Pollyanna

Summary

Pollyanna Whittier, eleven years old, is the orphaned daughter of a poor missionary minister in the American West. Her mother, Jennie, had long ago disappointed her proud New England family by marrying the young minister instead of a wealthy suitor. When her father dies, the Ladies' Aid that cared for them sends Pollyanna east to her only relative, her mother's sister Miss Polly Harrington, a stiff, dutiful and wealthy spinster of Beldingsville, Vermont, who takes her in purely out of duty. Miss Polly puts her in a bare attic room and sets her a strict timetable of sewing, music, reading and cooking. Pollyanna is delighted with everything anyway. She explains to the maid Nancy the 'glad game' her father taught her: when a missionary barrel brought a pair of child's crutches instead of the doll she had hoped for, he showed her she could be glad because she did not need them. The game is to find something to be glad about in everything, and the harder it is, the better the fun. Pollyanna wins over the household servants, Nancy, Old Tom the gardener and his son Timothy, and then the town. She visits Mrs. Snow, a complaining invalid who has kept to her bed for years, and coaxes her into letting her hair be arranged and into taking an interest in life. She makes friends with John Pendleton, the gruff, rich recluse called the Man, and finds him in Pendleton Woods with a broken leg, fetching help and the young physician Dr. Chilton. She befriends Jimmy Bean, a runaway from an orphans' home, and pleads with Aunt Polly and then with the Ladies' Aid to give him a home. Pendleton eventually confesses that he loved Pollyanna's mother and asks Pollyanna to live with him, but she will not leave her aunt, and she persuades him to take Jimmy instead. Her talk of her father's eight hundred 'rejoicing texts' turns the discouraged minister, the Rev. Paul Ford, from a sermon of rebuke to one of encouragement. Then Pollyanna is struck by a motor car, and a famous specialist, Dr. Mead, finds an injury to the spine with paralysis from the hips down. When she overhears that she may never walk again, Pollyanna cannot play her game, and the whole town, one visitor after another, comes to tell Miss Polly how the child taught them to be glad. Jimmy tells Miss Polly that Dr. Chilton knows of a doctor who might help, and that only pride keeps her from calling him. Miss Polly sends for Chilton, whom she had loved and quarrelled with years before, and they are reconciled. The book ends with Pollyanna's letter from a sanitarium: she has walked six steps, and her aunt has married Dr. Chilton at her bedside. The novel first appeared as a weekly serial in The Christian Herald and was published in book form by L. C. Page of Boston in 1913.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters I-IV: Arrival in Beldingsville

  Miss Polly receives the letter about her orphaned niece and prepares the attic room; Nancy and Timothy meet a chattering, red-haired Pollyanna at the station, and Old Tom recognizes Miss Jennie's child.

• Chapters V-VII: The game and the rules

  Pollyanna tells Nancy about the crutches and the glad game; Aunt Polly's timetable meets Pollyanna's protest that breathing is not living; punishments meant to correct her become new things to be glad about.

• Chapters VIII-XII: Mrs. Snow, the Man and Jimmy Bean

  Pollyanna carries calf's-foot jelly to Mrs. Snow and surprises her into interest in life; she greets the silent John Pendleton until he speaks; she meets the orphan Jimmy Bean and asks the Ladies' Aid to take him in, but they would rather send money to children in India.

• Chapters XIII-XVIII: Pendleton Woods, the doctor and the prisms

  Pollyanna finds Pendleton with a broken leg and brings help; Dr. Chilton calls her better than a tonic; she dresses Aunt Polly's hair with a rose and a lace shawl just as Dr. Chilton drives by; she hangs Pendleton's prisms in the sun to fill his room with rainbows.

• Chapters XIX-XXII: Secrets and sermons

  Pendleton reveals that he loved Pollyanna's mother and asks Pollyanna to come and make his house a home; she chooses to stay with Aunt Polly; the Rev. Paul Ford hears about the rejoicing texts and rewrites his Sunday sermon.

• Chapters XXIII-XXVII: The accident

  Pollyanna is struck by a motor car; Dr. Mead the specialist comes from New York, and Pollyanna overhears that she may never walk; Pendleton adopts Jimmy Bean, and Pollyanna finds she cannot play the game for herself.

• Chapters XXVIII-XXX: The town plays the game

  Nancy finally explains the game to Miss Polly, who takes it up herself; townspeople send messages of thanks; Jimmy overhears Chilton and Pendleton and bravely tells Miss Polly that pride is keeping Pollyanna from help.

• Chapters XXXI-XXXII: A new uncle

  Miss Polly calls Dr. Chilton and accepts his love; Pollyanna is carried to a sanitarium, and her closing letter tells of her first six steps and the wedding at her bedside.

Characters

• Pollyanna Whittier, protagonist

  An eleven-year-old missionary's orphan, talkative, truthful and warm-hearted, who plays her father's glad game.

• Miss Polly Harrington, Pollyanna's aunt

  A stern, dutiful, wealthy spinster who takes Pollyanna in from duty and slowly learns to love her.

• Nancy, maid

  Miss Polly's kind-hearted young servant, Pollyanna's first friend and first player of the game.

• Old Tom, gardener

  The Harringtons' aged gardener, who remembers Pollyanna's mother as a girl.

• Timothy, Old Tom's son

  The good-natured young man who drives the buggy and teases Nancy.

• Mrs. Snow, invalid

  A bedridden, complaining woman whom Pollyanna coaxes toward cheerfulness; her daughter Milly looks after her.

• John Pendleton, the Man

  A rich, solitary man who once loved Pollyanna's mother and is drawn out of his bitterness by her daughter.

• Jimmy Bean, orphan boy

  A runaway from an orphans' home who wants a real family and finally finds one with Pendleton.

• Dr. Thomas Chilton, physician

  A lonely young doctor estranged from Miss Polly, who calls Pollyanna better medicine than a tonic.

• Rev. Paul Ford, minister

  The weary pastor whose sermon is changed by Pollyanna's talk of the rejoicing texts.

• Dr. Mead, specialist

  The New York physician who examines Pollyanna after her accident.

Lessons

• Looking for the good on purpose

  Pollyanna's game is not pretending that bad things are good; it is a habit of searching each hard thing for a real reason to be thankful. It began with a disappointed little girl and a pair of unwanted crutches, and it works because she practises it. The book shows gladness as something learned and chosen.

  • What did Pollyanna's father find to be glad about in the crutches?
  • Why does Pollyanna say the game is more fun when it is hard?
  • Is there anything you could play the glad game about today?

• Duty and love

  Miss Polly does everything that duty asks: she gives Pollyanna a room, food, lessons and rules. What she does not give at first is affection. As Pollyanna's love wins her over, the attic room becomes a real bedroom, and duty becomes love.

  • Why did Aunt Polly agree to take Pollyanna?
  • When do you first see that Aunt Polly is beginning to love her niece?
  • Can you do your duty to someone without loving them? What is missing?

• A house is not a home

  John Pendleton says that it takes a woman's hand and heart, or a child's presence, to make a home. Pendleton, Dr. Chilton and Jimmy Bean all lack a home, and the story ends by giving each of them one. Pollyanna keeps her promise to her aunt and finds a home for Jimmy instead.

  • Why does Pollyanna refuse to go and live with Mr. Pendleton?
  • How does Jimmy Bean finally get a home?
  • What makes a house into a home?

• When the cheerful one needs help

  After her accident Pollyanna cannot play her own game. Then the people she helped come to help her, and Jimmy has the courage to tell Miss Polly a hard truth. Gladness, the book shows, is passed back and forth among friends.

  • Why can't Pollyanna play the game after she hears she may never walk?
  • What does Jimmy do that takes courage?
  • How do the townspeople repay Pollyanna?

Context

Pollyanna is set in a small Vermont town in the years before the First World War, when motor cars were new on country roads and a church's Ladies' Aid society sent missionary barrels of used goods to poor ministers in the West. Its world of hired girls, orphans' homes, invalids kept in darkened rooms and family doctors in buggies is the New England of Porter's own youth.

Composition

Eleanor H. Porter wrote Pollyanna after a decade of magazine fiction and the novel Miss Billy (1911). It appeared first as a weekly serial in The Christian Herald and then as a book from L. C. Page and Company of Boston in 1913.

Reception

The novel was an immediate best seller and went through dozens of printings within a few years; Glad Clubs were founded in its honour, and Porter wrote the sequel Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Mary Pickford starred in a 1920 silent film and Hayley Mills in Walt Disney's 1960 film. The heroine's name entered the dictionary as a word for a determined optimist, often used more lightly than the book itself deserves.

Comparisons

• heidi

  Both books send a cheerful orphan girl to an unwilling guardian, and in both the child's joy softens a bitter adult and helps an invalid toward healing.

• anne-of-green-gables

  Anne and Pollyanna are talkative red-haired orphans who win over stern unmarried guardians in small towns; Anne is ruled by imagination, Pollyanna by gladness.

• the-secret-garden

  Mary Lennox begins sour and is healed by the garden, while Pollyanna begins glad and must be healed herself; both books link the spirit's health with the body's.

• understood-betsy

  Two Vermont novels of the same decade in which a girl sent to live with relatives grows through daily life in a New England household.

• little-lord-fauntleroy

  Cedric and Pollyanna each melt the heart of a rich, hard old relative or neighbour simply by assuming the best of him.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The story of the crutches in the missionary barrel in Chapter V, which explains the whole glad game.
• How Pollyanna finds something to be glad about in the bare attic room, and how that room changes later.
• Each grown-up Pollyanna meets who is unhappy: Mrs. Snow, Mr. Pendleton, Dr. Chilton and the minister.
• The moment after the accident when Pollyanna cannot play the game, and who helps her then.

Key terms and names

The glad game

Pollyanna's father's game of finding something to be glad about in everything, even when it is hard.

Missionary barrel

A barrel of donated clothes and goods sent by churches to poor ministers; Pollyanna's crutches came in one.

Ladies' Aid

A church women's society; one in the West cared for Pollyanna, and the one in Beldingsville would not take Jimmy Bean.

Rejoicing texts

Pollyanna's father's name for the Bible verses that tell people to be glad and rejoice; he counted eight hundred.

Prism

A piece of cut glass that splits sunlight into rainbows; Pollyanna hangs them in Mr. Pendleton's window.

Calf's-foot jelly

A jelly made from boiled calves' feet, often brought to sick people; Pollyanna carries it to Mrs. Snow and Mr. Pendleton.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why did Pollyanna come to live with Aunt Polly, and what kind of room did Aunt Polly give her?
2. Comprehension What did Pollyanna find in the missionary barrel instead of a doll, and what did her father say about it?
3. Comprehension How did Pollyanna help Mr. Pendleton when he broke his leg in the woods?
4. Interpretation Why do you think Mrs. Snow started to feel better after Pollyanna's visits?
5. Interpretation Why did Pollyanna say no when Mr. Pendleton asked her to live with him? Was that a hard choice?
6. Interpretation After the accident Pollyanna could not play the game. How did the people of the town help her be glad again?
7. Big Question Is it always possible to find something to be glad about? Is being glad the same as pretending nothing is wrong?

Faith Connections

• Philippians 4:4 (Scripture)

  Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. This is the kind of verse Pollyanna's father counted among his eight hundred rejoicing texts.

• 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (Scripture)

  Paul tells Christians to rejoice evermore and give thanks in everything. Pollyanna's game is a child's way of practising thanks in hard things like the crutches and her hurt legs.

• Psalm 32:11 (Scripture)

  Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart. This is the text of the Rev. Paul Ford's new sermon in Chapter XXII.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A girl who has lost everything still finds real reasons for gladness. Her gladness spreads to the lonely and bitter people around her, and they become kinder and happier. When she herself is hurt, the gladness she gave comes back to her. So the book argues that thankfulness, practised on purpose, can heal a household and a town.

Rhetorical device: repetition of a key word. The word glad returns on nearly every page, from the crutches in Chapter V to the closing letter in Chapter XXXII, so that readers feel the game working through the whole town.

Debate: Resolved: that Pollyanna's glad game is good advice for everyone.

Memory Work

the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about--no matter what 'twas

Just breathing isn't living!

Writing Prompts

Essay: Choose one grown-up in the book, such as Aunt Polly, Mrs. Snow or Mr. Pendleton, and write about how Pollyanna changes that person from the beginning of the story to the end.

Comparison with Heidi: Heidi and Pollyanna both bring joy to a grumpy grown-up and help someone who is sick. Compare how each girl does it and which story you think shows it better.

Medical Lens

The novel is full of early twentieth-century medicine: a chronic invalid kept to her bed and darkened room, a broken leg set by a country doctor, a city specialist called in consultation, a spinal injury with paralysis from the hips down, and a long stay at a distant sanitarium. Dr. Chilton's repeated joke that Pollyanna is a tonic he wishes he could prescribe like pills makes the book an easy entry point for the history of ideas about mood, encouragement and recovery, from the mind-cure movements of Porter's New England to later research on optimism and placebo response; any such link is a modern reading. Mrs. Snow's long invalidism, in which complaint has become a way of life, can be read alongside period ideas of nervous invalidism without asserting a diagnosis. The cure of Pollyanna's paralysis is told as a child would hear it, with no medical detail of the treatment.

• Chapters VIII and X

  Pollyanna's visits to the bedridden Mrs. Snow, who wants whatever she has not been brought, until Pollyanna arranges her hair and shows her a mirror.

  Hypochondria Nursing Caregiving
• Chapter XV

  Dr. Chilton says the child is better than any tonic and wishes he could prescribe her for his patients.

  Physicians Doctors Mind Body
• Chapters XXIII-XXVI

  The motor-car accident, Miss Polly's account to Pendleton of an injury to the spine with paralysis from the hips down, and the specialist Dr. Mead's consultation.

  Disability Deformity Physicians Doctors
• Chapters XXXI-XXXII

  Pollyanna is sent to a sanitarium run by a friend of Dr. Chilton and, after nearly ten months, writes that she has walked.

  Disability Deformity Nursing Caregiving

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Play the glad game as a class: each child names one small trouble from the week and one true reason to be glad about it, as Pollyanna does with the attic room and the freckles.

• Fiction

  Write a letter from Jimmy Bean to Pollyanna in the sanitarium, telling her about his first month living with Mr. Pendleton.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Nancy and Old Tom on the night Pollyanna arrives, when Tom learns that Miss Jennie's little girl has come.

• Essay

  Some people use the word Pollyanna to mean someone who ignores trouble. Using the crutches, the accident and the final letter, argue whether that is fair to the girl in the book.

Further Reading

• Pollyanna Grows Up, Eleanor H. Porter

  The 1915 sequel.

• Just David, Eleanor H. Porter

• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin

  An earlier New England novel of a cheerful girl sent to stern aunts.