Ramona

Holy hell, that was a challenge! I only wanted to read a story set in California, and thought a nineteenth century 'classic' might provide an interesting history of the land. Wrong! Helen Hunt Jackson wanted to write a novel which would do for the Indians of Southern California what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the 'cause' of the African Americans, but instead produced a pulp romance novel which sold thousands of copies but had no overall cultural impact. After ploughing through this melodramatic tripe, I could have told Mrs Jackson where she went wrong - like James Cameron believing that the tragedy of the Titanic needed superimposing with a cliched romance to make history sell, she drowned the devastating message of her novel in frothy, show more sensational soap suds.

I remember the song 'Ramona' ('I hear the mission bells above, they're ringing out our song of love') but had no idea the lyrics came from the title song of a 1920s film based on this claptrap. Ramona is the unwanted half-Indian, half-Scottish - randomly - adopted daughter of a Mexican woman who takes on her jilted lover's bastard child and then dies, passing her onto her sister who hates the child. Ramona, of the black hair and blue eyes, is beloved by everybody except Senora Moreno, because she is good and pure and sunny and strong and superior, and whole list of other overused adjectives. She is a typical heroine of Victorian fiction, 'childlike' and subservient to men. When a team of Indian sheep shearers start work at the Moreno ranch, one of the more educated and cultured of the hired help, Alessandro, falls in love with Ramona and the two plan to marry. The Senora, who should be glad to get Ramona off her hands and away from her pathetic son, Felipe, perversely objects to the match, forcing Ramona to run away with Alessandro (after the obligatory period of pining). In the mean time, Alessandro's village is stolen from the Indians by the Government to sell onto white settlers, which rightly pisses him off and also unbalances his mind. Alessandro and Ramona, whom he renames 'Majella' and refers to in the third person even when talking directly to her, travel around California looking for somewhere safe to settle. They move to the mountains, where they meet a family from Tennessee who speak in barely decipherable dialect - I stopped trying to read what 'Aunt Ri' was saying (those who think Joseph in Wuthering Heights is bad should hold onto their hats) - but the harsh living conditions cost them their baby's life, which sends Alessandro over the edge. Men are so weak, honestly. He develops a kind of intermittent dementia and is eventually shot down for 'borrowing' a white man's horse (based on the real murder of an Indian by a man who then claimed 'self defense'), and Ramona swoons herself into unconsciousness while others fight for justice. Never fear, however, here comes Felipe, who has been searching for Alessandro and Ramona ever since his mother died, to the rescue.

Look, I was disgusted by the treatment of the Indians, or native Americans, who were driven off their land and onto 'reservations' by the US government, but this Victorian potboiler isn't the right platform for highlighting any kind of social injustice, then or now. None of the characters are convincing, especially saintly Ramona, the dialogue is either stilted or incomprehensible, and the narrative is leaden and long-winded. I thought I was suitably acclimatised to purple prose, but even I found this a chore to read.

Kudos to Mrs Jackson, who died two years after her novel was published, for pouring out her heart and trying to do good for others, but for your sanity, avoid this like the plague. show less

A dramatic love story set in Old California during brutally changing times.

The United States government took land illegally from the few remaining Spanish ranchers /farmers, and violently forced out thousands of Native Americans from missions and communities where they had lived, farmed and worked for generations. And simply gave Indian land, homes and property to American families without any recompense.

Once Helen Hunt Jackson learned about these injustices, she did everything in her power to help Native American tribes made homeless and jobless, unjustifiably. She travelled to many Indian villages and documented the abysmal circumstances in which they lived, and how hard they worked. She wrote to and met with government officials, show more journalists and groups of citizens to push for reform. Despite initial resistance to her determined efforts she eventually succeeded in pushing the US government to secure land for Indian reservations, return some of their own land to them, obtain compensation for others for land and property illegally taken, and offer them some legal protection from possible land seizures.

Ramona is the novel that Jackson felt she must write to reveal these injustices and change Americans’ perception of Indians as lazy, violent, and non-deserving of basic human rights.

Beautiful story about Ramona and her love Allesandro, trying to make a life for themselves amid magnificent but treacherous land and weather, sickness, heartbreak, poverty and disappointment. But… they experienced many positives as well: loyal, helpful Indian friends, as well as the (white) Tennessean Hyer family who saved their lives during a blinding white-out, their exceptional love, tender care and respect for each other, and their Catholic faith’s comfort and solace.

I enjoyed Ramona despite it being overwrought and melodramatic. I understood the book reflected Jackson’s passion and urgency in getting Americans to learn and confront the truth about the harm and abuse of Native Americans. show less

Painfully sad how we treat other human beings. The story is brutally realistic in its depiction of the inhumanities we inflict. The writing is beautiful and lyrical while being descriptive and detailed. I am glad I read it, finally, but also sad to have some of those images lodged in my brain.

A classic romance originally published in 1884 by Helen Hunt Jackson (Oct 15, 1830 - Aug 12, 1885).

This is one I have never heard of before until my daughter, just a couple of weeks ago went hiking on the Seven Falls Trail to Inspiration Point in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and ran across a memorial for this author, Helen Hunt Jackson. She immediately sent me a screenshot, knowing two things about me: I love graves, and I love reading, which this book, “Ramona” was mentioned on her memorial. What we didn’t notice in the photo, at first, was that the author and I share the exact same birthday, October 15th, except she was born 130 years before me. So, of course, I HAD to read her book.

After the death of Helen’s first husband and show more two sons, she met and married her second husband in Colorado Springs. They moved to San Francisco where she became an activist for the rights of the Native Americans, which she wrote about in a previous book, A Century of Dishonor (1881). And three years later, she would write this romance novel, Ramona (1884), based on the prejudices and racism from the migrating Americans to the west, and also the prejudices from the Mexicans, just as the Mexican-American War for the California territory was ending in 1846.

I will now have to add her book, A Century of Dishonor, which depicts these governments exploits to find out her truths. I do believe the things shown in this novel could and probably did happen, knowing the nature of mankind, and also for the fact that my ancestors, the Acadians, experienced a very similar fate up in Nova Scotia in 1755, a whole century earlier, an event known by all Cajuns of today as the Great Deportation.

The story line was actually pretty good, better than some of the other classics I’ve read. But, when I got to the last 1/3 of the book, the author completely failed in trying to write a southern Tennessee accent. It could have been forgiven if it hadn’t been used so extensively and in such lengthy paragraphs. I struggled to decipher just exactly what was being said, and I’m from the south. All in all, I’d give another shot at another book written by this author.

I also have a free eBook from Amazon on my Kindle...4/12/2021. show less

Sometimes I wonder if there's a point to reviewing older novels. I mean - there's obviously a point to reading them, and Ramona presents a good case for that. But after reading a book like this it's hard to imagine that others haven't read it, or something like it... until I remember that until this past semester, I'd never even heard of Ramona.

For those of you who, like me, had never thought to pick this book up let me just say that it will frustrate, awe, and inspire you. The story is one that speaks of epic, sweeping love and loss, but it's buried in pages upon pages of description which, back in the day before the internet, television, and radio, would have passed for entertainment but today just feels as if it's one more thing to show more push through in order to get to the meat of the story.

Thankfully, I read this book for a classroom setting - so three days were set aside for us to get to the meat and actually talk about the themes and ideas in Ramona.

Here's what I came away from this talks with:

Even in a story, such as Ramona, when the author is seeking to shed light on the issues of the time (specifically the tensions between whites, Mexicans, and Native Americans), in order for Ramona to be related to she is given "white" characteristics - i.e. blue eyes from her Scottish Father.

Sweeping stereotypes are made not only about the whites (and honestly, as far as stereotypes go, they were pretty harsh but necessary ones) but also about Mexicans. Even the Native Americans in this book did not escape judgement from Helen Hunt Jackson.

Jackson has no problem spending 70 pages talking about the little things - making a bed on a porch, tension-filled relationship between Ramona and her adoptive family, and so on.. but she spends less than a paragraph on a vital turning part of the story. In fact, the action and result of this turning part happened so quickly I thought I'd imagined it happening and had to go back to re-read it.

I understand from our discussions the importance of a book like Ramona and I believe that it's important that it continues to be read and talked about - but more than anything, I wonder how that will be possible with the changing of our culture. We talk in 140 character tweets - so how can we expect young adults today to be patient enough to read pages upon pages of description? It saddens me to think that this story is one of many that will end up lost as a result - so if you decide to read just one "classic" American story this year, think about choosing this one. show less

The best-written and most enjoyable of the novels I read in a seminar about 19th-century transnational American women writers, Ramona was initially involving but ultimately somewhat blah. Jackson's descriptions are the best part; her characterization and plotting are not.

I have wanted to read this book for a long time, simply because it had so much influence on how Americans saw California.

The descriptions of the climate, geogarphy, and people of Southern California do make the place and people very distinctive. Jackson's take on how Americans treated California Indians, Mexicans, and Catholics was very progressive at the time. Now it feels painfully dated. Another character that feels dated (and forced) is the character of Aunt Ri, from Tennessee, with her dialect and open mind, is used to show how even an American from the South might have an open mind if given the chance. At the time, it was considered equivalent to Uncle Tom's Cabin (which I have not read). Some have claimed it influenced the show more creation of the Dawes Act (1887) which addressed Indian land rights in the US. Jackson was, per the source cited Wikipedia article (Women's History: Biographies 1997) upset that readers were more interested in the romantic Californio vision than the plight of California Indians.

Despite the issues readers today have with this book, it did very much influence American perceptions of California, and created additional interest in California right as the railroads were coming in to the state. It did influence American thoughts on Californios, and California and other North American Indians. It has never been out of print. show less