A while ago I wrote that Mary Poppins was a malevolent trickster god. I stand by this. There is still a sinister edge to Mary Poppins that unsettles me. There is something similar happening with Pippi Longstocking, with her impossible pigtails and super-human strength. She is the folk tale to Poppins’ myth. She is also chaotic, but amorally so. She is the careless chaos brought on by the intriguing narcissist. She is also one of the saddest characters I’ve ever read.
I know I know she’s supposed to be a nine-year-old menace but stay with me.
To back up, Pippi Longstocking is a freckled nightmare whose father may or may not be “king of the cannibals,” as if that were anything to write home about. The book begins by appealing to children’s natural hatred of their parents. Pippi is lucky not to have them, you see, since that means no one tells her when to go to bed or to take medicine. They did leave her a big house to live in, but nevermind all that.
The book is structured around Pippi’s adventures with her neighbors, Tommy and Annika, and whoever else in the town pops up. There are a lot of ways in which she is a natural icon for feisty young girls. She is self-sufficient and adventurous. She is confident. (There’s a delightful bit where she fights the strongman at the circus. “Man, yes,” she said, “but I am the strongest girl in the world, remember that.”) She is unafraid of adults or bullies. In one story, she defeats two bullies and later two burglars by lifting them up and sticking them on top of things, reminding us that the key to not being bullied is just to be magically stronger than everyone around you.
But Pippi Longstocking also does that infuriating hipster thing where she insists on authentic-seeming stereotypes of other cultures and uses them to make herself more interesting. Here is a list of things she says are true of other places:
- In Egypt everyone walks backwards.
- In Guatemala people sleep with their feet on pillows and their heads under the covers.
- Everyone in the Congo lies.
- People in China have ears big enough to use as capes, and they eat swallows’ nests.
- She fought a snake in India that ate five people.
- In China they also have weirdly shaped cakes?
For a moment it seems like you have to believe her. After all, she had to have gotten that horse and that monkey somewhere. Maybe her father really is a pirate and she really has sailed around the world and that’s really how people do things in Guatemala. But twice she is called out for lying, which is where things get depressing.
The first time it’s by Annika, who says it can’t be true how they walk in Egypt. Pippi is caught, and spins another tale. She says that of course she lies, given that her mother is dead and her father is off sailing somewhere, “how can you expect her to tell the truth always?” But she immediately follows it with the tale about the Congo, saying she spent too much time there and learned it from them. Colonial implications aside, you have to feel sorry for her.
The second time it’s by a random girl walking down the street, and when Pippi is caught she does that thing attention-seeking people do at parties where they try to own it and pretend the whole point was the lie, and really you’re the idiot for believing her in the first place. “Do you really think a child can live without food from May to October?” she asks the girl who dared believe her. “You mustn’t let people fool you so easily.”
Maybe I’m being too hard on her. She is a child, and the whole point of being a child is to make up stories about places you’ve never been. Or she’s a fictional, magical character and I’m reading too much into this. But it’s a cycle I see because I recognize it in myself.
Her friends are a horse and a monkey and two children nextdoor who see her more as an entertaining oddity than a true friend. She knows her value lies in her novelty, so she plays it up because it’s the only way she can attract attention. It gets her in trouble, over and over again, but she can’t stop because to stop might mean she’s proven right–that everyone who visits and smiles and cheers is only waiting for her to do the next absurd thing, for the next story, and that to just be wouldn’t be enough. She always has to have another trick up her sleeve.
This is no more obvious than in the chapter “Pippi Goes to a Coffee Party,” which came about four pages after I asked myself “Why the hell haven’t Annika and Tommy’s parents invited this poor girl over yet?” It’s a classic setup–menace gets invited to a fancy party, everything is ruined. But whereas in most of these setups the menace doesn’t really know or care what they’re doing, Pippi is desperate to be liked. “Oh I’m so nervous. What if I can’t behave myself?” she asks Annika, and promises she’ll try her hardest “so you won’t have to be ashamed of me.”
But immediately it’s a disaster. Pippi shouts commands at herself to be polite, sticks her face in a pie, sprinkles all the sugar on the floor, eats nearly everything, and keeps interrupting Mrs. Settergren and her friends’ conversation to talk about her Grandmother’s maid. Even when Mrs. Settergren tells all the children to go upstairs, she pops her head down the stairs and continues shouting her story. Eventually she is asked to leave and never return, and bursts into tears. “That’s just what I was afraid of,” she said. “That I couldn’t behave properly. It’s no use to try; I’ll never learn. I should have stayed on the ocean.”
It is so easy for self awareness to never turn into self reflection. You know you do things that push people away, and it happens and you cry, and you think to yourself that you’re fixed the way you are and you shouldn’t have to change for anyone anyway. That’d be ridiculous, to change your core just because etiquette or society or uppity neighbors say you should. They must just be jealous that you figured out how to live life outside the rules.
Maybe there’s something telling you that there’s a middle ground, that you don’t have to change completely but the things you do that make you happy very quickly make you sad. But no one has taught you change is okay, and you’re stubborn and stronger than all of them anyway.
In the last story Pippi invites Annika and Tommy over for her birthday party, and they bring her a gift. It’s a sincere gift, a music box, for a girl who loves to dance, and it hints they may not be fair-weather friends after all. And Pippi gives them thoughtful gifts in return, and they sit for cocoa and cake and cards, and they play, and for a second it looks like just three kids playing in a house with a horse and a monkey. But then Pippi mentions ghosts live in her attic, and they check it out, and when she kids get scared Pippi tells them not to be silly, there are no ghosts. “If anyone insists that there are ghosts, I’ll tweak him in the nose.” More lies, more distance.
Or maybe not. Maybe she cares enough about her new friends that she doesn’t want to scare them away. So she lies to protect them, adding more proof to her untrustworthy reputation but sparing them the fear of meeting ghosts in her attic. She knows what people think of her, but maybe this time she can use her faults for good. The kids go home and Pippi stands on the porch, waving goodbye, yelling about becoming a pirate, and maybe hoping that they weren’t too scared, that they’ll keep coming back no matter how destructive she is. Either way I cried.
Even as a kid I didn’t like Pippi Longstocking. There was something…not malevolent, but deeply unsettling to me, a naturally quiet and retiring kid, about this girl who lived by her wild lonesome and rejoiced in having no parents. I loved my parents! I was glad they were there to look after me and cook my food and make decisions for me! The thought of being alone in the world (and the accompanying horror of doing whatever whenever) was deeply upsetting to me.
Except for the part where Pippi makes a ton of pepperkakor on the floor and they feast on cookies. That I liked.
Oh yes, cookies. Also scrub brush shoes.
Scrub brush shoes! That’s about the only part I remember. I used to watch one of the Pippi movies on a loop with Follow That Bird, and now the soundtracks are kind of smushed together into a weird medley in my head and I don’t remember what came from what.
Also, I met a real-life Annika a few years ago, and she had never read Pippi! I felt bad for her at the time, but maybe it was a good thing.
The house we lived in until I was 6 had gorgeous parquet floors (now sadly destroyed by flooding), and my brother and I would help wax them. Mom would put down floor wax, and we’d put on big thick socks and slide around to buff the wax in. It was amazing.
We did that too!
It was so much fun! I thoroughly endorse getting children involved in household chores by pretending it’s a fun game.
I too was a naturally quiet and retiring kid–though I liked her, I had a very odd sense of discontent regarding her for similar reasons (and also because I couldn’t comprehend why the heck someone would constantly LIE).
Now as an adult, in light of what Jaya’s said in this post, I think there were a lot more reasons behind the feeling which I couldn’t articulate.
pepparkakor are the best ever
Same here – I always found the chaotic sorts of characters in fiction deeply unsettling, as someone who liked rules and order and security.
Well she does turn into the inspiration for Lisbeth Salander, so it’s not all that surprising that she’s disturbing as a youth.
I barely remember Pippi, thanks for the analysis.
D:
you’re right and all this is true but still D:
As a kid desperate for attention, I definitely did my fair share of tall-tale-telling, and it always backfired. It makes me sad. Pippi Longstocking was my sister’s fare, though – after all, I was the only girl in my family without red hair. I should behave.
Jaya oh my god.
Fun fact: This was my favorite book as a young kid, inasmuch as I had a favorite book. I once dressed as Pippi for Halloween (pro tip: un-bend a wire hanger and stick it through your braids). I named my stuffed monkey Mr. Nilsson. I attempted the feet-on-the-pillow-head-under-the-blankets method of sleeping several times, always having to give up because it was too stuffy. I made a compelling argument to my parents about why it should be okay to roll out cookie dough on the floor.
What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that this book meant a whole lot to me, despite its problematic parts. I appreciate this reading of it. I’ve never thought of her as sad, but as having some kind of magical irrepressible resistance to situations that would be upsetting to any normal person.
Wait, I also did that! With the coat hanger and the stuffed monkey and everything. But it was for a “living books” thing at school. My mom made me a blue dress with red patches, too!
“…magical irrepressible resistance” is exactly why I liked her as a kid and even more as an adult. I spend so much time overthinking, apologizing in advance or better yet never speaking up for fear of giving offense, and “suffering from” freckles, fat and personality traits that I should love. She’s still important to me, and a reminder that while I may not be able to lift a horse I can for damn sure say my piece.
Pippi acted strange and so often *didn’t care* when people thought she was peculiar, and I cared so much and couldn’t be normal either, and I loved her for not caring.
My first grade teacher compared me to Pippi, and yeah, this. I cared that I didn’t fit in, I cared with a passion, but social situations just confused me for years.
As I got older I got better at faking that I didn’t care that people thought I was weird. And then I got better at social skills! I’m still seen as a bit of an oddball but not in a way that puts people off the way it used to, and I’m pretty happy with that.
Same here! There is definitely a picture of me somewhere as a kid “sleeping” with my feet on the pillow.
I just assumed everyone read Pippi Longstocking for the same reason I did (the descriptions of adult-free carbohydrate-filled picnics) and woke up to the racism many years later.
I did!
That picnic on the island with a thermos of coffee and ham sandwiches was gateway food porn for sure.
Oh God, the horrible, palpable awareness of being Just Too Much and powerless to stop hurtling towards the inevitable ruinous end = my entire youth and most of my twenties. I’m just going to go breathe in a paper bag for six hours and thank God I live in a country where I can pretend I don’t speak the language so no one can realize my deeply-buried horrible, fundamental truth. THANKS JAYA.
This is also me, and is still a problem – not in that I lie but the opposite, I’m bad at having a filter which is damaging to me in the workplace. I keep getting “What you said was true, but I wish you hadn’t said it in front of the client/colleagues from another team/etc.”
You’re not wrong of course, but IMO this is what makes her lovable. Okay, most of us don’t have a chest full of gold coins or superhuman strength, but otherwise Pippi is just a kid like the rest of us with problems and quirks like anyone. It’s what makes the difference between a tall tale and a complete fantasy.
Also, I have always like to pretend that the Pippi stories were written by a grown-up Annika and that the unbelievable parts were the bits embellished by her youthful imagination.
I am with you, and I don’t think you are wrong at all, but I also think it wasn’t entirely unintentional. While Pippi was one of the lighter of Astrid Lindgren’s books, a lot of them are about lonely, orphaned children (she had to give up her first child, a son, to foster care in Denmark because she gave birth to him out of wedlock and couldn’t come get him until several years later) and she often included plenty of dark/scary themes in her stories. She admitted that openly, making the argument that you have to talk to kids about scary stuff as well as fun stuff. It’s less obvious in Pippi than in Mio My Son or The Red Bird (the latter couldn’t be made more horrific by Mallory, and that’s saying something) but it’s definitely there.
re: the colonialism/racism, it’s worth noting that while being written in the late 30s/early40s is not an excuse, Lindren herself commented that it was problematic and that she would have written it different already in the 1970s/80s.
I can’t even talk about The Brothers Lionheart.
No no, The Brothers Lionheart is sad and all (especially now that I am old enough to empathize with the mother) , but it has nothing on The Red Bird (Sunnanäng)
ssh, it’s like Old Henry, you don’t want Mallory to think you’re challenging her ability to make things even more horrific…
Lindgren’s stories weren’t happy stories and I think that’s a good thing.
I mentioned this before, but I’d read a short version of Nils Karlsson Pyssling in a Childcraft book as a child. Bertil, the human boy in the story, was left at home by his parents when they’d go to work, but he was so lonely, he made up a friend as big as his thumb and went on adventures with him. As a latchkey kid with few friends, I identified with this story and read it at least 20 times. I wish there was an English translation of the entire book.
It’s a pity that not all of her stories are translated; there’s been a few reprints the last decade (I had huge issues finding copies of Ronja and Mio for my boyfriend when we were in college), but not of everything. But that got me started thinking about kids who are orphaned or lonely in her books
Mio in Mio My Son is believed to be orphaned until His Father the King sends the genie to get him
Pippi’s father is a sailor and her mother is dead
Bertil mentioned above is alone at home while his parents are working in a factory
Göran in In the Land of Twilight has parents, but no friends to play with. Because polio.
Jonathan and Scotty in The Brothers Lionheart have a mother but no father, and once they’re in Nangijala they are on their own
Rasmus in Rasmus and the Vagabond is orphaned.
I already mentioned Mattias and Anna in the Red Bird (orphaned)
Maria in My Nightingale Is Singing is (orphaned)
The more I think about it, it’s easier to list the kids who are living happily with both their parents (The Children of Noisy Village, Lotta on Troublemaker Street, Magpie/Mischievous Meg, Ronja -kinda, and Little Brother in Karlsson-on-the Roof, Emil.)
So yeah, that’s a thing.
Oof. I always felt a bit sad for Pippi when I read the books as a kid, but it was the more obvious aspects of being a child (no matter how magically strong and charismatic) left alone to fend for herself that did it. This hit hard.
Tsk tsk, Social Services in Sweden must be quite deplorably lax.
I never read Pippi, but did anyone else read Astrid Lindgren’s The Children of Noisy Village? Very sweet. Very Christmas-centric, if anyone’s in the mood.
Yes! My mom read that one as a kid in Germany, and I remember reading it as a kid as well.
I read this; it was a gift from my Swedish-descended grandma. It was charming, from what I remember.
Those last two paragraphs really hit me in the feelings.
Can we talk about Ronia, The Robber’s Daughter?
All day, every day. Just gave it as a present to a kid I know. My all-time-favourite book, not even separating out kids’ books.
I am late to this party but, yes, absolutely. Ronia is, looking back, part of the reason why pale little bookworm me got excited about going hiking and camping.
I haven’t watched any but I know it’s been adapted as an anime series by Studio Ghibli. Typing this makes me realize my priorities are seriously off.
Maybe there’s something telling you that there’s a middle ground, that you don’t have to change completely but the things you do that make you happy very quickly make you sad.
Too much too much too much wake me up when I’m 40 please
Oh my god, Pippi is Crazy Eyes from OItNB
This is My Field so I’m commenting with my real name. (I did my master’s thesis on Lemony Snicket). Cheer up, Jaya, sometimes what’s depressing to adults is exhilarating to kids! (I love your catching up series — especially Mary Poppins as trickster god — so I don’t mean that remotely in a critical way, just a “here’s the good news” way).
Pippi Longstocking is the queen of what Alison Lurie (maybe others too? This is my field from a sociology angle, not literature) calls subversive children’s literature, in which the world is topsy turvy and kids are more powerful than adults. It’s an exciting escape from the reality of adults telling you what to do, but it isn’t necessarily a world kids want to live in. Children’s literature that is the most beloved usually has an element of this, like Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter — both of which, if you think about it, are kind of nightmarishly depressing.
On a deeper level, kids who do have reliable adults in their lives often fear what would happen if they were left alone, and these stories provide some comfort — almost like a script for how they could survive and triumph. Kids who don’t have adults they can rely on, or kids who are constantly causing trouble without meaning to, have even more reason to relate to Pippi. A boy whose dad had died told me that he likes Lemony Snicket because it reminds him of his own series of unfortunate events.
Dammit! This was supposed to be less depressing, not more! I mostly meant to say that kids are more likely to interpret books like this as carnivalesque fun (maybe not in those words, unless they are a baby Mallory is acquainted with). It works because it speaks to worries that are specific to childhood in an absurdly exaggerated manner. The things adults readers notice are still important — I became sociologically interested in Lemony Snicket because I like how he portrays gender, and I am troubled by the colonialism in Pippi (so glad to hear that the author rethought it!) — but kids also actively interpret what they read, from a different perspective.
It’s like boy bands: adults see little girls crushing on them and are appalled that they’re being sexualized so young, but when you ask those girls if they want Justin Bieber to be their boyfriend most of them will say, “What?! Gross!” (Especially now, but that was the reaction I got even before they began disapproving of him).
Wow, this explains a lot about why Pippi and that little dude from My Side of the Mountain were important to me as a young’un. Rural home, dad sometimes there and then briefly not, then back again. I spent a lot of time making elaborate contingency plans (just always for the wrong emergency). So it was good to know what a flint and steel were for, but also to have the fantasy that trees contained soda and candy and that I could probably punch a flood and make it recede.
I would totally read your thesis. Oh my werd. I just reread the entire soue and I was like ALL THE SOCIAL COMMENTARY. It’s amazing.
Also, I wrote my master’s thesis on L.M. Montgomery and I love analyzing children’s lit the way people analyze all other lit. So basically I am saying I would totally be your friend.
I recently played Mary Poppins in the stage musical, so I agree with your assessment of MP, she’s a dangerous creature. It was funny to see the cast realize this as we went through the run of the show – someone would come up and say, “Ya know, I’m just realizing…” and I’d say, “Don’t analyze Mary too deeply. She’s really scary.” Ha!
There’s a lesser known (for good reasons) third Pippi Longstocking book Pippi On The South Seas where she goes to the island where her father was crowned king of the natives. Pippi is a liar but unfortunately the colonialism is real.
Try reading Astrid Lindgren’s other book The Brothers Lionheart. Fatal childhood illness, house fires, tyrants, suicide and a giant lindworm. It’s all just so Scandinavian, probably seasonal affect disorder. Ingmar Bergman has NOTHING on this lady.
Okay, but Pippi’s father actually is a pirate. Hence, Pippi in the South Seas. So she doesn’t always lie.
And really Astrid Lindgren’s best book is Ronia the Robber’s Daughter IMHO
Has anyone else read Astrid Lindgrens book on sex education? I came across it when we were looking for a book for my nephew and niece. It was much the best approach, not too twee EXCEPT, in the double page spread just after she had described that Mummy and Daddy had sex, there was a series of illustrated sex positions that ‘Mummy and Daddy also like to have sex in’. One of them showed them balancing on a space-hopper! We bought the book, but my sister glued those pages shut because my niece was very fond of her space- hopper and my sister didn’t think she could take the side eye from my niece ( who mastered dirty looks at just 4 months – she’s really scary now!). The book is well worth tracking down!
Is that book not Mummy Laid an Egg by Babette Cole? That definitely has the pictures of sex positions, one including a space-hopper. We had it when I was a child, and I loved it (and my cousins had a space-hopper, and I did not have any weird associations with it when we played with it).
We did that too!
Interesting. My father totally encouraged me to read Roald Dahl, and i continue to remember the stories as more "smarts ill always outsmart greed" rather than "children v adults". Like in the Fantastic Mr. Fox, the Twits, and the Witches.
For what it’s worth, the swallow’s nest thing actually is true. It’s actually pretty delicious, from what I hear. I had a teacher that I kept in touch with after graduation that moved to China and got to try it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nes…