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The Child Is Mother of the Woman: <i>Heidi</i> Revisited

1991; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 1991; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chq.1991.0035

1553-1201

Linnea Hendrickson,

Themes in Literature Analysis

The Child Is Mother of the Woman: Heidi Revisited A book read and loved as a child can influence one's perceptions of life, one's values, and even one's preferences in literature as an adult. Johanna Spyri's Heidi, I recognized upon rereading, had such an effect on me, and furthermore, despite its old-fashioned style and assumptions, still offers an acceptable model for life, not only through the life it depicts, but through its structure, which provides an alternative to the archetypal Journey of the Hero. Years ago, when I, nearly as naive and trusting as Heidi herself, confided to my freshman composition teacher that Heidi and Little Women were my favorite childhood books, he made me feel ashamed. "What! Those sentimental stories! Not Alice in Wonderland?" Little Women, he admitted, might have some literary merit, but Heidi? —a piece of trash! I, unlike Heidi, did not have the gumption to stand up for my opinions, and assumed that my intelligence and judgment were seriously and irrevocably flawed. Although I continued to re-read Little Women surreptitiously on vacations, I never looked at Heidi again until recently . What a shock to discover that the values and images of the Heidi I had suppressed have remained with me throughout my life. In re-reading Heidi, I rediscovered numerous fantasy images of "the good life" that I had thought were mine alone, as well as reverberations of especially vivid images from my past. Among images that I have subconsciously carried with me all these years are those of the mountains with their flower-filled meadows, the mountains turning red in the sunset Alpinglow—a sight that has always delighted me in Albuquerque and Tucson, where it occurs in the winter months, the image of the bed of hay in the loft with its circular window through which the stars shine at night, and the sun shines in the morning; the simple hut and the meals of homemade bread, goat's milk, and cheese; the kindly, wise grandmamma in Frankfurt who taught Heidi to read, who seemed the most worldly and powerful character in the book, as well as the most genuinely kind and understanding. Even the images of the music of the fir trees, the artificial and superficial Fraulein Rottenmeier , the wonder of snow so deep that one had to climb out of the windows, and the gruff but loving grandfather who enfolded the little Heidi in his strong arms, seemed part of my own life. I remembered that I had never seen mountains until I was grown, but I used to lie in my Michigan back yard, looking at the clouds and straining my eyes to see snow-capped peaks among them. I, too, had fir trees that made music outside my window, and later there were cherry boughs, whose moods reflected the weather and the state of my own mind. Did that sense of resonance between inner and outer originate with my reading of Heidi or did 141 I recognize in Heidi something that was already part of my experience? Is that why, years later, Robert Frost's "Tree at My Window" spoke to me? "Tree at my window, window tree,/ My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn/Between you and me '." The poem concludes, "Your head so much concerned with outer,/ Mine with inner, weather" (251-52). Is that window in Heidi's loft, and the lack of a view from the windows in Frankfurt the reason I have always chosen to live, when I have had the choice, in rooms full of windows that let in the light and views of trees and flowers? Was my unconscious memory of Heidi's experience in Frankfurt part of the reason why I left New York City and my ground floor apartment where the sun reached the windows only between twelve and one p.m. and thieves stole the geraniums I placed on the window sill? Is that why, when I visit people who keep their curtains closed in daytime, I expend a great deal of energy restraining myself from impolitely flinging them open? And why I have never long...