I was very surprised to discover just how pushy Heidi is in its Christian evangelism.
You might recall that I mentioned last month [blog entry lost]
that I had started reading the book to Mulan.
Well, we finished it on Friday night.
I had never read the book, and I don’t recall ever seeing any of the many
movie adaptations. But I decided to
introduce it to Mulan as I had the impression that it is about a young girl
whose bright personality brings happiness to everyone she meets. And it is set in Switzerland. And it is a famous children’s classic. So, it seemed good to try.
It was all
that. It really is a lovely story, and
Mulan thoroughly enjoyed it. There are
no scary bits, and, for us big-city-dwellers, the green grass, blue sky, fresh
mountain air and friendly goats were exotic and enticing.
Unlike The Railway
Children, which was our previous book, Mulan had no trouble at all with
understanding everything that was going on.
Heidi is a much simpler story,
and very easy to follow. The characters
are not too deep, and their actions are straightforward. The slightly more unpleasant characters, Miss
Rottenmeier and Deta, are consistently and obviously the big grumps, in a
two-dimensional kind of way. But they
are still not too bad. Similarly, all the
other adults are two-dimensionally kind-hearted and lovable. The sad ones, Grandfather and the Doctor, are,
in an uncomplicated way, immediately and permanently cheered up by the
combination of Heidi and the beautiful Swiss Alps.
It also had greater meaning for us because of our holiday in Switzerland and Germany last year. Even though we never got as far as the Alps
during our trip, our time around Lake Constance, with the mountains, lake and
towns, gave us some small sense of what Heidi’s home must have been like. Reading the descriptions of the places
allowed us to recall our own experiences and compare them with Heidi’s life.
For all of these reasons, Heidi is a delightful young children’s book.
However, chapter 10 came as a big shock to me. It was at this point that the story changed
from being about Heidi, to being a thinly disguised attempt at pushing
Christianity. Up until this point, most
of the storyline had been gentle descriptions of events and simple, short
conversations. Suddenly, in this chapter,
the newly arrived Grandmama launched into a (comparatively) much longer sermon
about how Heidi should pray to God, and that God will solve all her problems.
I want to make it clear here that I have nothing against books
in which the characters are Christian, and express Christian points of view. But what I found questionable was the sudden
and dramatic change of tone in the book.
It was a style that didn’t sit right when compared with the earlier
chapters. There didn’t feel like there
was any textual reason for this
sudden and dramatic change from neutral description to overt, lengthy preachiness. It was textually strange for Grandmama to say all of that.
Up until that point, no one had given long opinionated
speeches (any God-talk was done in passing, and completely contextually appropriate). After that point, there were several more
opinionated speeches, all of which were aimed at convincing the other
characters (or, more likely, the reader) of the Christian point of view. No one gave longer speeches on any other
topic, and God was a central theme of many of the characters’ interactions
after that point. From the perspective
of a reader only interested in the sweet story of a delightful little girl, this
lecturing was irrelevant and ruined the enjoyment.
I also felt a little tricked by the author. This change in tone came almost halfway into
the story. Those of us who didn’t like
this change of tone could hardly stop reading the book at that point (in my
case, Mulan would have demanded that I continue, had I said anything).
So, if someone were to ask me to summarise the theme of
Heidi, I would say that it is not about
a sweet young girl’s life in the Swiss Alps.
Instead, I would say that it is primarily a religious text, aimed at
convincing children of the need to trust that God knows best, even when things appear
not to be going so well.
For those of us who believe that God doesn’t exist, and
would prefer to raise our children in a secular way, we thus need to question
the appropriateness of using Heidi as
an early reading book. Had I pre-read
the entirety of the book first (and not just skimmed the first few chapters), I
probably would not have given it to Mulan so soon. I would have preferred that she had had a bit
more critical awareness and life experience first.
You may be wondering if, despite this, Heidi could still be used as a P4C book. I think possibly but not ideally. A good P4C book is one in which the text
itself gives no clear-cut answers. It is
supposed to open up ideas and conversations, not give one-sided opinions. For this reason, The Railway Children could be a good P4C book. But Heidi
is too one-sided, so it is not so good.
Therefore, despite the nice story, and its supposed classic
status, I would not include Heidi on a young child’s recommended book
reading list.
