Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings | |
---|---|
Born | Marjorie Kinnan August 8, 1896 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Died | December 14, 1953 St. Augustine, Florida, U.S. | (aged 57)
Occupation | Writer |
Period | 1928–1953 |
Genre | Fiction, Florida history |
Spouses | Charles Rawlings
(m. 1919; div. 1933)Norton Baskin (m. 1941) |
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953)
Early life and education
Kinnan was born in 1896 in
She attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she joined Kappa Alpha Theta[5] sorority and received a degree in English in 1918. She was selected as a member of the local senior women's honor society on campus, which in 1920 became a chapter of the national senior women's society, Mortar Board. She met Charles Rawlings while working for the school literary magazine, and married him in 1919. Kinnan briefly worked for the YWCA editorial board in New York City.[1] The couple moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where they both wrote for the Courier Journal, and then to Rochester, New York, where they wrote for the Rochester Journal-American,[6] and where Marjorie wrote a syndicated column called "Songs of the Housewife".[3]
In 1928, with a small inheritance from her mother, the Rawlingses purchased a 72-acre (290,000 m2) orange grove near Hawthorne, Florida, in a settlement named Cross Creek for its location between Orange Lake and Lochloosa Lake. She brought the place to international fame through her writing. She was fascinated with the remote wilderness and the lives of Cross Creek residents, her Florida cracker neighbors, and felt a profound and transforming connection to the region and the land.[7][8] Wary at first, the local residents soon warmed to her and opened up their lives and experiences to her. Marjorie actually made many visits to meet with Calvin and Mary Long to observe their family relationships.[9] This relationship ended up being used as a model for the family in her most successful novel, The Yearling.[9] The Longs lived in a clearing named Pat's Island, but Marjorie renamed the clearing "Baxter's Island."[9] Marjorie filled several notebooks with descriptions of the animals, plants, Southern dialect, and recipes and used these descriptions in her writings.[10]
Career
Author and writer
Encouraged by her editor at
Her first novel, South Moon Under, was published in 1933. The book captured the richness of the Big Scrub and its environs in telling the story of a young man, Lant, who must support himself and his mother by making and selling
That same year, she and her husband Charles were divorced; living in rural Florida did not appeal to him.[3][8]
One of her least well-received books, Golden Apples, came out in 1935. It tells the stories of several people who suffer from unrequited love from people unsuited for them. Rawlings herself was disappointed in it, and in a 1935 letter to her publisher Max Perkins, she called it "interesting trash instead of literature."[4]
But she found immense success in 1938 with The Yearling (also set in the Big Scrub), a story about a Florida boy and his pet deer and his relationship with his father, which she originally intended as a story for young readers. It was selected for the Book of the Month Club, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1939.
Rawlings's final novel, The Sojourner, published in 1953 and set in a northern setting, was about the life of a man and his relationship to his family: a difficult mother who favors her other, first-born son and his relationship to this absent older brother. To absorb the natural setting so vital to her writing, she bought an old farmhouse in Van Hornesville, New York, and spent part of each year there until her death. The novel was less well-received critically than her Florida writings and did little to enhance her literary reputation. She published 33 short stories from 1912 to 1949. As many of Rawlings's works were centered in the North and Central Florida area, she was often considered a regional writer. Rawlings herself rejected this label saying, "I don't hold any brief for regionalism, and I don't hold with the regional novel as such … don't make a novel about them unless they have a larger meaning than just quaintness."[14]
Invasion of privacy case
In 1943, Rawlings faced a libel suit for Cross Creek, filed by her neighbor Zelma Cason, whom Rawlings had met the first day she moved to Florida. Cason had helped to soothe the mother made upset by her son's depiction in "Jacob's Ladder".
Rawlings used Cason's forename in the book, but described her in this passage:
Zelma is an ageless spinster resembling an angry and efficient canary. She manages her orange grove and as much of the village and county as needs management or will submit to it. I cannot decide whether she should have been a man or a mother. She combines the more violent characteristics of both and those who ask for or accept her ministrations think nothing at being cursed loudly at the very instant of being tenderly fed, clothed, nursed, or guided through their troubles.[15]
Cason was represented by one of the first female lawyers in Florida, Kate Walton. Cason was reportedly profane indeed (one of her neighbors reported her swearing could be heard for a quarter of a mile), wore pants, had a fascination with guns, and was just as extraordinarily independent as Rawlings herself.[16]
Rawlings won the case and enjoyed a brief vindication, but the verdict was overturned in appellate court and Rawlings was ordered to pay damages in the amount of one dollar.[12] The toll the case took on Rawlings was great, in both time and emotion. Reportedly,[citation needed] Rawlings had been shocked to learn of Cason's reaction to the book, and felt betrayed. After the case was over, she spent less time in Cross Creek and never wrote another book about Florida, though she had been considering doing a sequel to Cross Creek.
GeeChee
In her memoir Cross Creek, first published in 1942, Rawlings described how she owned 72 acres of land and also hired a number of people over the years to help her with day-to-day chores and activities. An entire chapter of the book is dedicated to one woman she hired, whose name was Beatrice, but who was affectionately known as "GeeChee", because the woman was ethnically part of the
When Cross Creek was turned into a 1983 film, actress Alfre Woodard was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as GeeChee.[18][19]
Personal life
With the money she made from The Yearling, Rawlings bought a beach cottage at
Her singular admitted vanity was cooking. She said, "I get as much satisfaction from preparing a perfect dinner for a few good friends as from turning out a perfect paragraph in my writing."[21] Rawlings befriended and corresponded with Mary McLeod Bethune[22] and Zora Neale Hurston.[23] Hurston visited her at Cross Creek. Rawlings resisted social norms of the time in allowing Hurston, an African-American, to sleep in her home instead of relegating her to the tenant house.
Rawlings's views on race relations were very different from her neighbors', castigating white Southerners for infantilizing African Americans and labeling their economic differences with whites "a scandal", but simultaneously considering whites superior.[8][15] She described her African-American employee Idella as "the perfect maid". Their relationship is described in the book Idella: Marjorie Rawlings' "Perfect Maid", by Idella Parker and Mary Keating.[24]
Biographers have noted her longing for a male child through her writings, as far back as her first story as a teenage girl in "The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty", and repeated throughout several works, letters, and characters, most notably in The Yearling.[4][8] In fact, she stated that as a child she had a gift for telling stories, but that she demanded all her audiences be boys.[25]
Her hatred of cities was intense: she wrote a sonnet titled, "Having Left Cities Behind Me" published in Scribner's in 1938 to illustrate it (excerpt):
Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange, gregarious
Huddling of men by stones, I find those various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despising ...
She was criticized throughout her career for being uneven with her talent in writing, something she recognized in herself, and that reflected periods of depression and artistic frustration. She has been described as having unique sensibilities; she wrote of feeling "vibrations" from the land, and often preferred long periods of solitude at Cross Creek. She was known for being remarkably strong-willed, but after her death, Norton Baskin wrote of her: "Marjorie was the shyest person I have ever known. This was always strange to me as she could stand up to anybody in any department of endeavor but time after time when she was asked to go some place or to do something she would accept—'if I would go with her.'"[8]
Death and legacy
Rawlings died on December 14, 1953, in
Her land at Cross Creek is now the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park. Norton Baskin survived her by 44 years, passing away in 1997. They are buried side by side at Antioch Cemetery near Island Grove, Florida. Her tombstone, with Baskin's inscription, reads: "Through her writing she endeared herself to the people of the world."
Rawlings' reputation has managed to outlive those of many of her contemporaries. A posthumously published children's book,
Several public schools in Florida have been named in her honor, including Rawlings Elementary School in Gainesville,[32] PVPV/Rawlings Elementary School in Ponte Vedra Beach[33] and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Elementary in Pinellas Park.[34]
Works
Short stories
- 1912 "The Reincarnation of Miss Hetty"
- 1931 "Cracker Chidlins"
- 1931 "Jacob's Ladder" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1931 "A Plumb Care Conscience" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1932 "A Crop of Beans" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1932 "Gal Young Un" (O. Henry Award First Prize for 1932) (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1933 "Hyacinth Drift"
- 1933 "Alligators" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1933 "Benny and the Bird Dogs" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1934 "The Pardon" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1936 "A Mother in Mannville" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1936 "Varmints" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1938 "Mountain Rain"
- 1939 "I Sing While I Cook" (nonfiction)
- 1939 "Cocks Must Crow" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1940 "The Pelican's Shadow"
- 1940 "The Enemy" (contained in When the Whippoorwill [1940])
- 1941 "Jessamine Springs"
- 1941 "The Provider"
- 1942 "Fanny, You Fool!"
- 1944 "Shell"
- 1945 "Black Secret"
- 1945 "Miriam's Houses" (6-part series based on "A Mother in Mannville")
- 1940 "In The Heart"
Novels and story collections
- 1928 Blood of My Blood
- 1933 South Moon Under
- 1935 Golden Apples
- 1938 The Yearling (adapted to film in 1946) (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1939)
- 1940 When the Whippoorwill
- 1942 Cross Creek (adapted to film in 1983)
- 1942 Cross Creek Cookery
- 1947 "Mountain Prelude" (adapted to film as The Sun Comes Up in 1950)
- 1950 Jacob's Ladder
- 1953 The Sojourner
- 1955 The Secret River (Newbery Honor in 1956)
See also
References
- ^ a b c Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings House and Farm Yard, Women's History Month 2006-A National Register of Historic Places Feature; accessed December 8, 2014.
- ^ "1939 Pulitzer Prizes". The Pulitzer Prize. 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
- ^ ISBN 0-79104-653-2.
- ^ a b c Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Biography | Dictionary of Literary Biography
- ^ "Notable Thetas: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings". Kappa Alpha Theta website. Retrieved on December 30, 2007.
- ^ "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Biography". Marion County, Florida. Archived from the original on September 30, 2006.
- ^ Florida State Parks: Welcome to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park
- ^ Twayne Publishers, New York: 1974.
- ^ NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
- ^ Treasures of South Florida Libraries. University of Florida
- JSTOR 23264717.
- ^ a b c Bigelow, Gordon. Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. University of Florida Press, Gainesville; 1956.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-81300-908-7.
- ^ Clowes, Molly. "Fact and Fiction." Louisville Courier-Journal, October 5, 1939: p.1
- ^ a b Rawlings, Marjorie K. Cross Creek, 1942.
- ^ Hines, Laura. Invasion of Privacy (book review), in Michigan Law Review, Vol. 88: 1925.
- ^ Cross Creek Ch.10 accessed September 16, 2015.
- ^ "Road to the Oscars: Alfre Woodard". BU Today. Boston University. 27 February 2011. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
- ^ "The 56th Academy Awards". Oscars.org. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 1984. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
- ^ Evans, Harry. "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Part One", The Family Circle. May 7, 1943: pp 10–11.
- ^ Pfeiffer, Sarah. "Only One Road to Success-Says Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings", Christian Science Monitor, September 4, 1940.
- ^ Letters to MKR from, A-K, uflib.ufl.edu; accessed September 16, 2015.
- ^ ZNH and MKR, uflib.ufl.edu; accessed December 8, 2014.
- ^ University Press of Florida
- ^ Evans, Harry. "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Part One", The Family Circle. May 7, 1943: p. 18; accessed December 8, 2014.
- ^ Rawlings Hall at the University of Florida, ufl.edu; accessed September 16, 2015.
- ^ "IMDb – Cross Creek, Full Cast and Crew". imdb.com. Retrieved April 11, 2016.
- ^ "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings". Florida Women's Hall of Fame. Florida Commission on the Status of Women. Retrieved 24 August 2019.
- ^ "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Division of Historical Resources - Florida Department of State". dos.myflorida.com. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
- ^ Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Gets 'Stamp of Approval'
- Florida Department of State. Retrieved September 16, 2015.
- ^ "M. K. Rawlings Center for Fine Arts, Gainesville, Florida". http. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
- ^ "PVPV-Rawlings Elementary School – St. Johns County School District". www-pvmkr.stjohns.k12.fl.us. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
- ^ "M.K. Rawlings Elementary, Pinellas Park, Florida". http. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
External links
- A Guide to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers
- University of Florida's Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Digital Collections, created from the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Manuscript Collection in the Libraries' Special Collections
- Robert Middendorf and Rodger Tarr collections of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at the University of South Carolina Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Cross Creek
- A Guide to the Cross Creek Trial (Cason vs. Baskin) Papers
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park
- The Friends of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm, Inc.
- Photos of the first edition of The Yearling
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at Find a Grave
- Works by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at Faded Page (Canada)
- Works by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at Project Gutenberg Australia
- United States Stamp of Marjorie Rawling. (archived)
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at Library of Congress, with 53 library catalog records
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at IMDb