Pollyanna Grows Up

The sequel to the better-known novel Pollyanna begins shortly after cheery Pollyanna Whittier returns to Harrington House in Beldingsville, Vermont, and is 12 or 13 years old. The beginning is a bit disappointing, but this slender novel really takes off once Pollyanna arrives in Boston as a secret cure for the despondent young widow Ruth Carew.

Halfway through, the book shoots ahead to Pollyanna at age 20, and the action picks up even more. I did enjoy Pollyanna, which I didn’t find twee at all, which is what I feared; however, I loved the sequel even more. It’s a pity that it isn’t better known. There are happy endings all around, but sometimes that’s OK. Highly recommended.

Alguém deveria ter dito para essa senhoira Porter que o tratamento dado a crianças já não serve para as meninas-moças... se bem que ainda encontramos muito dessas senhoiras por aí, tratando mesmo adultos assim. Resumindo, se você lê uma coisa quando criança e depois cresce e a memória afetiva desse objeto não cresceu junto com você, então a experiência foi realmente indigesta.

Remember how bad Miss Billy Married was? So actually I didn’t read the famous one, Pollyanna, in 2014 for my round up of 1914, just this sequel. Polyanna is an inspirational little orphan girl who has been cured of some kind of disability, and has been sent to cheer up a bitter old rich lady. Polyanna is continually playing “the Glad Game,” where no matter what kind of horrible thing has just happened, she will find something to be grateful for. This drives everyone totally bonkers, obviously, but eventually they all swallow the Kool Aid and become incredibly cheerful in the face of life’s adversity. Polyanna is mono-maniacally focused on her Game, so that she comes across as a bit unhinged. A sign of trauma?

Polyanna finds an show more orphan boy with a disability for the bitter old rich lady to adopt. The lady thinks he might be her missing nephew but she can’t be sure; however, she decides she loves him either way.

Then we fast forward ten or twelve years and our author is presented with a problem. It’s cute (maybe) to have a child constantly playing the Glad Game, but in an adult it would be insufferable. Eleanor Porter actually does a pretty good job of turning Polyanna into a semi-normal human being, considering the situation Porter had created for herself.

Now the book gets a little bit fun, as a few love triangles develop, with many comical misunderstandings about who’s in love with whom, à la Three’s Company. There’s a part that’s really bizarre where Polyanna is almost gored by a wild boar (I think I’ve got this right.) But the one who really suffers from this mishap is the orphan boy with the disability, now also all grown up, because he was unable to rescue her, and he makes a big production out of it. Like many children’s book authors of this era, Porter really has a bee in her bonnet about disability. In the end, everything is sorted out—the orphans all come into their rightful inheritance and everyone is paired off with the right person. show less

In 1915, Eleanor Porter published a sequel to her bestseller Pollyanna. It seems that in Pollyanna grows up she wanted to retain the elements that made the original book so successful, while overhauling the story with many new elements and characters.

Overall, the plot of Pollyanna grows up seems very contrived. Towards the end of the original Pollyanna, the little girl had managed, single-handed, to turn a whole, gloomy community to happiness. Therefore, in Pollyanna grows up, the tonic of Pollyanna's infectuous optimism, must be sprinkled over a new set of gloomy characters, which she encounters on a visit, replacement of characters who die off and boarders moving into her home. Many plot situations are the inverse of elements from the show more original story. The story feels contrived and lacking the spontaneity of the first volume.

Although supposedly Pollyanna grows up to about the age of 20 by the end of the story, her behaviour and mindset remain largely characterised by the naivete and childishness of the original novel. The suggestion that old Mr Pendleton, aged 70 or thereabouts, might marry her, seems very peculiar.

Both volume one, Pollyanna, and volume two, Pollyanna grows up, end in a low key. Towards the end of Pollyanna, the main character is hit by a car (probably still a novelty in 1913), and by the end of Pollyanna grows up, the character Jimmy Bean is troubled by his lowly class background.

As in the original novel, Eleanor Porter, makes the oblique suggestion that people should not think too much about money, and that losing all one's money, can never be the worst thing to happen in one's life (p. 376).

While the original Pollyanna was a bestseller and inspired many people, the word Pollyanna has slipped into the language with a negative connotation as an excessively or blindly optimistic person while pol·ly·an·na·ish has come to mean unreasonably or illogically optimistic.

These negative connotations may suggest that there is a limit to how much optimism the reader can stomach. show less

I have to say that I didn't find Pollyanna as charming in this novel. Although Ms. Porter attempts to show that Pollyanna has become more aware of her effect on people, she comes across as unforgivably naive about the conflicting feelings of adults at a time when she is actually experiencing those feelings. And all the romantic confusions were silly. No real people would be so blind. The impact of Pollyanna's "glad game" loses it's power in this followup. Too bad.

Her crippled legs cured, Pollyanna takes her glad heart to cheer new friends in Boston before travelling to Europe with Aunt Polly and Dr chilton. But growing up brings sorrows as well as joys, and when she returns after six years, with Dr Chilton dead and Aunt Polly fallen on hard times, even Pollyanna has trouble maintaining her usual cheerful outlook.

Ummm. I was going to rate this a touch less severely, but the second half of this book was supremely uncomfortable and mainly consisted of all the characters convincing themselves and each other that everyone else was in love with someone scandalously older or younger. In the end, everyone was matched up into (mostly) age-appropriate relationships, but I am forced to deduct a star for the cringe.