Sara Teasdale

This young girl from St. Louis grew up to write “Life has loveliness to sell" and many others...

I remember when I first started discovering some of the women poets of the early twentieth century. It felt like I had found a huge room full of women who were like sisters, mothers, cousins and aunties to me.

Sara Teasdale was one of them.  A lyrical poet whose work focused on words from a women’s perspective, she won the first Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918, a prize that would later be renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Today I was thumbing through my collection of “all things Sara” when I realized I have used her as an inspiration for creativity many, many times. She has showed up in lessons I have taught, she has appeared in essays, her images fill my photo album:  how had I put those memories of our earliest “relationship” aside.

Sometimes that happens with passion: we fall head over heels in love with one.. and then another… and then another and while the one a few ones back is still tucked away back there, sometimes underneath the surface she is still doing her poetic best to awaken the memory.

Literary Grannies do that: they walk around in your thoughts, tip toe by tip toe, untraceable sometimes for years. When you do manage to notice, they are never angry. They may even give you candy and most definitely a hug or a kiss and a squeeze on the cheek.

If you haven’t “met” her before, please settle into your seat and allow her words to fill your breath, your heart and your mind.

 “Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.”

☼

“I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful when rain bends down the bough.”

☼

“I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”

☼

“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.”

☼

“No one worth possessing can quite be possessed”

☼

“My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.”

☼

“I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies--
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold”

☼

“Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far”

Sara Teasdale in Mixed Media: lyric poet with a sad end to her life.

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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott

In the Remains of the Fire: Lessons from Literary Granny George Sand & Writing in Community

In the Remains of the Fire; Lessons from Literary Granny George Sand

George Sand, also known as Armandine Aurore Lucille Dupin

I wrote this poetic piece of prose during an afternoon of writing with friends. We had been working with the words from who we called "The Two Georges" - well respected women authors who chose to use men's names: George Eliot and George Sand.

We told stories around a circle and created a collaborative story and in between circles, we wrote.

Once again I am reminded of the power of writing with others, both for the passion in the moment and most importantly in the what comes next.

I find truth in the remains of the fire. Not in the flames, but the remnants of wood, the coal grey scratches on my hand as I let go. There are the tingles of pain as I breathe it in, the repetition of the now missing fire into my chest.

I have to pause.

I have to ask my heavenly father-mother about the fire’s path, now that it has died, now that the fire no longer breathes.

What can be made from this no-longer fire?

Truth lives in the what’s left, not in the romance of the heat or the momentary kisses and skin against skin, the wooziness of being there in the fire in just that moment when up the smoke goes, up around heaven’s chimney, the shouts of climax, the pleasure of the otherworldlyness.

The truth vibes in the messiness of the charred wood and what we find from that. Sometimes it is stuck to our shoes, left unswept on our floors, stuck in our hair. The truth lives in being willing to sit amidst the rubble and not quickly, giddily push it away to make more room for more fleeting moments of ecstasy but instead…

Be there for the almost wordless wonder that is born when I release my addiction to the fire and instead, learn to play with the dust it left behind, to not cry when I wash my smoky sweater but to laugh at the profound meaning of what the deposits of those flames left against my skin.

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This post is Number 30 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

 

 

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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In the Remains of the Fire; Lessons from Literary Granny George Sand

George Sand, also known as Armandine Aurore Lucille Dupin

I wrote this poetic piece of prose during an afternoon of writing with friends. We had been working with the words from who we called "The Two Georges" - well respected women authors who chose to use men's names: George Eliot and George Sand.

We told stories around a circle and created a collaborative story and in between circles, we wrote.

Once again I am reminded of the power of writing with others, both for the passion in the moment and most importantly in the what comes next.

I find truth in the remains of the fire. Not in the flames, but the remnants of wood, the coal grey scratches on my hand as I let go. There are the tingles of pain as I breathe it in, the repetition of the now missing fire into my chest.

I have to pause.

I have to ask my heavenly father-mother about the fire’s path, now that it has died, now that the fire no longer breathes.

What can be made from this no-longer fire?

Truth lives in the what’s left, not in the romance of the heat or the momentary kisses and skin against skin, the wooziness of being there in the fire in just that moment when up the smoke goes, up around heaven’s chimney, the shouts of climax, the pleasure of the otherworldlyness.

The truth vibes in the messiness of the charred wood and what we find from that. Sometimes it is stuck to our shoes, left unswept on our floors, stuck in our hair. The truth lives in being willing to sit amidst the rubble and not quickly, giddily push it away to make more room for more fleeting moments of ecstasy but instead…

Be there for the almost wordless wonder that is born when I release my addiction to the fire and instead, learn to play with the dust it left behind, to not cry when I wash my smoky sweater but to laugh at the profound meaning of what the deposits of those flames left against my skin.

* * * * *

This post is Number 30 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

 

 

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Throw Your Words Into the Air and Fly Along with Them

Courage + Literary Granny & Woman Extraordinaire: George Eliot (also known as Mary Ann Evans)

Reading the words of literary granny and superstar George Eliot today astonished me even more than usual. She said, “Our words have wings but fly not where we would.” I can’t imagine George, AKA Mary Ann Evans, ever being unable to “fly” where her words are going or where they have been.

 

There are moments when I write in the voice of who I wish I could be.

This may surprise many of you who hear me as a very brave, very “on every minute” sort of person.

There are certain things I do that require some people lots of courage, like performing on stage in front of an audience or perhaps public speaking – and enjoying each moment.

Yes. These are both true.

I am an activist and an advocate and underneath all of that I have an inferiority complex that weaves through my blood enough to stop the flow almost completely.

Reading the words of literary granny and superstar George Eliot today astonished me even more than usual. She said, “Our words have wings but fly not where we would.” I can’t imagine George, AKA Mary Ann Evans, ever being unable to “fly” where her words are going or where they have been.

When I settle in more deeply, though, I realize she didn’t use her real name to write.

She hid her identity and even her gender underneath a masculine given name. George.

During her time, her words went many places she could not go – as Mary Ann Evans.

It makes me wonder, who would I be as a writer if I sent my words into the world under a different identity? I think of JK Rowlings, who published the ridiculously successful Harry Potter books using her initials rather than her first name because her publishers believed a feminine name would hurt sales.

She has certainly flown up and over where her words flew. Many of us know her story, from welfare mom to international sensation, but when she was starting out the prevailing business belief was her identity as a she should be cloaked.

It is risky to throw your words into the air and then follow them.

It is risky to throw your words into the world and then feel comfortable going wherever they take you.

“People might point and laugh,” I foolishly believe.

So what if they do?

Yes. So what if they do.

That is my mantra for the time being. I am going to be more bold and courageous in following my words into the world and beyond because I am stripping away the power from “they” who point, laugh and ridicule.

So what if they do? I will take note and move one rung higher on the ladder of my literary adventures.

Are you feeling brave enough to join me in flight?

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This post is my first with the Linking up with My Ladies Party from Dysfunction Junction. I hope to meet lots of new, phenomenal bloggers who will quickly become my friends!

 

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U is for Ursula Le Guin: Our Literary Grannies from A to Z

Today's Literary Granny: Multi Faceted & Ridiculously, Out-of-this-World talented Ursula Le Guin

I am not precisely sure when I first came across Ursula Le Guin, but knowing me as I do, I suspect I was on a quote search either about writing itself of about something to do with women and writing. Today’s literary granny is best known for her science fiction, but oh – her ability to create heart opening quotes is beyond amazing.

 

You might say it is “out of this world”.

I can hear your groans from here at my desk in my home office in Bakersfield. I know, that was almost pandering to the most obvious.

I mean what I say though: until recently I wouldn’t have expected a science fiction novelist to have so many relevant snippets within her pages of fantasy writing. A few years ago I read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and I remember how deeply that book struck a chord with me.

Naturally I ate healthy doses of CS Lewis’ Narnia chronicles so one would think I would also have an appreciation for science fiction – especially being raised in a house with people who are much more left brained than I.

She has won five Hugo awards and six Nebula Awards for writing. Her work has been adapted into films and, this surprised me, two operas. She also writes how-to-write books, collections of short stories, children’s books as well as commentary and criticism. Ursula used to tour the country giving workshops and reaching out as a leader and teacher. She translated Lao Tsu’s Tao de Ching as well as written poetry and published collections of her essays.

She is older now, still well, and continues to write.

Her best selling works include the Earthsea Series and the Catswing Series (for Children). To surprise (and delight) me even further, in her first major work of science fiction The Left Hand of Darkness includes an investigation into gender roles and is noted continually for its literary complexity.

The San Francisco Chronicle describes her work this way: ““If you want excess and risk and intelligence, try Le Guin.”

A review in Newsweek adds, “She wields her pen with a moral and psychological sophistication rarely seen... and while science fiction techniques often buttress her stories they rarely take them over. What she really does is write fables: splendidly intricate and hugely imaginative tales about such mundane concerns as life, death, love, and sex.”

Thanks to Ursula Le Guin, I am rethinking my view of Science Fiction and Fantasy writing. This year I am attempting to try new literary forms: most recently I even attempted to read a graphic novel. Any writer who tells me “To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” and “The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.” and “Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” is ripe for my reading – and appreciating eye.

I’m so glad to have spent time getting to know today’s literary Granny. If you don’t know her work yet, I hope you soon will.

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Tomorrow’s Literary Granny: Vita Sackville-West

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This post is a part of my series Our Literary Grannies from A t0 Z which was inspired by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Find out more about the Challenge by clicking here.

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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Julie Jordan Scott is available to speak to your group (or in your teleconference) about the creative process, writing and will create a session individually according to your wants and needs. Contact her at 661.444.2735 for more information.

 

Our Literary Grannies from A to Z: K is for Katharine Lee Bates

Today’s literary granny has not one, but TWO statues I found honoring her when I did my image searches. This is rare – so I wanted to include them here. She is also one of the few songwriters I have featured. If you are American, you may know her song.

Katharine Lee Bates statue in Colorado Springs + A photo from Harvard

If you are in my age group or before and are American, I am sure you know her song.

 

Beyond that, she was an educator who advocated quality education for girls and women, again at a time when this wasn’t necessarily standard for us.

So – without more waggling to the point – I introduce today’s Literary Granny – Katharine lee Bates, the lyricist for "America, the Beautiful."

She wrote this song after adventuring to Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs in 1893, so one of her statues is of her gazing upon the glorious view… that is until some unthinking, unaware developers put a building up right in her way. Why does this not surprise me? Nobody thought about it, I suppose. The song started its life as a poem published in The Congregationalist two years after she wrote it. The Boston Evening Transcript   followed it with a revised version in 1904. It was revered immediately and then, turned into the song we continue to love.

Sadly, sometimes thoughtfulness trumps America, the Beautiful… this American sadly says.

Katharine Bates was educated at one of the leading colleges for women: Wellesley

This statue of Katharine Lee Bates is in Cape Cod (at a younger age)

College. This campus is where she chose to have her career in academia. Sometimes this career overshadowed her many poems and essays. Her first poem, “Sleep” was published in the Atlantic while she was still an undergraduate.

 

What I especially love about her poetry is how she takes something fairly mundane – a simple wildflower – and writes it a love poem.  See what I mean, in this excerpt?

So it began,
This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,
To be our tenderest language. All the years
It lent a new zest to the summer hours,
As each of us went scheming to surprise
The other with our homely, laureate flowers,
Sonnets and odes,
Fringing our daily roads.

Today, when you are out doing your own version of adventuring, consider the beauty in whatever you see – even and especially that which may not appear beautiful to the ordinary eye. Remember, you aren’t ordinary. You are reading this, aren’t you?

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Tomorrow’s Literary Granny:Katharine Lee Bates

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This post is a part of my series Our Literary Grannies from A t0 Z which was inspired by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Find out more about the Challenge by clicking here.

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

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Julie Jordan Scott is available to speak to your group (or in your teleconference) about the creative process, writing and will create a session individually according to your wants and needs. Contact her at 661.444.2735 for more information.

 

I is for Isabelle Eberhardt: Our Literary Grannies from A to Z

Isabelle Eberhardt: A Woman Beyond Her Time

Isabelle Eberhardt, today’s literary granny, is one of the most eccentric women in entire roster of twenty six. Actually, I am safe to say she is the most eccentric.

 

What I love about her the most is she is a woman who lived on her terms, not anyone else’s. She followed her heart, she studied a lot and she was absolutely fearless. Just the other day I was sticking up for my friend, Emily Dickinson, saying basically the same thing. “She just lived on her own terms. So she liked staying at home. Big deal! There are times when I don’t want to be bothered with the fluff and funk of everyday life, either.”

Isabelle Eberhardt’s short life was anything but everyday.

What else could describe a French female journalist who masqueraded as a man, was the first European to be admitted as a member of a Sufi brotherhood who died during a flash flood because her clay home basically fell to the ground upon her?

She was born in Geneva, a child conceived outside of marriage. This not only lead to a life of emotional instability, but also financial instability because she could not gain access to her inheritance. She was a very smart woman, multilingual, and enjoyed spiritual study with her father. They poured over the Koran together and had lively discussion about what they read.

Isabelle as Si Mahmoud Essadi

Her choosing to dress as a man started as a young age, primarily because she knew men had more freedom than women. She could move about freely as a man. She could travel alone.  When her brother joined the French Foreign legion and moved to his post in Algeria, Isabelle and her mother joined him. What no one could have known is not only would Isabelle convert to Islam and become a part of a Sufi Brotherhood, she became known as Si Mahmoud Essadi and fought against the foreign legion. She is reported to have used hashish and before her marriage she enjoyed a lusty and fulfilling sex life with a variety of men.

 

Meanwhile, she was reporting back to France via daily newspapers and journals and wrote several books – very near to her life works of fiction – and she even survived an assassination attempt.

Isabelle and the people she traveled with were vagabonds above all whose quest was not so familiar as ours: achievement financially or in business, the arts or perhaps in academia. Her characters in her books and Eberhardt herself chose to live an unstructured life while seeking enlightenment. They experienced poverty and spent time in the “darkest” places.

She wrote of herself, “As a nomad who has no country besides Islam and neither family nor close friends, I shall went my way through life until it is time for everlasting sleep inside the grave.

It is a shame she died so young. I can only imagine who the legendary Isabelle Eberhardt may have become.

 

Tomorrow’s Literary Granny: Judith Sargeant Murray 

This post is a part of my series Our Literary Grannies from A t0 Z which was inspired by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Find out more about the Challenge by clicking here.

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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Julie Jordan Scott is available to speak to your group (or in your teleconference) about the creative process, writing and will create a session individually according to your wants and needs. Contact her at 661.444.2735 for more information.

Literary Grannies Speak: Quotes from the Women Who Lived & Wrote Before Us

For an added bonus:  Read over the quotes once, looking for which one or two especially resonate with you. Write that quote or quotes on a piece of paper or index card and tape it above the place you write.

Tomorrow morning, early, take the quote and use it as a writing prompt.

This is one way you will give respect and homage to your Literary Grannies.

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“Variety is the soul of pleasure.” Aphra Behn – Literary Granny 2013

“The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.”--Simone Weil

“If you would reflect well and wisely, you would realize that those events you regard as personal misfortunes have served a useful purpose even in this worldly life, and indeed have worked for your betterment.”
Christine de Pizan (Literary Granny 2013)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

"No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty." --George Eliot (born with the name Mary Ann Evans)

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” Zora Neale Hurston (Literary Granny 2012)

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.--Katherine Mansfield

Meet Denise Levertov, Poet

“Perhaps this very instant is your time.”  ―Louise Bogan (Literary Granny 2013)

“Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.” Denise Levertov

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.”  Kate Chopin (Literary Granny 2012)

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” May Sarton

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Watch this blog for profiles of Literary Grannies throughout the month of April here at Julie Unplugged. To check out the first few entries of the year, visit here.

  This post is Number 8 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

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F is for Fredrika Bremer: Our Literary Grannies from A-to-Z

I found another Literary Granny who astounds me and makes me wonder where she has been all my life. She never married nor had any children, but her impact on the social justice movements of her day through literature left her mark upon the world in grand ways.

Fredrika Bremer, a celebrity of the 19^th Century, was a Swedish author whose books were oftentimes published in English and German before her native Swedish. Her reach was wide and her impact was significant.

Her novels were written in a realist style with sketches of “everyday life.”  Her women characters did what the women in her world were doing. They expressed everyday joy and pain and made it interesting rather than leaping into the wildly romantic that was popular at the time. While she couldn’t speak directly about her beliefs, she did put a certain “writer’s code” into her work.

Even men read her novels, which she, at first, published anonymously, citing the philosophical questions posed within the well crafted prose.

What I noticed right away was Fredrika’s unbridled curiosity. She traveled to the United States in 1849 when she was nearing her fiftieth birthday and had gained popularity. She was single and she traveled alone which had special challenges in that time. While she was widely interviewed, her main purpose was to ask questions and to get a closer look at this “new” place which she thought might give her some answers about how to improve Europe.

She carried her sketchbook with her (as did yesterday's literary Granny, Ellen Emerson) and as she went different places, she had conversations with people – from the Native Americans in the north to the Southern Plantation owners and their slaves. She visited the Five Points district in New York to get a clearer image of the slums and the people who made this frightening neighborhood their home.

She visited prisons and attended meetings of Quakers and Shakers and sought out others from Sweden who had made the move to the United States. She was welcomed into people’s homes where she carefully sketched and documents her vivid impressions of the status of American culture, including the rights of omen.

In her homeland, she was passionate about the law of legal majority for unmarried women which would allow them to own property and manage their own money. Her novel, Hertha, opened dialogue on these topics as well as a formal higher education for women. It opened debate much like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin did here in the United States.

I giggled to realize the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women were read from Fredrika’s work by their mother.  Interesting that Alcott’s books were some of the first “realist” novels in the United States.  It seems obvious she used Fredrika  for inspiration.

When Fredrika died of pneumonia she had worked hard and had not seen the full impact she had on social reforms which would come to fruition after her death.  She was eulogized by many, but quite notably was many years after her death by future Swedish Nobel Prize winner,  Selma Lagerlof, who was only a seven-year-old when “Miss Fredrika” died.

This post is a part of my series Our Literary Grannies from A t0 Z which was inspired by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Find out more about the Challenge by  clicking here.

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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Our Literary Grannies from A to Z: E is for Ellen Russell Emerson

When I decided to do a profile on Ellen Emerson, I knew I wouldn’t have many resources to guide me.

Women without much of an ongoing following are among my favorite Literary Grannies to highlight here. Ellen Emerson did phenomenal work and had at least one international “first woman” status, but I would guess most people just shrug and think she is one of “THE” Emersons, meaning the lineage Ralph Waldo Emerson, et al, sprang from. She was actually Waldo’s contemporary and there is no word of them ever interacting or even knowing the other existed.

On the Left is one of the few portraits of Ellen Russell Emerson, on the right, a drawing she made of one of the people she met while studying Native Americans.

Ellen Russell Emerson was born in New Sharon, Maine in 1837.  When she was a little girl she met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow whose epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha, ignited her lifelong interest in Native Americans. I can imagine a wide eyed little Ellen listening to those famous opening words:

 

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.
  Fiercely the red sun descending
Burned his way along the heavens,
Set the sky on fire behind him

This little girl went on to become a wife and a mother but her passion for learning continued beyond the traditional walls of education.  When she was twenty-seven years old in 1884 her 700 page Ethnological Study titled Indian Myths: Or Legends, Traditions and Symbols of the Aborigines of America Compared with Those of Other Countries.

Her widely regarded volumbe included her knowledge of Native American cultures (in her day called by many other names which are now very politically incorrect) and she compares and contrasts these myths and legends with those in other civilizations in the world such as Hindus, Chinese and Persian. She not only wrote this enormous book, she also served as Illustrator and mapmaker.

When her daughter was grown, she went to Europe and began studying with the leading ethnologists in Europe.

She even studied Egyptology in Paris. The European scholars were very impressed by her literary work as well as her approach using words and also sketch books and paint to render her subjects in a variety of ways. She was, after all, a gifted illustrator and thoroughly enjoyed making comparisons and contrasts in order to learn about her subjects more deeply.

Through her book Masks, Heads and Faces, Ellen sees the movement from mask as protection to the creation of art. Perhaps this lead to her stretch into the world of published poetry.

She was honored as the first woman in the Société Américaine of Paris

Her opening sentence in her well known (and still in print) book of essays, Nature and Human Nature, goes like this: “Estrangement is impossible between nature and human nature for any length of time, the spring and source of all life being one.”  Such poetry in a scientific book! Perhaps there is a bit of Ellen Emerson in today’s writer, Diane Ackerman. Both women are naturalists and poets, biologists and studies of humans, plant life, culture – how interesting to make that connection.

After she returned from France, she settled into a quiet life living in Boston with her daughter in a home filled with enjoyable study and fellowship together. I attempted to find her daughter’s name, but in this research, I could not. I do have an upcoming trip to Boston so I may seek out more details of her life when I am there.

She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1907. I know how she spent her life would have made Longfellow very proud.

This post is a part of my series Our Literary Grannies from A t0 Z which was inspired by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Find out more about the Challenge by either clicking here or on the icon.

 

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