Tuesday, August 13, 2019

The “Lessons” of the Moths in Gene Stratton-Porter’s The Girl of the Limberlost


My husband was in charge of planning family time a few Saturday afternoons ago, and he decided to take our ten-year-old son and me to the Limberlost State Historic Site in Geneva, Indiana, about an hour from where we live. This was a carefully considered choice: he thought that I would like touring the home of Gene Stratton-Porter, an early 20th-century author most famous for her best-selling fiction set in the nearby Limberlost Swamp and that he would enjoy observing and photographing the wildlife in the recently revitalized wetlands area. In all, the site was a hit. Even Wes liked it—since he was the only kid on the Stratton-Porter home tour and, therefore, got a lot of special attention from our guide. We started in the visitor’s center, where we were quickly drawn to a butterfly habitat cage, in which we observed several huge moths. One of the staff told us that these were Polyphemus moths, a species that Stratton-Porter particularly enjoyed collecting and studying. They had hatched in the last couple of days and would only live for about 7-10 days more, with the sole purpose of mating and laying eggs in that time. (They don’t even have mouths; they can’t eat!) Next, during the home tour, the guide led us through period rooms, as well as many engaging anecdotes, to paint a compelling picture of Stratton-Porter as a talented naturalist, writer, photographer, artist, musician, and film producer who often refused to fulfill conventional gender roles and focused her critically and commercially successful career on educating the public about the flora and fauna of the swamp as well as sharing the culture of the people residing in and near the Midwestern wetlands. The most well-known of her books, we were told, is The Girl of the Limberlost, the story of Elnora Comstock, a girl who sells moths and other specimens and artifacts from the swamp to pay for her high school education, earning intense admiration from everyone in the community, including her initially neglectful mother and a wealthy man visiting from Chicago, whom she eventually agrees to marry.

When I took up the novel in the following week, I was pleasantly surprised by its complexity. Despite Stratton-Porter’s personal history of bucking gender norms and the clear focus on nature in her writing, The Girl of the Limberlost is not straightforwardly feminist or environmentalist. Contemporary scholarship on Stratton-Porter’s body of work reflects her conflicted representation of women and nature. In keeping with the popular conception of Stratton-Porter’s oeuvre, Cheryl Birkelo calls her an “early ecofeminist” (8). Robert Mellin notes, however, that her writing engages with the difficulties of maintaining environmental ideals in a cultural landscape of technological “progress”: her characters often unquestioningly accept the “easy money” that they find is “available by compromising the ecological integrity of the Limberlost region” (31). And Lawrence Jay Dessner says that Stratton-Porter’s writing “dramatizes assumptions about class, gender, and sexual identity that are at best ambiguous, at worst retrograde” (140).

In a more thorough discussion of Stratton-Porter’s depiction of women in The Girl of the Limberlost in particular, Elizabeth Ford details the disappointing trajectory of both Elnora and her mother toward “convention.” Ford notes that Katherine Comstock, Elnora’s mother, gives up her self-reliance—as well as her dedication to protecting her land from loggers and oil rigs, incidentally—in order to become the ideal mother to Elnora. And, although Elnora is originally intent on pursuing college and is consistently depicted as intelligent, strong, and resourceful at the beginning of the novel, she ultimately retreats, like the caterpillar that spins itself into a cocoon, to conventional wife and motherhood: “Before Elnora has had a chance to spread her wings, she prepares to enter the cocoon of convention, an enclosure not known for nurturing the individual pursuits of its inmates, no matter how feisty the heroine” (152). I would like to extend this discussion of women as like the moths that Elnora collects by countering aspects of Ford’s assertion. Elnora does spread her wings; it’s just that—on the surface at least—the book suggests that the way that women become beautiful moths is by taking on the responsibilities of the ideal wife and mother. Like the Polyphemus moth, and others with similar life cycles, women in this novel live for the purpose of reproduction. However, I would also suggest that the framework of “the female swerve”—Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s notion that female authors have sometimes written female characters who adhere to conventional gender norms to conceal feminist agendas—might be helpful in understanding Elnora’s significantly narrowed life path at the end of the novel.

I’d like to start with a supporting character in The Girl of the Limberlost—Edith Carr. Edith is Phillip Ammon’s betrothed. Phillip is the man who visits the Limberlost area from Chicago and, while there, develops an intense appreciation for moths—and for Elnora, the girl who collects them. Edith is frivolous, petty, and self-interested while Elnora is industrious, honest, and nurturing. (There is certainly something here about rural, Midwestern identity vs. “big city” identity, but that is beyond the scope of this post.) Despite Edith’s obvious shortcomings, Phillip tries to honor his engagement after he returns to Chicago. When he throws a ball in Edith’s honor—and clearly still thinking back to what he left in the Limberlost—he has a dressmaker create a gown for Edith in imitation of the Imperial moth, complete with wings. Emphasizing Edith’s unwillingness to subordinate herself to Phillip, the narrative conveys her understanding of the gown: “She was the Empress—yes, Phillip was but a mere man, to devise entertainments, to provide luxuries, to humour whims, to kiss hands!” (310). It is later in the novel when Edith comes to understand what readers can infer is the true significance of Imperial moth costume—that she, like Katherine and Elnora, is most beautiful and in greatest alignment with the designs of nature when she accepts her subservience to men and her intended role of wife and mother. In a conversation with Hart Henderson, her new love interest after Phillip has broken their engagement and returned to Elnora, Edith promises to become more like Elnora: “You find out what you want to do, and be, that is a man's work in the world, and I will plan our home, with no thought save your comfort. I'll be the other kind of a girl, as fast as I can learn. I can't correct all my faults in one day, but I'll change as rapidly as I can” (409). Edith’s acceptance of her new role (and “nature” in general) is solidified when she captures an Imperial moth—despite her past feelings of repulsion for all insects—and presents it to Elnora as a peace offering. Symbolically, here Edith offers herself, in the figure of the moth that she previously outfitted herself as, to the ideal of womanhood. She has finally taken on the natural responsibilities of women represented in the moth.

Just as Edith turns her attention to the Imperial moth in the moment of her acceptance of convention, soon after Katherine’s transformation to loving mother, she becomes fascinated with a just-hatched Royal moth. Katherine exults the moth’s life cycle as “a miracle” : “. . . it takes the wisdom of the Almighty God to devise the wing of a moth. . . . this creature is going to keep on spreading those wings, until they grow to size and harden to strength sufficient to bear its body. Then it flies away, mates with its kind, lays its eggs . . . . [The moths] don't eat, they don't see distinctly, they live but a few days . . . ; then they drop off easy, but the process goes on” (259-60). (Eating here could certainly represent bodily appetites in general, which would suggest that the moth is, symbolically, as asexual as the ideal mother that Katherine becomes. Eating is represented in complex ways in the novel and could certainly bear more discussion in another context.) Inspired by the moth’s purposeful design for the work of reproduction, Katherine goes on to beseech God, “Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders” (260). Of course, Katherine is in need of the “lessons” of nature at this point because she was not always “the other kind of girl” that Elnora is and that Edith later aspires to be. Until after Elnora’s graduation from high school, Katherine treats Elnora with neglect bordering on cruelty and blames her daughter for the death of Elnora’s father, Katherine’s husband, Robert Comstock. Katherine returns again and again to the site of Robert’s death, “the oozy green hole” (207) in the swamp, where she was unable to save her husband years ago because of being in childbirth labor with Elnora. Ford calls Stratton-Porter’s representation of the sinkhole Freudian, rightly indicating its likeness to the conception of a vagina as a man trap (152). I would add that Katherine’s early attachment to this site and to the fateful moment of giving birth suggest her association with the wrong kind of womanhood—the sexually desirous and the corporeal. But, in the chapters following her study of the Royal moth, Katherine takes on a new identity as a self-sacrificing and spiritual woman by showering attention and adoration on Elnora. (Katherine’s transformation also necessitates the purchase of all sort of beauty products and stylish clothing at the shops in nearby Onabasha and the rental of a beautifully furnished home in town. Consumerism is at the heart of The Girl of the Limberlost, but this is also outside the scope of this blog post.)

While both Edith and Katherine transform into conventional women based on the instruction of moths, Elnora is associated with moths throughout the narrative, as she collects them to pay for schooling, and seems to have already learned the “lessons” of ideal womanhood even at the beginning of the book. But it is only at the end of the novel when Elnora fully accepts the conventional role of wife to Phillip and mother to his children. Perhaps the moment that seems to change Elnora’s life trajectory most significantly is when Phillip convinces her to give up her dream of attending college, a goal that she has consciously worked toward from the first day of high school, according to the narrative. The moment is precipitated by Elnora’s admission that the trees in the swamp talk to her: they tell her "[t]o be patient, to be unselfish, to do unto others as I would have them do to me" and “to be true, live a clean life, send your soul up here and the winds of the world will teach it what honour achieves” (274). Of course, the values that Elnora articulates here are many of those associated with the domesticity, chastity, and self-sacrifice of the ideal woman. And, apparently convinced that Elnora’s possession of these values makes her education complete, Phillip tells Elnora, “What you have to give is taught in no college, and I am not sure but you would spoil yourself if you tried to run your mind through a set groove with hundreds of others. I never thought I should say such a thing to any one, but . . . I honestly believe it; give up the college idea. . . . Stick close to your work in the woods. You are becoming so infinitely greater on it, than the best college girl I ever knew, that there is no comparison” (276). In keeping with the novel’s suggestion that ideal women nurture men and children, it is clear that Phillip is most interested here in what Elnora “[has] to give.” Possibly even more gratingly to the contemporary reader aware of the history of women’s financial reliance on men in patriarchal cultures, Phillip goes on to wield his own financial security against Elnora, who he positions as financially dependent, at least in the hypothetical: “If I now held the money in my hands to send you, and could give it to you in some way you would accept I would not” (277). Even when Katherine later discovers that she has enough money in the bank to send to Elnora to college, Elnora refuses, choosing instead to share the “lessons” of the Limberlost with the younger generation through the traditionally women’s role of teacher in Onabasha.

Later, when Elnora is trying to make a final decision about whether or not to marry Phillip despite what she perceives as Edith’s still justified claim to him, Elnora visits Freckles, the titular character of a previously published Stratton-Porter novel, and his wife, only identified as “the Angel,” at their lake house in Michigan. It is hard to believe that Stratton-Porter would not have been aware of the literary allusion in the name “the Angel” to Virginia Woolf’s wholly self-sacrificing mother, wife, and household manager, “the Angel in the House,” who Woolf proposes that all women need to kill in order to pursue fulfilling lives. (As I was reviewing Woolf’s discussion of “the Angel in the House,” I realized that she also wrote an essay entitled “The Death of the Moth.” There is definitely more to say about this; I hope I can get back to it soon!) It is certainly possible, given the allusion to “the Angel in the House,” that readers are to take the Angel’s ideal womanhood ironically—representative of exactly that which Elnora should kill in order to pursue college and a career but that ends up ensnaring her instead. On the surface, however, the Angel is sincere in her unwavering adoration of her four children, only a “start” to the large family she and Freckles want (372), and her desire to provide Freckles with a home that serves as a cozy retreat from his work in the city of Grand Rapids. This portion of the novel also clarifies Elnora’s ambitions to follow in the Angel’s footsteps. Upon arrival at the lake house late at night, Elnora is so excited to see the sleeping children that she asks the Angel for “a peep at the babies” before going to bed, a move that earns her the exclamation “Now you are perfect!” from the Angel (372). From there, Elnora becomes heavily involved in the care of the children and household. When she finally realizes that Edith has fully surrendered her hold on Phillip, Elnora “see[s] angels” (395) in a moment that perhaps signifies her full incorporation into the ranks of women like Freckle’s wife. Also significantly, it is in the next few paragraphs that Elnora accepts Edith’s offering of the Imperial moth, still the central symbol of ideal womanhood in the novel.

On the surface, the trajectories of the women in The Girl of the Limberlost suggest that conventional womanhood is the ideal that is taught in the “lessons” of the moths. Just as the moths are most beautiful in the phase of their lives dedicated to reproduction, these female characters are at their best as self-sacrificial wives, dedicated mothers, and efficient housekeepers. But readers cannot ignore that the ultimate fate of the moths in the Limberlost is death after only a few short days dedicated to mating and laying eggs. If women are like moths, then they are almost certainly headed toward demise—symbolic death, and, given the maternal mortality rate of this era, perhaps literal death. It is also significant that almost all the moths that appear in this narrative suffer insult beyond that of having short lives. Through descriptions of the spreading of moths’ wings as they die and the pinning of dead moths to boards, both of which contain phallic symbolism, Stratton-Porter might be leading us to consider the humiliation and violence represented in the permanent affixing of intelligent and spirited women, like Edith, Katherine, and Elnora, into roles of self-sacrifice and domesticity. The pin used to hold a specimen to a board for observation may also be interpreted in an ecofeminist view as similar to the oil rig—another phallic symbol—that penetrates the land for extraction of natural resources for human use. It is perhaps not coincidental that, as Katherine accepts her role as ideal mother, she also entertains the idea of allowing oil mining on her land, something that she had previously resisted. The placement of the oil rig is like the pin in that both represent the violence of men against nature—and women, who are here closely associated with both the wetlands itself and the moths that live there. Indeed, then, while Stratton-Porter seems to use moth symbolism to indicate the natural path for women as leading toward wife and motherhood, another possibility exists—that the moth symbolism in this novel works as a “female swerve,” through which Stratton-Porter points to the death that awaits women in domesticity. That this duality in the moth imagery in The Girl of the Limberlost exists—in conjunction with Stratton-Porter’s unconventional personal history and the ethos of conservatism in her nature writing—earns this author her contemporary reputation as an ecofeminist and deserves further study among literary scholars.

Works Cited

Birkelo, Cheryl. “Gene Stratton-Porter: Scholar of the Natural World in A Girl of the Limberlost.” Midwestern Miscellany, vol. 40, 2012, pp. 7–29. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2015384103&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Dessner, Lawrence Jay. “Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Gene Stratton-Porter’s Freckles.” Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature, vol. 36, no. 2, 2000, pp. 139–57. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2000058323&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Ford, Elizabeth. “How to Cocoon a Butterfly: Mother and Daughter in A Girl of the Limberlost.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 4, 1993, pp. 148–53. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=1994060348&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 2nd ed. Yale UP, 2000. Print.

Mellin, Robert. “The ‘Talking Trees’ of the Limberlost: Negotiating a Class-Informed Ecofeminism.” Midwestern Miscellany, vol. 40, 2012, pp. 30–36. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2015384104&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Stratton-Porter, Gene. A Girl of the Limberlost. Dell Publishing Company, 1986. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. “Professions for Women.” The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1942. 235-43. Print.