How to Cocoon a Butterfly: Mother and Daughter in A Girl of The Limberlost

Gene Stratton-Porter's novel, A Girl of The Limber lost, turns on a central moment of maternal revelation. After years of apparent indifference, and worse, Katharine Comstock feels the need to visit her daughter's room to "get nearer to her" (226). Even though Elnora is absent, the space speaks of her presence. Everything her mother sees increases her realization that she hardly knows her daughter. Pictures and books suggest Elnora's interests. "Packages and bundles," graduation gifts, illustrate her ability to make friends (226). Carefully prepared specimen boxes of "large, velvet-winged moths" demonstrate Elnora's eye for beauty as well as her sophisticated knowledge of the natural world around her—the Limberlost Swamp. This collection is "the most exquisite sight [her mother has] ever seen" (227). The contents of Elnora's room radiate intelligence and individualism, and Katharine ruefully acknowledges "the distance between her and her child" (227). Without her affection, without her encouragement, without her support, Elnora has somehow matured into an exceptional young adult. Along with Katharine's painful insight comes regret and a devouring desire to become a "good" mother (230).

Katharine Comstock's resolve has an epiphanic catalyst outside Elnora's room; after eighteen years of mourning, she has discovered that the husband for whom she wept was a philanderer. She can now, she says, stop regretting his loss and shift attention to the child she has resented (230). Katharine's bitter grieving for her husband provides justification for her initially abysmal mothering, and a series of revelations, including the knowledge that Robert was unfaithful, help explain her shift to archetypal mother. Yet, the implications of Katharine's mothering and Elnora's response demand a reexamination of their complex mother and daughter relationship that looks beyond narrative cause. Gene Stratton-Porter's jarring presentation of "good" and "bad" mothering in A Girl of The Limberlost links her with many female authors of her era and genre whose fiction for young female readers provokes these questions: What should a mother be? How should she treat her daughter?

A study of Elnora's progress through a complex maze of mothering—absent mother, evil mother, substitute mothers, angel mother—demonstrates that A Girl of The Limberlost is still painfully relevant, not just a pleasant pre-World War I bildungsroman with an interesting wilderness setting. It is the setting, however, that should give this novel a position among the touchstones of its genre. Tension between rebellion and conformity, independence and dependence are acted out within a threatened maternal Eden that graphically suggests the violence facing mother and daughter. Ultimately it becomes clear that no kind of mothering and no combination of mother figures can save Elnora from convention.

Stratton-Porter's most famous precursor, Louisa May Alcott, gives creative Jo March a mother who is beyond reproach, a model to all her little women. But danger lurks in Marmee's perfection, which acts as a constant reproach to her daughters: they cannot hope to duplicate her goodness.¹ In contrast to Alcott's illustration of ideal mothering, Lucy Maud Montgomery avoids biological parenting altogether in Anne of Green Gables by making Anne Shirley an orphan and by giving her a kind adoptive father and a substitute mother whose notion of nurturing is akin to boot-camp training. Matthew Cuthbert meekly nurtures Anne, but any reader quickly understands it is Manila with whom Anne must contend. Anne combats Marilla's harshness with imagination, and she develops strength, intelligence, and creativity under Marilla's rule of tough love.

Frances Hodgson Burnett uses a similar device when she kills, then replaces, Mary Lennox's father and her vain mother. Maternal replacements in The Secret Garden, however, differ greatly from Manila Cuthbert. Mary Lennox develops under the guiding hands of Martha Sowerby, a buoyant Yorkshire servant, and Susan, her earthy, prescient mother. To these healthy peasant types, Burnett adds the angelic spirit of Colin Craven's dead mother plus a dollop of Eastern philosophy from Mary's Indian ayah to provide spiritual sustenance for the child. Ultimately, however, it is the very feminine presence...