The Legacy of the Grimm Brothers: Origins and Transformations–a guest post by Amalie Dieter

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Amalie Dieter is a senior at Southern Oregon University working towards a BA in English & Writing and a BS in Environmental Science & Policy.

The Grimm brothers are the most associated with the fairy tale genre compared to any other author or fairy tale collector and their work has been translated into 150 languages and is known throughout the world (Zipes xi). Despite this wide recognition and fame, how many people really know the original origins and purpose of the tales collected by the Grimm brothers? And how did these tales transform from their original state in 1812 to the many adaptations we see today? Numerous authors and scholars have written and researched the history of the Grimms and their tales and have found that their transformation is in large part due to the readers themselves.

The first edition published the Grimm brothers was fairly small compared to the eventual 210 tale edition: “Today the Grimms’ tales fill two fairly thick volumes, but in 1812, after five years of collecting, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had only found enough tales for one small book” (Bottigheimer 27). The Grimm brothers did not originally collect these tales for children to read: “When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first developed the plan to compile German folktales, they wanted to capture the “pure” voice of the German people and to preserve in print the oracular poetry of the common people” (Tatar 341). The original intent of the Grimm brothers was a scholarly project to preserve the oral traditions and cultural viewpoints of the German people, but after the first printing of the collection everything changed.

The readers’ response to the first edition of the collection was not what the Grimm brothers had been hoping for:

To a great extent the Grimms’ scholarly ambitions and patriotic zeal guided the production of the first edition of the Nursery and Household Tales. But once the collection was in print, reviewers weighed in with critiques that took the brothers back to the drawing board to revise, rescript, and redact. One critic denounced the collection as tainted by French and Italian influences. Another lamented the vast amounts of “pathetic” and “tasteless” material and urged parents to keep the volume out of the hands of children. (Tatar 343)

In the following editions of the Nursery and Household Tales the Grimm Brothers made many changes. They fleshed out the texts they had collected, often doubling their length and they polished the language used. The biggest change of all however, was the intended audience of their collection of tales, from scholars to children (Tatar 343). In order to make their collection suitable for children the Grimm Brothers made many additions and redactions to their collection: “The Grimms were intent on eliminating all residues of risqué humor in the tales they recorded, yet they had no reservations about preserving, and in some cases intensifying, the violence” (Tatar 344). Many of the tales the Grimm brothers had collected originally contained innuendo and sexual content that was considered to be inappropriate for children. The Grimm brothers also added religious references to the text and instructive motives to the tales in order to make them a sort of teaching device for children (Tatar 49). The violence of the tales only intensified over the editions, but during this time period violence was everywhere.

The Grimms would have been exposed to much of the political turmoil of the eighteenth-century: “The French Revolution of 1789, which was followed by grisly reports of the execution of Thermion, affected Wilhelm’s young imagination. His earliest watercolor drawing depicts a bloody scene from Louis XVI’s execution, as his head is held aloft before the gathered mob” (Bottigheimer 3). Other events and changes in Europe during this time were the Napoleonic Wars, the Romantic movement, Kantian philosophy, the age of Metternich, the July revolution in France, he struggles for constitutional government in the German states, the revolution of 1848, and the rise to power of Bismarck (Peppar xii). These events and changes in Europe influenced the additions and reactions to the Grimm brothers’ collection.

Some examples of changes the Grimm brothers made to their collection are found in the tales of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. The Grimm Brothers made the tale of Cinderella more violent than the one written by Charles Perrault: “The Grimms delighted in describing the blood in the shoes of the step sisters who try to slice off their heels and toes in order to get a perfect fit. The German version also gives us a far less compassionate Cinderella, one who does not forgive her stepsisters but invites them to her wedding where doves peck out their eyes” (Tatar 30). Some of the transformations the Grimms made were to serve as harsh lessons for children (Zipes 14). The Grimms revised the Red Riding Hood tale so that the Huntsman rescues Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, while in the original the young girl rescues herself by distracting the wolf with a strip tease (Tatar 18). The Grimms erased all of the inappropriate erotic content and added in behavioral imperatives such as: “When you’re out in the woods, look straight ahead of you like a good little girl and don’t stray from the path” (Tatar 19). Many scholars have pointed out that some of the rewriting and edits the Grimms did made the women in the stories less independent, giving us the role of damsel in distress. The Grimm brothers also took out any “scandal” of their version of Rapunzel: “In the first version of the Grimms’ Nursery and Household Tales, Rapunzel asks the enchantress why her clothes are getting so tight and don’t fit any longer” (Tatar 113). This was taken out and replaced with a less harmful line. The Grimm brothers also made Rapunzel a “wife” to the prince so as to not suggest that Rapunzel’s twins were born out of wedlock (Tatar 113). Other edits were made in general to many of the tales, for example many of the original evil women in the tales were mothers, but the Grimms changed them to step mothers.

A lot has been written about where the Grimm brothers got their tales: “Few readers know that more than half of the 210 fairy tales included in the Grimm anthologies had a woman’s hand in them, whether they were recorded from her storytelling or recorded by her as she listened to another storyteller” (Paradiz xi). Many of the people who provided the Grimm brothers with tales were girls and young women who were in the brother’s social circle:

Wilhelm’s informants were as young as 14-year-old Dortchen Wild, one of six daughters of the town apothecary Rudolf Wild who lived across the street from the Grimm family. Dortchen’s older sister Gretchen, another tale contributor, was 20. The two girls and their mother told Wilhelm several folk tales and many fairy tales, some of which – like “The Frog Prince,” “Frau Holle,” The Six Swans,” and “Many Furs” – later became well known in the English-speaking world. (Bottigheimer 28)

The three Hassenpflug girls (Marie, Jeannette, and Amalie) were also principal sources for the Grimm brothers. The three girls provided the brothers with many tales including, The Seven Ravens, Red Riding Hood, The Girl Without Hands, The Robber Bridegroom, Sleeping Beauty, King Thrush beard, Snow White, and The Carnation (Bottigheimer 29).

The changes that the Grimm brothers made to their collection of tales has influenced two centuries worth of generations and continues to shape our world today: “In this century, Walt Disney’s film versions of fairy tales, beginning with Snow White in 1937, helped add to familiarity with the stories. In recent years, widespread enthusiasm for every sort of fantasy, from science fiction to horror movies, has included a strong up swing of interest in fairy tale” (McGlat vii). There are many Disney adaptations of fairy tales and the tales collected by the Grimm brothers: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled are just a few examples. These adaptations of course do not resemble even the edited editions of the Nursery and Household Tales, not to even mention the originals. Most women and girls in these adaptations are either damsels in distress or villains, gone are the women who save themselves with their imagination, bravery, and quick thinking (Zipes 74). There is also very few traces of violence and sexual content left in any of the tales we see today, however many still cling to the idea of role models of behavior, instruction, and morality (Zipes 152).

It is unclear whether or not children stories will return to their original form, seen in the eighteenth century, but recently there has been an increase of films and television series based on fairy tales that are of a much darker nature than the Disney film adaptations. One popular television series is Once Upon a Time, which contains material from many tales and myths including: Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, Rapunzel, and Cinderella. In this show many women are damsels in distress or villains, but there are also many more who are strong women who save the day. Red Riding Hood in this enchanted world is actually the wolf herself and her grandmother is one tough old lady who comes to the rescue of many of the characters (Once Upon A Time). Another current TV series is Grimm, which is a spin on the Grimm brothers themselves. This show is set in current society and is a cop drama with a fantastical twist. In this show a Grimm is someone who collects tales and information about magical creatures and then uses that information to hunt them down (Grimm). The Grimm TV series includes many of the details of the tales collected by the Grimm brothers and reflects more of the original versions, especially the violence the Grimm brothers were known for describing in their tales.

Walt Disney Pictures is even embracing the return to the darker versions of fairy tales with the musical fantasy film, Into The Woods, which was produced in 2014. In the introduction of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales you find this description of fairy tales:

Fairy tales are up close and personal, telling us about the quest for romance and riches, for power and privilege, and, most important, for a way out of the woods back to the safety and security of home. Bringing myths down to earth and inflecting them in human rather than heroic terms, fairy tales put a familiar spin on the stories in the archive of our collective imagination. (Tatar xii)

The film Into The Woods embraces this description of the classic fairy tales literally and figuratively. Much of the material used in this film comes from the original versions of the Grimm tales. Red Riding Hood in this film is a clever girl who tricks the baker and his wife out of many of their goods, however she does end up needing rescuing. The wolf is represented by a deviant man like the original version and includes instructions like “do not wander from the path and beware of strangers” (Into The Woods). After the encounter with the wolf Red Riding Hood becomes more independent, a girl who wears a cape made of wolf skin and carries a knife to protect herself with (Into the Woods).

The tale of Rapunzel in this film is a mixture of the old and new versions, it does contain the sexual content that the original version did, but it contains many of the other details. Some of these include: the enchantress getting Rapunzel because her parents stole from the enchantress’ garden, the enchantress locking Rapunzel in a tower, thorns blinding the prince, Rapunzel being banished to a swamp, Rapunzel’s tears healing the prince (Into The Woods). The tale of Cinderella in this film adaptation contains the violence of the original Grimm version, where the stepsisters have their toes and heels sliced off to fit into the slipper and Cinderella’s birds blind the stepsister for their cruelty (Into The Woods). Also, from the original Grimm tales the theme of wish fulfillment, of wanting riches, children, and a different life are included in this film.

What would literature, culture, and society be like today if the readers of the 18th century had not called for the Grimm brothers to edit their collection or if the Grimm brothers refused to do so? The Grimm collection of tales have changed many times over for the past two centuries, but that is the nature of fairy tales: “Fairy tales are never fixed and always changing from one region to another, from one teller to another, they still preserve a stable core” (Haase 31). Even though the fairy tales we know today may not reflect the original Grimm collection, their legacy lives on through the adaptations and the inspiration they passed on to other authors, scholars, and collectors.

Works Cited

    Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Fairy Tales: A New History. Albany: Excelsior Editions, 2009. Print.

    Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Grimms’ Bad Girls & Bold Boys: The Moral & Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Print.

    Ellis, John M. One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago, University of Chicago, 1983. Print.

    Grimm. By Stephen Carpenter, David Greenwalt, and Jim Kouf. NBC Universal Television, 2011. DVD.

    Haase, Donald. The Reception of Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1993. Print.

    Into The Woods. Dir. Rob Marshall. By James Lapine. Walt Disney Pictures, 2014. DVD.

    McGlat, James M. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1991. Print.

    Once Upon A Time. By Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. ABC Studios, 2011. Digital. Netflix. Web.

    Paradiz, Valerie. Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Basic, 2005. Print.

    Peppar, Murr B. Paths Through the Forest: A Biography of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Print.

    Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.

    Zipes, Jack. Grimm Legacies: The Magic Spell of the Grimms’ Folk and Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Print.

    Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to Modern World. New York: Palrave, 2002.

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An Interview with Allie Sipe

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Allie Sipe is senior in the SOU Honors college. An English major, writer, coffee aficionado. She was the first student ever from outside the University of New Mexico to join its honors journal Scribendi.

EB: Tell us a little bit about your internship at Scribendi.

AS: I attended the University of New Mexico last term semester (Fall 2016) to work as a staff member for the honors literary arts magazine Scribendi.

EB: What sort of things did you do?

AS: During class time and in projects outside of class, I worked on a little bit of everything: staff teambuilding, typography and design practices, fundraising and community outreach, critical assessment of creative works, and copy editing. I’ve designed a flyer calling for submissions to the magazine, created a modern book cover for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and read through hundreds of creative works to narrow down what belongs in the magazine. I’ve also gone to Santa Fe to ask local businesses to consider donating items to our magazine’s silent auction and spent hours making sugar skulls to sell as a fundraiser at the Marigold Parade. Some of my favorite time is spent in the office with the other staff members, working on design or copyediting assignments for class and sharing ideas and laughs.

EB: What did you learn?

AS: What’s become most clear to me is that the production of a magazine takes a whole range of skills, ideas, and hard work. Each staff member contributes their unique perspective to what should be in the magazine and how it should look. Every single person is essential – there’s an enormous amount of work and collaboration involved in the production of a magazine. Even when we have different opinions from one another (especially during the debates about which pieces belong in the magazine and which do not), I have learned the value of listening to each individual and respecting their opinions. Scribendi is one of the most tangible examples I’ve ever seen of a diverse range of thoughts and ideas coalescing into one successful creative effort.

EB: How did the work complement or expand on your academic studies?

AS: Almost everything I’ve been doing with Scribendi has complemented my academic studies in English in some way, which is incredibly rewarding. Specifically, I’ve learned tons about critically evaluating literary works. Reading through so much creative nonfiction and articulating to others what is effective has given me the confidence to pursue my own writing. This couldn’t be better timing right before I graduate from Southern Oregon University and hope to pursue graduate school.

EB: What was the most interesting aspect of the internship? Any surprises or revelations?

AS: I honestly didn’t expect to find such a welcoming, accepting community through Scribendi. Coming in, I didn’t know if it would be possible to find a close sense of community at UNM, a school with about 30,000 undergraduates. I’m excited to know that a healthy, inclusive community is achievable in many, if not all, environments and places.

EB: How did you like Albuquerque?

AS: I think Albuquerque itself is one of those places where, if you’re from there, it’s a family member: only you can insult it and no one else can because, deep down, you love it. That being said, I’m not from here, so I think I should keep my mouth shut. I do love the people I’ve met in Albuquerque, and New Mexico is a beautiful state. The green chile is also excellent.

EB: Any advice for other students thinking about internships?

AS: If you’re even considering an internship or study abroad opportunity, find a way to make it happen. Meeting new people and collecting different experiences is invaluable, and it just gets more difficult to take these kinds of opportunities the older you get. Apply, commit, and tell everyone your plan so you can’t back out. I almost talked myself out of this, but I am so glad I didn’t. I’ve made friends and professional connections that will change the course of my life.

EB: Thanks for talking with us. Congratulations on a successful internship.

AS: Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience!

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An Interview with James Anderson

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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James Anderson grew up in the Pacific Northwest and completed an undergraduate degree in American Studies at Reed College and a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at Pine Manor College in Boston.

In 1974, while still an undergraduate, he founded Breitenbush Books, whose authors included Mary Barnard, Bruce Berger, Clyde Rice, Naomi Shihab Nye, Michael Simms, William Greenway, John Stoltenberg, Sam Hamill, and Gary Miranda. Anderson served as Breitenbush’s publisher and executive editor through 1991.

His poems, short fiction, essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in Northwest Review, New Letters, The Bloomsbury Review, Solstice Magazine and elsewhere.

From 1995 to 2002, Anderson co-produced documentary films, including Tara’s Daughters, which chronicled the plight of Tibetan women refugees as carriers of Tibetan culture in the diaspora. The film won Best Documentary at the New York Film Festival.

An Ashlander for several years, Anderson published his first novel, The Never-Open Desert Diner, released by Crown in 2016 in hard cover and paperback. Marilyn Stasio, writing the New York Times Book Review said that Anderson’s voice, like his terrain is “High, dry and severely beautiful… Anderson is one fine storyteller.”

EB: How did you come up with the idea for The Never-Open Desert Diner?

JA: I recently wrote a piece on process where I suggested that there were essentially two kinds of novelists: architects and gardeners.

When we create, in whatever medium or genre, I believe the impulse can be broken down to either exploring (gardeners) or building (architects.) Both processes produce great novels, but I am firmly in the gardening category—yes, I am answering your question—which, for me, means I walk out into the field and start planting, then cultivate and harvest whatever pops up. Sometimes some very strange and wonderful plants begin to grow. The seeds might be a snip of dialogue, a location, a description or, most often in my case, a central image, however indistinct, that carries within it an emotion, or several. In this sense I do not actually begin with the idea of a story. My novel The Never-Open Desert Diner began with simply imagining a two-thousand foot granite mesa cliff swirling in that beautiful red light of the Utah desert. That was how I began the writing. The novel itself ends with that description. I just plant, water and watch through the process of composing the rough draft; and then, when I have the crop in front of me, and I know what the story is—that is, the story that has been revealed to me—I revise and revise what originally sprouted in situ.

EB: The Utah setting struck me as perfect–a place where people go to get off the grid. Did you consider any other locales? I couldn’t see it in Oregon, for examplen

JA: Well, I was born in Seattle and raised primarily in verdancy of the Willamette Valley, but also on the Oregon coast and a little in Northern California. Most people, even Oregonians, tend to think of Oregon as predominately represented by the Willamette Valley and the coast, when in fact two-thirds of Oregon is the high desert that I love—Bend, Burns, Fossil, Baker City, Dufur, Crane Prairie and so on. The novel could have easily been set in the arid high desert region of southeastern Oregon if high desert was all there was to the setting, except there isn’t the unique quality of the red-tinged Utah light of which my friends and literary heroes Terry Tempest Williams and Bruce Berger write so eloquently. I know that region and how the light suffuses the soul and body there in ways that are magical and terrifying and bathe human time in geological time and rhythms and a kind of spirituality borne of the natural world. Glancing ahead to your fine questions, I see we will touch upon paradox, and for now all I will is say that my novel and the story, and the characters, are very much entwined with paradox, contradictions, living oxymorons.

EB: Ben Jones was an engaging character—a kind of forgotten man who maintains his dignity in the face of adversity. I found myself liking him even though we had little in common. You seemed to build his character through a series of small decisions her makes.

JA: Thank you. Dashiell Hammett said that we are not measured by how we deal with success but how we handle adversity. Who a person is at his or her core is not revealed by one grand action, good or bad, but on everyday actions that indicate a pattern. Ben is struggling, as we all do. He makes poor decisions sometimes. Yet he is always trying. This struggle is illuminated through the person point of view, which includes internal monologues of that struggle. As I was shaping Ben Jones as a character I wanted him to be average, not some kind of super hero, or someone with special skills. For me, and this has always been true, the people I admire most are the ones who get up every damn day and do the best they can, often against incredible odds, no parades, no medals of commendation. When my novel was being rejected I was often asked, from thriller and mystery editors and agents, “What’s your protagonist’s super power?” I knew what they were asking and I knew my answer wasn’t going to excite them. Ben Jones is not a former Navy Seal, nor does he have friends in powerful places. His super power is he gets up and does a job for a low wage that few appreciate and he tries to do the right thing—and occasionally fails—and gets up the next day and does it again as well as he can do it. That’s my idea of a hero. It was immensely gratifying that so many readers and reviewers thought so too.

EB: The title is filled with contradiction—a never open dinner. How did you choose that?

JA: Ah, yes, the title—my original title was DESERT CELLO. My publisher didn’t like it, and a number of friends thought it didn’t communicate enough about the story. One of them, my friend and literary agent (not mine) Ann Rittenberg, told me I should change the title. She’s as smart and perceptive a book publishing veteran as one is likely to find. Ann represents James W. Hall , Dennis Lehane and C.J. Box , to name just a few. She told me to read my first chapter and ask myself what image or phrase comes to mind.

In the first chapter the diner, which is really named The Well-Known Desert Diner, is nick-named The Never-Open Desert Diner by locals. Its owner, Walt Butterfield, and his diner, are central to everything in the story. I suggested the title to Ann and she immediately said, “I love it!” I then polled a number of friends, many of whom are writers, and the consensus was that it was a good title. I am of the opinion that the title of a novel is the true first line of the novel; it is the first thing the reader sees. The best titles ask questions, or create questions in the readers mind, if only implied, and should deepen and change throughout the reading of the novel. The title I chose, in my opinion, does exactly that. It conjures the archetypal image of a diner in the desert, provides the setting and sense of place, and asks, “Why is the diner never open?” My title (besides the fact that I love its rather whimsical and lyrical phrasing) does all a good title should do and in the process compels the reader forward.

EB: The supporting characters seemed paradoxical too. How did they arise?

JA: This is a great question, and I am glad to respond, because perhaps this is a quality that appealed to readers. The entire novel is slightly subversive and it achieves this through contradiction and paradox and provides much of the dramatic and comedic tension. When I use the word ‘subversive’ I do not mean it strictly in the sense of undermining a government, but undermining tradition, even genre, by intentionally mining opposites, though in the rough draft this was not consciously done but in subsequent drafts I worked to emphasize it. We have an old itinerant preacher who hauls a life-sized wooden cross up and down an isolates desert highway; a very smart and self-reliant homeless, single, punk pregnant teenager who becomes the heroine of the novel; a diner that is perfectly maintained and yet is never open; a truck driver who has no tattoos, and in a way meditates on and celebrates the natural world; a cello that has no strings and whose music is never actually heard yet provides an imaginary soundtrack to the novel. I cannot tell you how the characters were invented. Ginny, the homeless, punk pregnant teenager started out as just a nightshift clerk in a Walmart and slowly grew to a greater presence in the novel. I like the idea of going against type, against preconception, and in the case of Ginny, since every detective (though Ben is not really a genre detective) there is a kind of sidekick, Gal Friday, who is a pragmatic femme fatal. I turned that on its head by making that person a pregnant, punk teenager. I made Ben Jones, the protagonist truck driver, the ultimate exile orphan, a Jewish Native American. Ben doesn’t know for sure. He was abandoned as a baby on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon and was thought to be the baby of a Jewish social worker and a Native American man and as a young boy, Ben was adopted by an older, childless Mormon couple in Utah.

EB: What’s next for you?

JA: The Never-Open Desert Diner is the first of a trilogy, though I prefer to think of it as a triptych, more of a panorama in sections, though related, each is also a stand alone work. The second, Lullaby Road, is at Crown Publishing Group now and should be out in early 2018. Right now I am working on a memoir about being raised by a single, divorced mother in the 1950s—back when America was “Great.” (Insert sardonic smile here.) Also a collection of stories and novellas.

EB: Who are some writers you read? Or who have influenced you?

JA: That’s a long list. Early on, of course, Mark Twain, William Carlos Williams, Conrad Aiken. Sounds uninspired but nonetheless, true. I read books in every discipline and I firmly believe that a writer’s wellspring should draw from diverse sources of inspiration. In contemporary American fiction I am consistently blown away by Michael Chabon , Luis Alberto Urrea and Sherman Alexie. I read a lot of nonfiction, memoirs and biographies, history, geology and natural history, with an emphasis on environmental studies, but particularly physics and neurobiology. Most recently the work of Steven Pinker and Murray Gel-mann and Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters. For the past few years I have been especially drawn to the concept of Entanglement Theory for its far-reaching implications in every aspect of human existence. Of course, I also read a lot of philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhist, both popular and scholarly, among them (returning again and again) are the works of Shunyru Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, D.T. Suzuki, and one of my particular, and these days somewhat obscure favorites, is Nishida Kitaro.

I also read a lot of contemporary poetry (too many to mention) and, for lack of a better word, popular fiction, including C.J. Box and Cormac McCarthy. Then there are the works I read in translation. I am a huge fan of Enrique Vila-Matas, Laura Restrepo, and the late Umberto Eco. Everything I read informs my work in one way or another. In terms of The Never-Open Desert Diner, particularly the works of Bruce Berger and Terry Tempest Williams (who I mentioned earlier) plus, James Crumley, John D. Macdonald and Thomas Merton, especially his translation of the 2nd Century desert ascetics published as Wisdom of the Desert.

EB: Any advice for aspiring fiction writers?

JA: Sit down. Shut-up. Read. Write. Write. Write. Learn all you can all the time from everyone and everything.. And damn it, have fun! And write.

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An Exit Interview with Charlotte Hadella

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Ed Battistella
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Charlotte Hadella, Chaco Canyon, NM, in 1985


Originally from Virginia, Charlotte Hadella received a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of New Mexico and joined the faculty of Southern Oregon University in 1991. She served as SOU site Director of the Oregon Writing Project and (twice) as Department Chair and training and mentoring many area teachers and university colleagues. Among her publications are Of Mice and Men: A Kinship of Powerlessness (Twayne, 1995) and, with Michael Baughman, Warm Springs Millennium: Voices from the Reservation (University of Texas Press, 2010).

In spring of 2016, she was one of the three faculty members receiving the University’s first ever Distinguished Teaching Award. In December of 2016, she retired from teaching at SOU, offering courses on social justice in antebellum US literature and on teaching literature for the last time.

EB: Do you remember what you taught in your first year at SOU?

CH: WR 121 and 122; Intro to Native American Literature; ENG 488/588 Teaching Literature; Graduate Education courses in language arts pedagogy, and supervising student teachers in Middle School and High School English placements.

EB: What else stands out from that year?

CH: I was able to convince the administration to allow me to establish a National Writing Project site here. I submitted a grant to NWP, was granted funding, and began my 20 years of work as the SOU Site Director for the Oregon Writing Project.

EB: How has your teaching evolved over the years?

CH: My preparation and planning for courses gained focus and clarity over the years, and my instructional goals and implementation became more streamlined. I believe I would describe my teaching philosophy as “less is more.” My emphasis is on depth rather than breadth in terms of engaging students and pushing them to become independent, self-motivated learners.

EB: You pioneered scholarly research on women characters in Steinbeck’s fiction. Tell us a bit about that work?

CH: Well, I never thought of my Steinbeck research and publications as “pioneering.” I think I just entered the conversation in the mid-1980s at a lucky moment for women scholars who were writing about Steinbeck. People like Mimi Gladstein had offered commentary on Steinbeck’s women characters, and a number of male scholars had published extensively on all of Steinbeck’s work, but I decided to steadily beat away at the notion that, although Steinbeck created unflattering and often un-empowered female characters, he was writing from an ethnographic stance. He was highlighting the paucity of choices for women’s lives in America. He was motivated by empathy rather than misogyny. I suppose that angle seemed “fresh” at the time, so I had success publishing articles on Steinbeck’s short fiction, and some articles and a book on Of Mice and Men.

EB: Is there anything you still wish you could teach? Or teach again?

CH: Trick question: I really feel that after 45 years as a classroom English teacher, I don’t wish to teach in an academic setting again. I’m retiring from that while I still enjoy it. What I fantasize about is teaching my grandchildren how to plant gardens and pull weeds!

EB: What were some high points of your work at SOU?

CH: I really appreciate that I’ve had an opportunity to work in a variety of arenas at SOU. Each area of focus was a high point for me at the time I was involved in it. Certainly the Oregon Writing Project work and teacher preparation courses dominated my career here for almost two decades. I believe that the work we do at SOU to deliver professional development training in teaching writing addresses an important element of our university’s mission: serving the community. I loved working with area public school teachers and I admire tremendously their work ethic, enthusiasm for teaching, and respect for the needs of their students.

I was thrilled when we were able to hire Margaret Perrow to take over the Writing Project work so that I could move into teaching more courses in American Literature. Interestingly, the “high points” of my teaching career came in the courses that were the most challenging for me to create: Social Justice in Antebellum US Literature, and The Beat Moment—US Literature in the 1950s and ‘60s. Every time I taught one of those courses, I learned something new about the topic, and I was always pleased with students’ responses to material that I think most of them would have never read had they not taken my classes.

And, of course, working with great colleagues in the English Program and across campus has been the highlight of my experiences here as a professor. I have also enjoyed working with a number of great students over the years.

EB: Any other thoughts you’d like to share about the academic life?

CH: Academic life, though it may look leisurely to those people looking in on it from outside, is not for the “faint of heart” (I believe that’s the expression). Teaching demands constant attention to details, to student needs, to program needs, to a variety of professional demands. I never felt that I was done with my work, even during lengthy breaks (winter and summer). I created lesson plans in my sleep. Just last week, I dreamed that I was told I couldn’t retire because I hadn’t passed chemistry yet! I’ve sort of been possessed by teaching for the last 45 years.

EB: What are your plans, post-SOU?

CH: I will finally have time to practice the piano again. I’m excited about doing all the prep work in my garden that needs to be done in winter and spring so that my summer garden is spectacular. Paul and I will be able to make short camping trips to the coast whenever we please, and to visit our daughter in Corvallis more often. Also, I haven’t seen my family in VA for over four years, so I plan to travel there this spring.

Eventually I plan to edit a young adult novel that my daughter, Lucia, wrote in her early teens. That will be more fun than work. If I do any writing myself, I think I’ll write a memoir that focuses on our house, since we’ve remodeled that little cottage from the inside out, several times over in the last 25 years. We call it a recycled house. It’s grown and changed as we have grown and changed as a family.

EB: Thanks for talking with me. We’ll miss having you on campus!

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