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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Despite, or perhaps because of, its popularity in 19th-century America, Ramona (1884), Helen Hunt Jackson's nostalgic novel of the California mission Indians, has seemed to offer little to academic readers. Seldom appearing on the lists of required reading for college courses in American literature, Jackson's novel has also been virtually ignored by literary and cultural scholars. Nevertheless, Ramona has had an active and influential “cultural life.” Jackson's Indian novel appealed to generations of readers from a wide variety of regions and socioeconomic classes. Published in the same year as Huckleberry Finn, Ramona first ran as a six-month serial in the Christian Union and subsequently amassed tremendous sales figures both in the United States and abroad. In 1885; for example, Ramona sold 21,000 copies as one of the year's best-sellers, and by 1900 readers had purchased more than 74,000 copies. Despite the lack of cheap, reprint editions, the novel continued to sell roughly 10,000 copies per year for most years through 1935. Held by 68 percent of U.S. libraries in 1893, it was one of only three contemporary novels held by 50 percent or more of the public libraries in the United States. Indeed, at least one of them had enormous trouble meeting public demand for the novel: in 1914 the Los Angeles Public Library was circulating 105 copies of Ramona, but it still had a waiting list; by 1946 the library had bought over a thousand copies of the novel. Never out of print, Ramona has been translated into “all known languages” and has been printed hundreds of times in dozens of editions. The popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin was phenomenal, but in Ramona Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel had a worthy rival. Clearly a powerful explanatory myth for generations of American readers, Ramona deserves serious attention from literary and cultural scholars alike.
1. Hart, James D., The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), p. 183.Google Scholar
2. McWilliams, Carey, “Southern California: Ersatz Mythology,” Common Ground 6 (Winter 1946): 31.Google Scholar
3. McWilliams, , “Southern California,” p. 32.Google Scholar
4. Quoted in Friend, Ruth, “Helen Hunt Jackson: A Critical Study,” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1985), pp. 264, 294.Google Scholar
5. Jackson's approach very much echoes Washington Irving's as he describes it in “To the Reader,” from Tales of a Traveller (1824)Google Scholar: “I am not, therefore, for those barefaced tales which carry their moral on the surface, staring one in the face; they are enough to deter the squeamish reader. On the contrary, I have often hid my moral from sight, and disguised it as much as possible by sweets and spices, so that while the simple reader is listening with open mouth to a ghost or a love story, he may have a bolus of sound morality popped down his throat, and be never the wiser for the fraud” (Tales of a Traveller, ed. Haig, Judith Gilbin [Boston: Twayne, 1987)], p. 4).Google Scholar
6. In his preface to the New York edition of The Ambassadors, James explains that the ficelle belongs “less to my subject than to my treatment of it” (reprinted in The Art of the Novel [New York: Scribner's, 1934])Google Scholar. This character guides the reader's understanding in the paths of the author's intentions. While I have no direct evidence that Jackson drew Aunt Ri in response to James's work, we do know that Jackson and James were friends and sometimes summered together (see Dorris, Michael, Introduction to Jackson, Helen Hunt, Ramona [New York: Signet-NAL, 1988], p. viii).Google Scholar
7. Throughout the novel, Jackson casts the Americans as colonialist invaders of a pastoral, idyllic world in which the various ethnic and racial groups (Indian, Mexican, and Spanish immigrants) functioned harmoniously. Thus, the Indians, Mexicans, and Spaniards constitute one-half of a bipolar “native” versus “invader” conflict. Scholars who have commented on Ramona often criticize Jackson's pastoral vision precisely because she romanticizes the relations among the Indians, Mexicans, and Spanish (a topic I shall explore in greater detail later in this essay); nevertheless, in this novel, Indians, Mexicans, and Spaniards all constitute native cultures whose boundaries are being penetrated by the pestilent and dangerous Americans.
8. Jackson, Helen Hunt, Ramona (New York: Signet-NAL, 1988), p. 281Google Scholar. All quotations from the text of the novel are taken from this edition.
9. See Keiser, Albert, The Indian in American Literature (New York: Oxford, 1933), p. 284Google Scholar; Nevins, Allan, “Helen Hunt Jackson, Sentimentalist vs. Realist,” American Scholar 10 (1941): 284Google Scholar; and Dorris, Michael, Introduction to Ramona, p. xvii.Google Scholar
10. McWilliams, , “Southern California”Google Scholar; and Mathes, Valerie Sherer, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Reform Legacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 92.Google Scholar
11. Biograph Bulletins: 1908–1912 (New York: Octagon, 1973), p. 197.Google Scholar
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13. Because of the popularity of the novel and these dramatic versions, the “Ramona story” has become known to a great many people who never read the novel. Nevertheless, I consider their responses to be a part of the reading history of Ramona. Therefore, when I specifically refer to readings of the actual novel, I shall make that clear by using the title, Ramona, or by specifying “the novel.” Otherwise, I shall use the term “story” to refer to the many versions of the basic plot that people may have picked up through dramatic versions, newspaper articles, or the popular culture.
14. “Cambridge Book Club Records 1832–1960,” Catalogue Four, 1881–1900. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
15. As several theorists have suggested, we can consider all reading to be an act of “writing” in which the reader fills in the interpretive gaps left by the story. In response to the Ramona story, however, readers have played an unusually vigorous role as “writers” of the text. They have consistently not only filled in interpretive gaps but have actively contested the very details of the plot, radically changing some details from the original novel and ignoring others.
16. Roosevelt, Theodore, The Winning of the West (New York: Putnam's, 1920), pp. 41–42Google Scholar. Roosevelt refers specifically to A Century of Dishonor, but his comments seem equally applicable to Ramona.
17. “An Ideal Destroyed,” San Francisco Chronicle (Jackson Manuscript Folder 13, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.), n.d.
18. Marsden, Michael, “Helen Hunt Jackson: Docudramatist of the American Indian,” Markham Review 10 (Fall/Winter 1980–1981): 17.Google Scholar
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22. Edmon Chase, letter to Roberts Brothers, Boston, n.d., 1890 (Jackson Manuscript Folder 12, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.).
23. In many ways the illustrations of Ramona perform the same function as does Aunt Ri – that of a ficelle or reader's friend. They interpret the action and help to promote a particular reading of the text.
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26. Scheick, William, The Half Blood: A Cultural Symbol in 19th-century American Fiction (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979), p. 45.Google Scholar
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28. Radway, Janice A., Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).Google Scholar
29. Los Angeles Examiner, Sunday, 01 9, 1927Google Scholar (Jackson Manuscript Folder 13, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.).
30. “Ramona Interleaved: Suggested Photographs, Covers, Pen, Ink Sketches, Medieval Book Marks, Etc.” (Jackson Manuscript Folder 14, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.).
31. “Is the Moving Picture to Be the Play of the Future?” New York Times Encyclopedia of Film: 1896–1928, ed. Brown, Gene (New York: Times Books, 1984), entry for August, 1911Google Scholar. The author goes on to add that since during the story an Indian village is destroyed, “to get a faithful likeness of the devastation, the Biograph Company purchased a village and burnt it down.”
32. Motion Picture Review Digest 1, no. 54 (New York: H. H. Wilson), 12 28, 1936), pp. 111–12.Google Scholar
33. Lavender, David, California: Land of New Beginnings (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 313, 317.Google Scholar
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35. “The Ramona Pageant: 1991 Season” (San Jacinto, Cal.: Ramona Pageant Association, 1991), p. 3.Google Scholar
36. Certainly, Jackson's own choice of narrative strategy (to hide her moral within a more readily acceptable story) has contributed to the penchant of readers to focus on the story rather than the message. Nevertheless, Jackson seemed to have felt that she had been explicit enough about the message that her readers should have understood it.
37. Wyman, Stan, “Righting a Wrong: Author of Novel Wanted to Help Indian People,”Google Scholar distributed by Ramona Pageant Association, n.a.
38. McWilliams, , “Southern California,” p. 32.Google Scholar
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40. “Those Theme Songs,” in New York Times Encyclopedia of Film: 1937–40, ed. Brown, Gene (New York: Times Books, 1984), 08 4, 1929A.Google Scholar
41. Jackson Manuscript Folder 15, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.
42. Jackson Manuscript Folder 15, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.
43. Readers familiar with Jackson's novel will realize that Ramona is not famous for wearing roses in her hair. The reference in the song was probably meant to echo the film's second promotional device, the development of a new strain of roses called the “Ramona” rose.
44. Miller, Daryl H., “Love Conquers All at Ramona Pageant: San Jacinto Again Glows with Spirit of the Old West in Long-Running Tear-Jerker,”Google Scholar distributed by the Ramona Pageant Association, n.a.
45. Radway, , Reading the Romance, p. 140.Google Scholar
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50. Baym, , Woman's Fiction, p. 14.Google Scholar
51. Baym, , Woman's Fiction, pp. 17, 19.Google Scholar
52. While Stowe probably did not intend for her audience to blame Legree rather than the cultural system, evidence suggests that many “readers” did, channeling their emotional responses into loathing for Legree. This seems to have been especially true in response to the dramatized versions of the story.
53. Friend, , “Helen Hunt Jackson,” p. 269Google Scholar. Friend argues that the novel does not succeed as social criticism in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin does because Jackson did not provide an identifiable villain (as Stowe did with Simon Legree). Without a clear villain, Friend asserts, readers' emotions are not stirred by the Indian issue, and their attention can then be directed elsewhere, such as to the romance plot.
54. Holme, Garnet, The Ramona Pageant (revised script, 1986), “Epilogue.”Google Scholar
55. Holme, , “Epilogue.”Google Scholar
56. Whitaker, , “Helen Hunt Jackson,” pp. 36–37.Google Scholar
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58. Starr, Kevin, Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 61.Google Scholar
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60. Dillon, , Humbugs and Heroes, p. 173.Google Scholar
61. Dillon, , Humbugs and Heroes, p. 172.Google Scholar
62. McWilliams, , “Southern California,” p. 31.Google Scholar
63. “Southern California: The Home of Ramona” (Jackson Manuscript Folder 14, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.).
64. The “Ramona Pageant” was not the only outdoor drama to sell the mission myth to residents and visitors alike in the early 20th Century. Starr notes that though the “Ramona Pageant” has outlasted all others, The Mission Play, which had its own playhouse in San Gabriel seating 1,450, was seen by “an estimated 2.5 million people between 1912 and 1929,” and its author/founder, McGroarty, John Steven, “was named poet laureate of California, knighted by the pope and the king of Spain, and twice elected to Congress” (Inventing the Dream, p. 88).Google Scholar
65. Dillon, , Humbugs and Heroes, p. 173.Google Scholar
66. Dorris, , Introduction to Ramona, p. xviii.Google Scholar
67. Kincaid, James R., “Who Gets to Tell Their Stories?” New York Times Book Review, 05 3, 1992, p. 1ff.Google Scholar
