Girl Power: Now v. Then

After reading Cummin’s The Lamplighter and watching Amy Poehler’s interview, it is quite evident that not much has changed in the way little girls struggle from day to day to try and find equilibrium in their life. For this weeks reading, we are paralleling Gerty, an 8 year old orphan girl growing up in the nineteenth century with Anna, a 3rd grader who is most likely growing up in a structured, suburban home in the early twenty-first century.

Women and girls are able to freely express themselves now a-days because it is socially acceptable, whereas in the early nineteenth century, women were strongly discouraged from outward bodily expression of emotion. So, yes the depiction of girls is the same (striving to find balance in an often stressful world), but Gerty has a much different approach at how she handles frustration as opposed to Anna who is able to express her feelings without restraint. We see Gerty’s burst of anger on two separate occasions, first when Gerty sees Nan Grant for the first time since she threw her out onto the street, “Gerty turned, saw that he was going, then, quick as lightning, stooped, and picking up a stone from the sidewalk, flung it at the window” (p.56) and then again when the bigger girls on the school playground made fun of Uncle True, “Gerty was furious. Her eyes glistened, she doubled her little fist, and without hesitation came down in battle upon the crowd” (p.68). While Gerty is trying to find a sense of balance in her life by seeking God, she is still not able to express her emotions so any time that she experiences intense anger or sadness, her reaction is often very extravagant.

I will say that there is not much difference between now and then with young girls trying to channel their emotions to find a sense of balance, but the largest difference that I saw between Anna and Gerty was that Anna had a healthy outlet to release any tension that she might be feeling (yoga), while Gerty was supposed to be filling the traditional woman’s role (cooking, cleaning, housework, etc) and had no way to easily vent her feelings.

What would Gerty have to say if she was talking with Amy Poehler? I do not think her answers would be that much different from Anna’s. Gerty might like a more physical form of releasing her frustration like tae bo or kickboxing though. She would probably also talk about her journey to find God or maybe even talk about how she prays. Gerty is sort of a spit fire, so you are not ever really sure what you are going to get out of her. And I definitely think that she would pick the rainbow, since she is so fond of stars.