Pollyanna

“Well, really, Nancy, just because I happened to have a sister who was silly enough to marry and bring unnecessary children into a world that was already quite full enough, I can’t see how I should particularly WANT to have the care of them myself. However, as I said before, I hope I know my duty.”

This passage shows how Miss Polly views the care of Pollyanna as a grim duty that she must perform if she is not to be morally remiss according to her Christian principles. Her cynical view of childbearing would shock the novel’s contemporary reader, who was used to sentimentalized ideas of motherhood. While Miss Polly’s outlook on children not being the source of happiness on an already overcrowded planet is modern, her being bound by religious duty is distinctly old-fashioned.

“‘Oh, I’m so glad, GLAD, GLAD to see you,’ cried an eager voice in her ear. ‘Of course I’m Pollyanna, and I’m so glad you came to meet me! I hope you would.’”

This passage is the first introduction to Pollyanna’s breathless, garrulous style of speech. From the outset, she makes gladness her personal brand, using the word four times in her speech to Nancy, who she mistakes for her Aunt Polly. Porter shows how Pollyanna imposes optimism on a situation before she is even certain of the circumstances. Pollyanna’s taking for granted that her aunt would be happy to meet her, sets up a keen contrast with Aunt Polly’s actual response.

“‘Oh, Nancy, I hadn’t seen this before,’ she breathed. ‘Look—way off there, with those trees and the houses and that lovely church spire, and the river shining just lie silver. Why, Nancy, there doesn’t anybody need any pictures with that to look at. Oh, I’m so glad now she let me have this room!’”

This passage illustrates Pollyanna’s ability to turn an unlucky situation, such as getting the shabby attic room in a house full of splendid ones, into an advantage. While Pollyanna originally wanted pictures on her walls, she is grateful for the picturesque view of the village. Arguably, for Pollyanna, who came from the less developed West, such a view would be an intriguing novelty. She also alerts us the untapped potential of the place, as she appreciates what the others take for granted.

“The game was to just find something about everything to be glad about—no matter what ‘twas […] and we began right then—on the crutches.”

Here, Nancy explains the basic philosophy of the famous glad game. When Pollyanna found crutches in a missionary barn instead of the doll she wanted, her father encouraged her to be grateful that she did not need the crutches. The game thus encourages Pollyanna and its players, to be grateful for simple things. This origin of the glad game will become significant after Pollyanna’s car accident, when she is unable to walk and cannot draw upon the good health that she has taken for granted.

“You breathe all the time you’re asleep, but you aren’t living. I mean living—doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors […] and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That’s what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn’t living!”

Pollyanna introduces the radical idea of “living” to Aunt Polly’s Protestant work ethic. While Aunt Polly is obsessed with productivity, Pollyanna enjoys using her time in a seemingly unproductive manner, as she wants to explore and get to know the world around her. Later, in the period of Pollyanna’s illness, when the full extent of Pollyanna’s goodness is revealed, her time spent just living and getting to know the town does not seem so idle.

“There were no children in the immediate neighborhood of the Harrington homestead for Pollyanna to play with. The house itself was on the outskirts of the village, and though there were other houses not far away, they did not chance to contain any boys or girls near Pollyanna’s age. This, however, did not seem to disturb Pollyanna in the least.”

This passage affirms that Pollyanna is a child in a world of adults. From what we learn of her past in the West, this was also the case where she used to live, spending her days surrounded by missionaries and Ladies’ Aiders. Ironically, while she makes joy her purpose, she seeks to share her ethos with adults who have trouble remembering how to be joyful, rather than seeking out peers who can easily access joy. Pollyanna set up in a world of adults demonstrates the belief that Pollyanna’s message is profound and potentially revolutionary rather than a trivial child’s game.

“To her unbounded surprise now, she found herself, not in the main attic before the cedar chest, but in Pollyanna’s little room sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs—so many, many times since Pollyanna came, Miss Polly had found herself like this, doing some utterly unexpected, surprising thing, quite unlike the things she had set out to do!”

This passage details how Miss Polly, who was planning to locate a cedar chest, end ups in Pollyanna’s room. Miss Polly’s disorientation since Pollyanna’s arrival is conveyed, as her plans go out the window and she ends up increasingly in her niece’s orbit. While prior to Pollyanna’s arrival, Miss Polly has sought a life of order, now presented with a person who has completely different values, she is suddenly questioning what life is about. Her subconscious is leading her to spend time with Pollyanna and learn from her, rather than seeking out the scarf.

“WILL you stop using that everlasting word ‘glad’! It’s ‘glad’—‘glad’—‘glad’ from morning till night until I think I shall grow wild!”

Normally guarded Aunt Polly’s outburst indicates her resistance to Pollyanna’s optimism. Her idea that the gladness mandate shall make her “grow wild” indicates how Pollyanna’s ways are threatening to make her into someone beyond the respectable authoritarian she recognizes. This comes after Pollyanna’s entreaty that Aunt Polly should adopt Jimmy Bean after she has been so generous to the kitten and puppy. For Aunt Polly, however, this is the final straw, as she strives to reassert the control that Pollyanna has removed.

“A great many ladies talked then, and several of them talked all at once, and even more loudly and more unpleasantly than before. It seemed that their society was famous for its offering to Hindu missions, and several said they should die of mortification if it should be less than this year.”

This passage conveys Pollyanna’s disappointment with the Ladies Aid. The women’s dubious morality is shown before they even speak in the cacophonous and chaotic sound of their chatter. To Pollyanna’s ears, the content of their speech is also ugly, as their fear that they “should die of mortification” if they are seen to be less giving to the Hindu mission, indicates a concern with reputation above charity. Here, Pollyanna’s local altruism is contrasted with the ladies’ self-centered notions of contributing to exotic missions.

“In spite of her feeling of haste, she paused a moment and looked fearfully through the vestibule to the wide, sombre hall beyond, her thoughts in a whirl. This was John Pendleton’s house; the house of mystery; the house into which no one but its master entered […] Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter alone these fearsome rooms…”

This passage shows how Pollyanna has made herself exceptional in the community and her own sense of her uniqueness. The mission to go into John Pendleton’s house after the accident and telephone Dr. Chilton gains fairytale dimensions when Pollyanna senses that she is entering a “mystery” where no one else goes. Here, the scene is set for Pollyanna’s revolutionary potential in the community.

“I wish I could prescribe her—and buy her—as I would a box of pills; —though if there gets to be many of her in the world, you and I might as well go to ribbon-selling and ditch-digging for all the money we’d get out of nursing and doctoring.”

Dr. Chilton comments to Mr. Pendleton’s nurse that Pollyanna’s optimistic ways have a positive, medicinal effect. As a doctor with his mind on medical advances, he even imagines the creation of Pollyanna pills to make people happy. However, he dismisses the idea that any medication should have such an effect, stating that it is Pollyanna’s human traits that are the best cure of all and exaggerating that there would be no need for doctors if the world were full of Pollyannas. Later, Pollyanna’s accident proves that she is not invincible and shows there is a place for medicine.

“For a moment the doctor did not answer. When he did speak his voice was so low Pollyanna could but just hear the words. ‘Yes, Pollyanna, I—I thought she did look—just lovely.’”

Porter drops an early clue that Dr. Chilton was Miss Polly’s lover and not Mr. Pendleton as per Nancy’s suspicion and the false narrative set up. The doctor’s silence on seeing the Miss Polly that Pollyanna has made up to resemble her younger self, indicates that he is experiencing real feeling, while the low pitch of his words shows that he is saying them more to himself than aloud. Suspense is created for the reader about this interaction about who Miss Polly’s lover might be.

“But after a time I found I was wanting to see you so much that—that the fact that I WASN’T seeing you was making me remember all the more vividly the thing I was so wanting to forget. So now I want you to come.”

Pendleton realizes that while he initially sought to banish Pollyanna for the pain she caused him in resembling Jennie, her mother, and his original object of affection, in the end, he finds that he suffers without her because hers is the kind of longed-for presence that he has lacked all this time. Pendleton’s passion for Pollyanna slots into the vacuum left by her mother when she chose Mr. Whittier over him. Thus, although his feeling for Pollyanna indicates his renewed openness and positivity, it is also of an unseemly nature, as he projects his longing for an adult woman onto her child daughter.

“Ever since then this great gray pile of stone has been a house—never a home. It takes a woman’s hand and heart, or a child’s presence, to make a home, Pollyanna; and I have not had either.”

This passage introduces the motif that no house is a home without the presence of a family unit. Despite his wealth and the grandness of his house, bachelor Mr. Pendleton considers that he will never be truly settled while he lives alone. Pollyanna, who has also lacked a home following her parents’ deaths and is trying to make one with Miss Polly, feels his pain. She also adopts the idea that no-one should live alone and transfers it to Dr. Chilton when she finds that he endures similar bachelorhood.

“It means she’s at last gettin’ down somewheres near human-like folks; an’ that she ain’t jest doin’ her duty by ye all the time.”

When Nancy learns that Miss Polly has been genuinely worried about Pollyanna following her unexplained absence, she has a higher estimation of her mistress. Rather than being a lofty, cold old maid who lives at the top of the hill and looks down on people, Miss Polly is “gettin’ down somewhere near human” and so is grounded enough to have real emotions. The duty that she felt towards Pollyanna at the beginning has been replaced with care.

“In his imagination he was far away in a little Western town with a missionary minister who was poor, sick, worried, and almost alone in the world—but who was poring over the Bible to find how many times his Lord and Master had told him to ‘rejoice and be glad.’”

Following his encounter with Pollyanna, the village’s disturbed minister takes her and her father as his example. He imagines Pollyanna’s father as a heroic man who was looking for reasons to be happy and taking the jubilant passages of the Bible as his inspiration despite difficult outside circumstances. He thus paints a vivid and sympathetic picture for the reader of the absent character who influenced Pollyanna and caused a disruption in their own Vermont village when he eloped with her mother Jennie.

“Just what happened, no one could seem to tell afterward. Neither was there any one found who could tell why it happened or who was to blame that it did happen. Pollyanna, however, at five o’clock, was borne, limp and unconscious, into the little room that was so dear to her.”

The passive voice is used with the regard to the motor car accident that “happened” emphasizing the wish to remove the incident from the realm of human blame. Thus, although it is tempting to do so, the reader must stop questioning why Pollyanna was run over and accept that she was. This impersonal beginning is contrasted with the moving fact that Pollyanna is brought in an unconscious state to the room that she is so grateful for. From having had superlative agency, Pollyanna now has none, as the novel enters its third act.

“She, too, grew pale and thin; and the nervous activity of the poor little hands and arms only emphasized that pitiful motionlessness of the once active little feet and legs now lying so woefully quiet under the blankets.”

While Pollyanna attempts to remain cheerful, as the period of her convalescence extends, she finds that she cannot help but be affected by her inability to move. The mobility of her hands and arms almost overcompensates for her inability to move her legs. The repeated epithet “little” endows Pollyanna with a dainty preciousness, indicating how much life force is contained in her small body.

“He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with kind gray eyes, and a cheerful smile. Pollyanna liked him at once, and told him so. ‘You look quite a lot like MY doctor, you see,’ she added engagingly.”

Pollyanna indirectly introduces the fact that Dr. Chilton is conventionally handsome, as he shares the same height and broad shoulders as Dr. Mead. Despite Aunt Polly’s professions that Dr. Warren is the family physician, Pollyanna never ceases to think of Dr. Chilton as her doctor. While Dr. Mead initially appears a reassuring duplicate of Dr. Chilton, he will prove to be the opposite when he casts his sentence of paralysis onto Pollyanna. There is thus no substitute for the original.

“Every one said afterward that it was the cat that did it. Certainly, if Fluffy had not poked an insistent pow and nose against Pollyanna’s unlatched door, the door would not have swung noiselessly open on its hinges until it stood perhaps a foot ajar; and if the door had not been open, Pollyanna would not have heard her aunt’s words.”

Pollyanna’s discovery of the truth about her condition is show to be the counterpart to the accident itself. Both are unpredictable, inexplicable acts. Still, the characters’ disposition to blame the cat, a mysterious, self-seeking animal, indicates their need to find some explanation for the uncontrollable fact that Pollyanna has learned the truth in its unadulterated form, rather than in words fit for a child to hear. This escalates the situation and maximizes the potential for testing Pollyanna’s optimism.

“Miss Hunt did not know ‘the game’; but she did know that her patient must be quieted, and that at once. In spite of her own perturbation and heartache, her hands had not been idle, and she stood now at the bedside with the quieting powder ready.”

While Pollyanna brings up the glad game, her nurse Miss Hunt dims her emotions and falls back on her duty. She depersonalizes this most distinctive of characters, making her “her patient” and administers the standard medicine of “quieting powder.” This is a sad moment, as Pollyanna’s autonomy is taken away from her and she is reduced to the status of an obedient charge.

“Everybody knew by sight now the piquant little freckled face that had always a smile of greeting; and almost everybody knew of the ‘game’ that Pollyanna was playing. To think that now never again would that smiling face be seen on their streets—never again would that cheery little voice proclaim the gladness of some everyday experience! It seemed unbelievable, impossible, cruel.”

This passage establishes Pollyanna’s fame in the village and creates pathos for how such a lively and generous character will never resume the activities that have made her so beloved. The repeated used of the adverb of frequency “never” indicates how the villagers’ attitude to disability is typical of the time in which the novel was written, as they equate it to a kind of death. Similarly, the three adjectives at the end of the passage are a form of hyperbole that expresses the villagers’ belief in the injustice done to Pollyanna.

“An’ so that’s why I come ter tell ye that as long as it’s only pride an’ et—et-somethin’ that’s keepin’ Pollyanna from walkin’, why I knew you WOULD ask Dr. Chilton here if you understood—”

Jimmy Bean acts as the messenger who delivers the vital news that Dr. Chilton knows someone who can help Pollyanna walk again. Jimmy’s slangy diction in addition to his inability to remember the French, old-fashioned word etiquette, convey the message that old class concerns must be put aside in favor of a more important cause.