Pollyanna

The optimistic personality of Porter’s heroine is so distinctive, that it lives on in the American cultural imagination to this day. Although the idea of being a Pollyanna is based on the original character, the meaning has shifted from the traits that define Porter’s original. For example, an online dictionary defines a Pollyanna as “an excessively or blindly optimistic person”, while the adjective pollyannaish describes someone “unreasonably or illogically optimistic” (“Pollyanna”; “Pollyannaish”). Both these definitions imply a careless person who ignores the difficulties of the current reality, groundlessly imposing their preferred version of events onto it. Porter’s portrayal of Pollyanna’s optimism, however, is more nuanced.

The aspect of Pollyanna’s optimism that is most like the dictionary definition becomes apparent when following the disappointment of learning that her aunt has given her the puny, stiflingly hot attic room in a lavish mansion, she finds ways to make the negative situation into a positive one. For example, although she wanted a mirror, she says that “I can be glad there isn’t any looking-glass […] ‘cause where there ISN’T any glass I can’t see my freckles” (26). Here, she makes the idea that she will not have to be faced with a dissatisfying aspect of her physical appearance into a consolation for the fact that her sole living relative does not appear to care for her. While Pollyanna waxes lyrical about how the beauty of the view from the window is better than any wall painting she would have originally wanted, Nancy who sees the real reason Pollyanna was given this room, bursts into tears. Here, Nancy’s more realistic reaction sets Pollyanna’s extraordinary one in relief.

While in the popular imagination Pollyannaism is largely to do with a change in perspective, Porter shows that how Pollyanna’s optimism leads her to act in ways that improve people’s lives. For example, on two different occasions, she does the hair of Mrs. Snow and Aunt Polly, making them look prettier and more feminine according to the values of contemporary society. These two women who have been relegated to the state of non-sexual beings through harmful stereotypes of disability and spinsterhood, are reintroduced to a more fertile realm where they are made to feel attractive and capable of change. Pollyanna’s daringly positive view of these women encourages them to see themselves differently and in the long term, live more connected, open-hearted lives. More importantly, Pollyanna’s constructive type of optimism helps serially rejected orphan Jimmy Bean find a home. She goes on a restless campaign, trying several approaches until she finally succeeds with Mr. Pendleton. Here, her optimism is not the pie in the sky thing of the dictionary definition, but something that is married with grit—there is a practical need, and she will do everything she can to meet it.

While optimism continues to be Pollyanna’s mainstay, she also learns its limits. For example, although she would wish for Mr. Pendleton to be less lonely, when she finds out that Aunt Polly is not his original love and that they cannot both go and live in his house, she finds that she must disappoint him. In choosing between Aunt Polly and Mr. Pendleton, Pollyanna must content herself with disappointing one of them, even as she does search for a consolation prize for the loser.

However, Pollyanna’s optimism is most put to the test under the threat that she has lost her mobility forever. Her immediate response is “if I can’t walk, how am I ever going to be glad for—ANYTHING?” as she appreciates how much being a busy, active person is intrinsic to her sense of joy (180). In Nancy’s words, she also realizes that “it’s easy ter TELL lifelong invalids how ter be glad, but ‘taint the same thing when you’re the lifelong invalid yerself” (184). Here, Pollyanna recalls her interactions with bedbound Mrs. Snow and gains the insight that it is easier to preach gladness in the face of hardship when you yourself have not suffered in the same way. Although Pollyanna has brief, vicarious moments of joy during her period of disability, such as when she learns that Mr. Pendleton has adopted Jimmy Bean, or she sees her aunt and Dr. Chilton together, lasting contentment eludes her and there is the sense that she has become a melancholier character. While this fits in with the early-20th-century’s prejudices around disability, it also shows that the modern stereotype of Pollyanna as unfailingly optimistic is an exaggeration.

The simplification of Pollyanna’s optimism is one that enables people in power to define their own grounds for hope against hers. To a cynical and well-informed public, laboring under the brain’s negativity bias, whereby unpleasant things have a greater and more lasting impact than pleasant ones, Pollyanna’s style of optimism can appear foolish and even dangerous. The culture therefore has drawn a sexist binary, whereby Pollyanna’s optimism is seen as the girlish, irrational kind, while that of, for example, male politicians is grounded and constructive. Such misunderstandings reduce the range and power of the original heroine.