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MARJORIE KIMNAN RAV/LINGS' TUI: YFARLING:
A STUDY IN THE RHrTORICAI ^FFECTI VE^ilESi 01- "A NOVEL

EDN'A LO'UiSE SAPFY

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE CO-JNCIL Oi

THE UNr\'T:R5ITY OF FLORIDA

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

To G'^iadij EoJiZ Jokn-bon, Juyvion.
[lla n.a.{^lk haycutl makabatzyi abadiyah]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish 10 acknov;ledge those individuals who con-
tributed to the accoTTiplish'rient of this document.

Without Dr. Ronald Carpenter, a scholar, a gentle-
parson, and T.)' iTcentcr, this dissertation would neither have
come into existence, nor have reached coT.pietion. He
gave not only of his wisdom but also of his faith. In a
house divided, only by his example was the profession
defined.

The dissertation itself serves as an acknowledge-
ment to another, that "Canadian Serpent" v/ho both sus-
tained and nurtured me, for without Grady Earl Johnson,
Jr., there v.ould have been nothing.

The work of this volume reflects the composition
cf av corrjaitteo and to each of the mem.bers T am grateful :
to Dr. Lcland Zimmerman for. his introduction tc the gradu-
ate st'jdy of speech; to Pr. Donald KLiliams for liis knowi-
ed{;e; to Dr. Patricia Schmidt for her direction; to Dx .
Vincent McCuire ^os h Li p!?r.Tpe',.t i\ e .

T would like tc acknowledge the others In rhe
Speech Defarcinent of t'i-3 Jniversity of i'Lorida, witliout
who.s':? aid t'l^s •■voi'k ^hs i'.';<. cmpi. :' s.'.^d .

Since a dissertation is never wi-itten alone, there
are so many o::hers to tnank; Dr. Laura Monti, who guided
ir.e through the freasures of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Collection; Dr. Harry Sisler^ Dean of the Graduate School,
viho gave me his friendship; Dr. Cal VanderWerf, Bean of
the College of Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Ruth McOuov/n,
Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who
both gave me their support.

And rhere are iiiore to v,hoTn I am grateful; to
a group called Bloomsbury; to a small friend V'jb,ose name
belied her value; and finally to the person with whOiTi it
all began— my mother, Sadie Daumit Saffy.

\'\BLE OF COiMTZNTS

-ase

ACKNCWLEDGE^IENTS iii

ABSI RACT vi i

CHAPTER

ONE INTRODUCT IGN 1

Universal Thenic of The Yearling -. . . 5

Regionalism as a Symbolic Ba~sTJ of

Universality 6

Regionalisn as a Rhetorical Response

to a Crisis 11

The Study of Regional Literature as

Rhetorical Discourse 20

Methodology 24

Utilization of the Mariorie Kinnan

Rav/liags Collection 5C

Conclusion 31

TWO MAR.JORIE KINNAN R.A.WLING5' T[!RCRY OF

COMPOSITION 35

Biographical Sketch 36

Awareness of Audience 39

Communication of Beauty Through Reality .. 42

Definitiou of Beauty 13

Responses to Beauty i~

Sources of Beauty Particular L)' in

The Yearling 19

Theory of Comnositicn Necessary to Achieve
Effect of Beauty Through Creation

of Reality 5 5

Through the Process of Character i ration . 3^>

True -to -11 re character! :ar ion 5?

Universality in characterization tf.'

L'l'titv In ch'i rac t'.'. r i." •! t J.o;"i 63

Through Ust of Facts and Details 66

Methods of Expression 6 9

Ghi£c-:ivit--' 71

Uic-l-v::: 72

Si'HDlicity 74

Conclusion 79

THREE RESPONSE FROM THE GENERAL READERSHIP 81

Readership Response to Effect of Beauty ... 84
Response Based Jpon Perception of
Reality as Produced b/ Mariorie

Kinnan Rawlings 86

Response to individual Elements of
Marjorie Kinnan P.awlmgs' Theory

of Composition 90

Response to the process of

characterization 90

Response to facts and details 97

Response to obiectivity 99

Cone lus ion '. '. 10 ^

FOUR RESPONSE FROM PROFESSIONAL READERSHIP 103

Professional Readership Response to

Effect of Beauty •. 107

Response Based Upon Perception of

Reality Ill

Response to Individual Elements of

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' Composition . 114
Response to the process of

characterization 115

Response to facts and details 123

Response to objectivity 126

Response to dialect , 128

Response to simplicity 131

Conclusion 135

F iVS CONCLUSION , 137

Sumna ry 157

Perspective 151

BIBLIOGRAPHY 133

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH , 163

Abstract of Disserra-ion Preserited. to the Graduate Council

ot the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillnient cf the

Requirerie:its for the Degree of Doctor of Phiio:sophy

M-XRjORIE KINNAN RAV/LINGS' the YEARLING:
STUDY IN THE RHETORICAL EFFECTIVENESS OF A NOVEL

Edna Louise Saffy

March 197 6

Chairperson: Ronald C. Carpenter
Major DepartT.ent: Speech

In 19.39 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize in Letters for her novel, The Yearling, and
elected to the Academy of <^.Tts ?.nd Letters. Marjorie
Kinnan Ra^'lings wrote with a preset concept of effective-
ness. Her theory of composition as evinced by her personal
papers, lecture notes, scrapbooks, newspaper articles,
and correspondence ?Loai.ed in the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Collection at the. University cf Florida Library, was based
upon the creation of a sense oF reality, which she believed
neces'-ary in orde:- to conxiuiii cuce beauty. H er^ h e o r y _ A' ',:L-
corporated the proces-i cf characterization, true-to-lice
depiction, universa 1 it/\ unity, the use on facts .i">' .iv^r.iil-^
objectivity, simplicity, and dialect.

Regionalism was the iitera'-y vehicle Marjorie Kinnan
Rawl i.njjs chose for her novel, and in so doinj?, she responded

rhetorically to an exigence, in accordance v;ith the ccii-
straints of her personal theorv- of coinposition . Region-
alisn, at that point in history, served as a response to
a crisis; that is, the untenable situation of a population
in the iriidst of society's ills during the Depression. Her
writing had as its purpose the communication of the beauty
which Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings found in the Big Scrub
country and its people, and by extension, of humanity in
harmony wiih the environment. That Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
purpose was effectively achieved has been borne out by
thorough investigation of the responses of both her gen-
eral readership and her professional critics.

This investigation places the effectiveness of
Marjorie f^innan Rav-zlings' no'vol into the broader context
of modern rhetorical critic Ismi and attempts to illume the
rhetorical interaction of sender, message, and receiver
in ^vhich the author o+' a novel determ^ines a method or
theory of composition predicated upon the effect she wishes
to acliieve.

CHAPTER ONE
INVRODUCT ION

The Yearling was first publisb.ed in 19 5S. For
it, Majorie Kinnan Rav/lingi v/as awarded the Pulitzer
Prize in Letters for a Novel in 1939 and elected to the
Academy of Arts and Letters. Receiving universal acclaim,
The Yearling was subsequently translated into thirteen
lang'jages and cited as the most ''distinguished novel
published during the year by an American author dealing
with American lirJe."" Reissued v-ith a special ''Study
Guide" geared to secondary schools, the novel has been a
part of the curriculum tiiroughout the country; and the
book has been designated "a classic" and "a literary
masterpiece"" on a regional, national, as well as an
international level. Chosen as a Pook-ot - tho-Month Club
selection at publication, accolades wore heaped upon it

R. R. Bovvker, i.itfravy Pi izes and Their '>vinners
(.Mew York: R, R, cowker' Company , li'b7j, pTTS.'

■"M. K. Rawlings, The Yearling, Study Guide by Mary
Louise Fap>' and F-dith' Ccvles rNVuTcTrk: Charii?.'? Scribner's
Sons, 19C2J.

not cniy fron the coirirrierciai i^arketp.Iace but also fron
profess .1 0 n a 1 s i o >^ r n a I s . In 19 :> 8 , The >iorth Aniei'i c an Rev i^e;>
a prestigious prof essioua'; iouriial, considered the work
"flawless,"' and the aatho- an ''intelligenc and meticulous
craf t.'irn.an . . . [who] v/ith The Yearling rightfully takes
her place among our most accomplished '/riters of fiction."

The ccncepc the public had of this "intelligent
and meticulous" craftsperson was often distorted not only
b>' the artistic milieu of the 1950's, but also by comrrer-
cial publications. For example, a Saturday Evening Fcst
article, "Marjorie Rawlings Hunts Her Supper: Menu:
Alligator, Turtle, and Sxvamp Cabbage," contributed to
the public image of the author as Great V/hite Huntress.
This public facade was based upon a contemporary tradition
of author -as-hero that her peers deliberately perpetuated:
Fitzgerald, the international playperson; Hemingway, the
great outdoors person; Faulkner, the country gentleperson.
However, behind this appearance v;as a Phi Beta Kappa
gra-iuate of the University of Wisconsin, an experienced
journalist, and a creative artist who had as her goal in
V r i^ti r.g The Yearling the accompl ish.Tient of a predetermined,
effsct achieved by adherence to her p e r s o n a 1 a u d i e n c e - ■
oriented ti.eory of composition. In so doing she performs

,lovd Morris. "A New Classicist," The ><o_rth
'V- ■ 246 CSe7;tember, 193S;, ir^-lSi:

what Bryant hs.s called the rhetorical functioa of "adjust-
ing ideas to people and o£ people to ideas," and illustrates
likewise Bitzer's concept or rlietoric as a response to an
exigence subject to the constraints of the author's per-
sonal theory of composition. In examining Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' personal theory of coTiposition , as well as reader
response to it, this study v/ill explore the rhetorical
role of the novelist's language manipulations as they con-
tribute to suasory (Effectiveness.

Universal Inerae or The Ye arl ing

As a basis for underscc'-nding this novel as rhetori-
cal discourse, recail tnat the Yearling evoked the environ-
ment of the Florida "Cracker" and yet, at the sane time,
transcended and ui'.ive'-'r.aiizcd this environment. The inter-
national popular ity achieved attested to tne universal
appeal of the novel, V/hicli concerned the relationship of
an individual to thi'. O'lvi -onment . The Baxter's pine
islond in The Yearling defined the microcosm or "small
v;orld" that iiivplied its corollary, the macrocosm, or

Donald C. Bryant, "Rhetoric: Its Function and
Scope," in The f'rovince_of Rhetoric, edited by Joseph
Schwartz anci jolm Tryl:eri2.'a"~T:''*ev' YoFT Ronald Press Company
1.565) , r- 34.

Lloyd Bitter, "The Rhetori.c.il Situation," in
Ccnte;r,j[;o£ary_Thsori»i;j of Rhetor_£c: Selected R-jadings^,
e3T r ed 1: y ' TQcRa rd^'To'fHj n ns"en 717ew 'To rTi ffar p e r"ancl"'Row .
1971), r.p. 381-3^3.

"great world." In the close reL'.iiticnship that existed
between the small world and the jreat world, the micro-
CGsm fancticned as a clo^'ed, corripiete sysr.eiTi. maintaining
its OvvTi individuality and integrity. The nine island of
The Yearling reflected the macrocosm: yez . simultaneously,
it was a self-contained unit that illustrated equilibrium
between the individual and the environm.ent achieved through
balance and harmony with nature. Within this context, the
pine island functioned as a symbolic garden of the middle
landscape as defined by Leo Marx in his book, The Machine
in tlie Garden, for the island garden became a symbol for
fruitfulness and blessed labor, placed xvithin a landscape
that had neither the corruption of civilization nor the
savagery of the jungle.^

The indi -iduai D^'teracting within an environment
reflected total hum;''nity interacting with the uniArerse,
for each individual contained tho unity and the variety
of the universe; thus. Fenny Baxter functioned as Every
Person. Universality was in part achieved through chrjrac-
terization, for according to a definitive text in literary
terminology, "of all qualities which make for universality
in literature, successful oortraval cf human character is

Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden ■^New York;
(D X f o r d U n 1 v e r s 1 1 y p r e s ?"i IVETT'.

Gordon '6. Bigelow frontier Ederi [Gjrinesvilie :
tin i V e r s i t v of F 1 o r i d ..i Press. ~rT^ir4ir

the .Ti03t i.TLportant . '■ ' In. nhe classic traditica, Penny

Baxter in The Yearling \-as a person, bruised by civiii-a-

tion and society, xvho returns to the land of the raiddle

landscape in an attempt to survive. Marjorie Kinnan

Ravvlings expressed this philosophy most directly in The^

Yearling:

He had perhaps been bruised too of-
ten. The peace of the vast aloof scrub
had drauTi him with beneficence of its
silence. Something in him was raw and
tender. The touch of men v/as hurtful
upon it, but the touch of the pines was
healing. Making a living came harder
there, distances were troublesome in tne
buying of supplies and the marketing of
crops. But the clearing was peculiarly
his own. The wild animal seemed less
predatory to him than people he had known.
The forays of bear and wolf and v/ildcat
and panther on stock were understandable,
which was more than he could say of human
cruelties . ''

In paraphrasing Rav/lings' philosophy, Bigelov believed

that a person ''can be happy only in the degree to v.hich

he is able to adjust harmonious 1)' to his surroundings.

The more natural tliese surroundings, the more completely

he is in harmon>^ v;ii:h -.lieiii, the creator will be his

^■'V'Uliam F. Thrall, A.ddison llibbard, and Hugh
Holman, A Handbook to Literature (New York: The Odvssey
Press, 15^ , p. 'SW:

M. u. Raw! lags, The Yearl ir.g (New York: Charic
Scril^ner's .^ons , '.97.2), p". ITT

na.pp:.r.sss . ;.iving ir. nc.r^'.^^Tw witl; ana cxoseness to
Nature creates a type of N'-jble Savage. Marjorie Kinnan
Ra'vviings' "account [of The Yearling] ren-inds one of the
eighteenth century theorists like Rousseau or Ciiai;ea\'briand

who claimed that virtue would most abound in men \^ho lived

. . - ,-9
m a state ot nature.

The personal region of Penny Baxter was hounded

by the environs of his daily life; yet, in the generic

sense, these personal regions of the individual expandec

to tlie persond.1 regions of all, and the environs of Penny

Baxter's daily life expanded to the environs of each and

every other person. Thus, Penny Baxter and the pir.e island

were able to function syri^ibolically as a universal metaphor

for the hu;nan condition.

Regionalism as a Symbolic Basis
of Universality

Universality was achieved through ihe vehicle of
regionalism; for m tiie genre of literary regionalism,
the locale functions as a medium for understanding t'le
universal by seeking out in tlie geographic region the

'Gordon E. Sigelow, "Mariorie Kinnan Rawlmgs'
iv i 1 d e !■ n e s s , ' ' T 1 • e S e '.v :\ ; i e e ki- v i :- v .- , 7 ..' , Ap r i 1 - J iine , 1 9 6 5 \
299-310. ■"■■

Ibid . , p . 3i' I

particular aspects "of the huT'^sri character and of the
human dilerina ccmrion to ail iTien in nil ages and places.''
A region may ha geographically, politically, socially, or
econonically defined as a territory within which there
are greater mutual dependency and homogeneity than exist
outside its boundaries. Regionalism in a literary pro-
duction usually concerns itself with a specific culture
and its cus:oir:S, speech p-it tera:-, , physical landscape,
legends, traditions, ai-d ideological or social point cf
view. The .^e^ulcan: interacLior of the human individual
with the immediate env^ircnment through the peculiarities
of language, landscape, culture, race, and tradition are
the domain of regionalism.

Usually infused in this process is a sentimental
roinanticism for an historical period by which the past
becomes a vehicle for the study of the present and the
future. The artists often fashioned their fiction from
•vanishing aspects of the region. "What historical liter-
ature reflects in terms of time and age, regional litera-
ture reflects in terms of space and locality,"* By makin:
"human drama from neighboring scrub and hammock country,"

^'^Thrali, Hibbard, and Hclman , pp. 406-407.

Heinnch Staumann, Amerj.c-tn Li t e rature in_ the
Twentieth Ccnlurv (N'ow York: ""HaTper ana~Row, 'i965j , "

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings attenptcd to preserve that which

was lost and dying, the traditions of the past, and for

1 ''
this she has bee:\ acclaii-ed a great Southern Regional is t.

Through the time warp of Cross Creek, the American past,
the frontier, the tradition of nature, and the purity of
the individual .ail could be brought into focus. As a
result, according to one i^Iarjorie Kinnan Rawlings scholar,
her vvritings reflect sone of th.e most deeply imbedded
attitudes of the- American people, and belong to a main
current of American culture fiov^?ing from Crevecoeur and
Bartram in the eighteenth centurv, through Cooper, the cran-
scendentalists , and vvhi'man in the nineteenth century, to
Faulkner in modern times." "'

Yet, Marjorie KLnnan Rawlings cared little for
the mantle of Southern Regioxial ist . She described herself
"as a writer who often suffers under the epithet of re-
gional," for in the late 1950 's, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
considered regionalism limited. ' She denigrated her
title thus:

"John M. Bradbury, Renaissance in the South: A
Critical History of t he Literature ,~rg"2 0'nrJoO" (Chapel"~Hri 1
university of North"'Carolina Press, 19c5j . p, 20.

"Sigelov/, "Wilderness," p. 300.

"^M. K. Rawlings, "Regional Literature of the
South." College English. I (February, 1940). 581-389.

RegionalisiT! written on purpose is
perhaps as spurious a form of literary
expression as ever reaches print. It is
not even a decent bastard, for back of
illegitiinacy is usually a simple, if ill-
tiir.ed, honesty. ^^

Ker concern at being neatly classified as a regicnalist
is understandable. During the 195C's she was v/orking in
the literary milieu of Hemingv/ay , V;olfe, and Fitzgerald,
who vvere the outstanding literary figures of her time,
and the apparently popular modes were realism, naturalism
or social consciousness. The title of Southern Regionali;
was praise, hov/ever, for as stated by Bradbury, the liter-
ary historian:

. . . by no means all of the impor-
tant novelists of the first generation
(of what was referred to as the Southern
Renaissance, 1930-1940) can be neatly
catalogued under the label of symbolic
naturalism . . . regional colorists like
Edwin Cranberry and Marjorie Kinnan Rawl-
ings write substantially outside the
developing new tradition. ^^

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings proffered a second ap-
proach to her definition of regional writing which she
found more am.enable and valid.

It is the approach of the sincere
creative writer who has something to
say c.ii who uses a sp-?cialized locale —
a region — as a logical or fitting back-
ground for tho particular tlioughts or

1 c

i.raJbii-y , ]i . 16

emotions that cry out for articulation.
This approach results in writing:; that is
only incidentally, sonatiiaes even acci-

Though her "second approach" broadened the concept of
regionalism and though tvo of her contemporaries basked in
the term — Robert Frost and William Faulkner — Mariorie
Kinnan Rawlings still chafed under her oxvn regional defi-
nition and opinion of the teria. V'et in the 1930 's, Robert
Frost's New England, William Faulkner's Yoknapatav;pha
County, Steinbeck's Dustbovvl, and Mariorie Kinnan Rawlings
Big Scrub each furnished a portrait or regional unit com-
plete and self-contained. From the multiplicity of these
parts the totality of the whole may be comprehended. In
explicating the basic conceptions underlying the works
of outstanding American writers, Heinrich Staumann states
that the literary "stress on regionalism is just another
powerful symptom, of that quest for a national tradition
based on a profound love for the variety of its ethno-
graphical aspects."" Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings achieved
such thematic unive r'^al i ty in her novel, The Yearling,
and It therefore is as one of the great Southern Region-
alists that she is remembered.

Rawiir.g.-, , "]
"itaumann, p

1.1

Regional is :- a£. a Rhe t cric;il Response
to a Crisis

In the 1930's, regionalism was often discourse in
response to a crisis; s.na as ?, re: pons e to the social
and cultural changf^ o '? the 1930's, The Yearling may
be treated r.ox tt.1/ as a iiter^r/ novel, but also as a
rhetorical document. It fits the rhetorical paradigm
of a response to a situation, for Bitzer regards a rhe-
torical situation as

. . . a natural context of persons,
events, objects, relations, and an exi-
gence which strongly invites utterance
. . . Rhetorical discourse comes into
existence as a response to a situation
in the same sense that an answer comes ^ g
into existence in response to a question."

Following the collapse of the economic and industrial
structure in 1929, the literary world argued for an
agrarian as opposed to industrial culture. As Bigelow,
in his study of Mar j one Kinnan Rawlings' career, de-
scribed that movement:

. . . economic catastrophe and
social unrest produced a widespread
renewal of interest in the regions,
so that life in the village [the
agrarian culture] began to receive new
scrutiny as a source of those virtues
which could heal che ills brought oa
by too much city and too much big busi-
ness [industrial culture].-'"^

^'"^Bitier. pp. 385-536.

** Bii;elow, frontier, pp. 70-71

October 28, 1929, stands as the augur of the
crisis. National income plummeCed fro.ui a high cf SI
billion in 192:) to 68 billion in 15."iO, and finally to
41 billion in 1932, Salaries dropped off -iO per cent
from 1929-]_932; \^g:is were dov/n cO per cent and dividends
36,6 per cent- Unemployment ultimately peaked at 17
million, half the uor'k force of the country. When
22,821,857 cltizei:3 >^oted foi ^''ranklin Delano Roosevelt
in the presidential election of 1932, "the clash between
the industrial and agrarian minds [becanej apparent in
the conflicting personal! r.ies of Herbert Hoover and
Franklin Delano Roosevelt . ""^ Herbert Hoover's political
philosophy in support of financial institutions and big
business as opposed to Roosevelt's "distrust of big busi-
ness and his concept of individual rather than corporate
well-being as the cornerstone of our welfare brought back
into our national thinking an agrarian point of view that
had been moribund since the trium.ph of Northern capital

in 1365.""-

The literary revival of the agrarian point of
view was reflected in the voluminous outpourings of

■"Rod W. Horton and Herbert 1^'. Edwards, Backgrounds

of American Literary Thought (New \jrk; Applet on Century
Crofts, 1952) , p. "37S.

Did . . p . J) 7 b

regional literature repcrted by Howard Gdan a:vi Harry
Moore in their 1938 comprehensive study. Using the list-
ings in The Publishers Weekly as the source, and restrict-
ing titles to fiction, Howard Odum catalogued more than
two thousand regional titles that appeared in the two
decades from 1916 to 1936. As part of a pattern that
peaked first after the Civil iVar and then more signifi-
cantly after V/orld War I in the late 1920 's and 1950 's,
the ten years preceding the publication of The Yearling
showed the Southeast to be strong both in numbers and m
literary quality.

The Northeast leads with 449 titles
followed strongly enough by the North-
west with its 'westerns' with 344, the
Southeast with 281, the Middle States
with 183, the Southwest with 138, and
the Far West 15 7 . . . Strangely enough
the Southeast has the largest number of
Pulitzer Prize winners and best sellers
and has tended to give the best regional
portraiture. -^

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was already classified among

"the best" foi- het nuvei, South Moon Under. Two years

later, she was to prcvp a.jain, with the publication of

The Yearling and su^;G^u.*r,t wiiining of the Pulitzer Prize,

her worthiness to be cJa.-ced with tie other great regional

writers. These ranks included WilliaT. Faulkner, Erskine

7-5

■■ Moward vv . Odum and Harry h. Moore, American
'^^^-ip^'l^^Vhl ^ CuJL^fjr^]. • Historical Approach to "National
1 n t'e"^ "f a 1 1 bn""T^ c w"V o ri. : If.' TTol t"anT''Cofnp".9ny","~l'gT5T7'"p'"T66 ,

Caldwell, Ellen Glasgov/, Zora Neale liurston, Margaret

Mitchell, Jap.es Farreil, Sinclair Lewis. Louis Bromfield,

Edna Ferber, John Dos Passes, and John Steinbeck.

The ly.ajor impetus for the Southern literary

renaissance of regionalism was a 1930 vciume of far

reaching impact, I'll Take My Stand, compiled by twelve

distinguished Southerners; John Crowe Ransom, Donald

Davidson, Frank Owsley, John Gould Fletcher, Lyle Lanier,

Allen Tate, Herman Clarence f^Iixon, Andrew Nelson Lytle,

Robert Penn Warren, John David V/ade, Henry Blue Kline,

and Stark Young. The main thesis of this volume was

stated in the preface of the 1930 edition.

All of the contributors tend to
support a Southern way of life against
what m.ay be called the American or pre-
vailing way; and all as much as agree
that the best terms in which to repre-
sent the distinction are contained in
the phrase Agrarian versus Industrial . '^'^

The influence of and reaction to this volume was vast and

immediate, as well as of long duration. The author of

a compilation of Southern litera"cure addressed the impact

of the volume: ''The statement of principles, together

with accom.panying essays, precipitated a more widespread

controversy, perhaps then has attended any other Southern

Tivelve Southern Authors, I'll Take ^!y Stand:
The South and t he Agrar x ^t n_ j j; a d i r i on [N"c^7~'i""ol."Y. Harper
and' Brothers, l"9o0), p." -.x.

cook ever printed. Copies of editorials, nevvspaper ar-
ticles, and letr.ers of protest f-^cm every part of the -
country virtually deluged the a'lthcrs."" William
Knickerbocker, edito?- of The Sewanee Review, tenned it
"the n:ost av.dTcious book ever v;r_^tten by Southerners
. . . the most challenging book published since Henry
George's Progress and Poverty." H. L. Mencken responded
in both the American Mercury and Virginia Quarterly Reviev.
Henry Hazlitt assailed i r. in The Nation on the grounds
that the Agrarians would be obstructionists in attempting
to stem the tide of progress. The volume was attacked
in Haiper's by Gerald W. Johnson and disparaged in Dallas
before a large audience by Howard Mumford Jones. The
contributors were called Fugitives, Escapists, sufferers
from nostalgic vapors, romanticists unwilling to face the
realities of modern life."

However, the twelve authors proudly bore the name
"Fugitives," for their volume was an alert, a reaction,
a respovise, and a reply for the prevailing economic,
political and social conditions. Their volume was a call
to a return Co the way of Life of the "middle landscape."
Th-D upsurge and responses of literary regionalism attempted

"Thomas D. Young, Flo/d C. Watkins, and Richard
C. Uealty, Thj; Literature of the South CAt lant.-i: Scott
F o r e s m a n a n'u Co'npany , VjZc.) , p . 606}

'^^Ibid.. ;:. 606. See for total idf.M.

to bulkhead the er.crc-,^ching ciisc-.5ter, for 3? faumford
stated in 1954, "regionalism is in parr a blind react Lcn
against outward circu:.-i,rcance3 ^nd disruptions, an atteapt
to find refuge within an old shell against the turbulent
invasions of the outside world.'"'

Thirty vea-^s after the book was first published,
Louis Rubin, Jr., in the int-oduction to the 1962 edition
°f I'll Take My Stand, ixaborated on the continued in-
fluence of the volune and the philosophy that addressed
the question of people separated from the well being of
the natural land who are brutalized by the machinery of
civilization.

It is about something far more generally
important and essential than the eco-
nomic and social well-being of any one
region. Man \/as losing contact with
the natural world, v/ith aesthetic and
religious reality; his machines were
brutalizing and coarsening him, his
quest for gain blinding him to all that
made life worth living. The tenuous
and frail spiritual insights of western
civilization, achieved so arduously over
the coarse of many centuries were being
sacrificed. The result, if unchecked,
coVild only be dehumani.zat ion and chaos. -^^

As thie Paris expatriates cf the Lost Generation of the

1920' s represented relection of the prevailing literary

York: Harccurt, Brace and Korld, I'^'SH , ']:. . 15^2."

'■""Twelve Southern Authors, '' ' 1 1 Take > ty S t a n d :
Thr South ?.nd the Agrarian Tradition (Xew v-crk: Harpe:
and Row, 1562) .

and social attitudes, so then in the 1950 's did the fu'ji-

tive authors of I'll Tske >'y Stand represent rejection of

prevailing literary and social attitudes. In fo doing,

they "initiated the current regional movement."" And,

as C. Hugh Holman states, "the movement was a response

to social and cultural change.""^

The Yearling was an integral part or this movement

Manorie Kinnan Rawlings' retreat in 1928 frori a career

as syndicated feature v/riter for two Northern papers tc

the precarious ov/nership of an orange grove in middle

Florida can be viewed, in part, as subscription to the

Agrarian philosophy. This poem, found among her papers

in the Collection, may provide additional perspective.

Now, having left cities behind me, turned
Away forever from the strange gregarious
Huddling of men by stoueb, I find various
Great towns I knew fused into one, burned
Together in the fire of my despairing.
And I recall of them only those thing?
Irrelevant to cities-, murmurings
Of ram and wind: moons setting and rising.

There was a church spire on i.- distant hill
Clamorous with birdj by day and stars by night,
Devout and singing. I have forgot its site--
Bost'^r . c-^ Rochest.-jr. cr Louisville

Paul R. Beath, "Regionalism.: Pro and Con, Foin

Fallacits of Rsgi cnalisni," Saturday Rgvicv^/ of Literature,

15 (November, 1936), 4-14.

C. Hugh Holman, "Literature :5nd Culture: The
Fugitive-Agrarians," Social Forces, 37 fCctover, 195S) ,

Of a certain zity ail I can reme;Tiher

Is wild ducks flying southv/ard in November
At the Cross Creek grove, as she later related to the
iNatiojial Council of Teachers of English, "she found her-
self, for the first time since leaving her father's farm

to go to college, in full spiritual harmony with her

5 "^
environment." " She knew almost immediately that these

Cracker people of inland Florida had not been dehumanized

by industrialization and for that reason, as she told

Stephen Vincent Benet, she began again to write.

I had met only 2 or 3 of tlie neigh-
boring crackers v/hen I realized that iso-
lation had done something to these people.
Rather, perhaps civilization remained too
remiOte, physically and spiritually, to
take fiom them something vital. -'^^

In one of her earliest autobiographical writings found

within the Collection, she addressed the isolation from

civilization of the Cracker country and predicted thai

the "inland core of this state is part of America's vanish

ing frontier . . . [and] it will be the last to vanisn,""''

Mar j one Kmnan Rav\ lines, "Having Left Cities
Behind Me." Unpublished poem in Mar j one .Kinnan Ra;«-iings
Collection.

"'"Marjorie Kinnan Rav'.'lings, "Regional Literature
of the South," College English, 1 (February, 1940), 3S5.

"^.N'ew York Herald Tribune, February 9, 1941. In
Mariorie Kinnan Rawlmgs Collection.

^^Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, "Cracker Florida."
Early Autobiographic:\l i-ritmgs. In Marjcrie Kinnan Raw;
ings Collection.

Other of her writings offered further evidence of

her reaction against mdas ci ializar ioii .

'*e ?ieed abov? al:. , I th.Lnk, a cer-
tain remoteness from urban confusion,
and while this c^n be found in other
places. Cross Creek offers it v/ith such
beauty and grace that, once entangled
with it, no otrier place seems possible
to us . . ,3j

Finally, in another of her personal vvritings, she addressed
civilization as a contributing agent to negative aspects
of human behavior, for "man's savagery and personal self-
ishness and greed, his materialism which seems to increase
in direct ratio to the technical advance cf so-called
civilization, are the stumbling block, the impasse. Plain
people seem to be aiiead of the leaders.""^ Thus, not only
her life, but also her writings, indicated a reaction
against a national threat.

Bigelow quite often referred to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' reaction against the cities, for he found her
to be a "regiorialist ," "inextricably enmeshed with agrar-
ian attitudes," drawn to a people "full of grace and dig-
nity bhe has i\ever found in city life." Previously,

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek (New York:
Ci^'irles Scribrer's Sons, 19^2"), p. 3.

■'Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, "Autobiographical
Sketch." In Marjorie Kinnan Rawling.s Collection.

'Bioelow, frontier Hden , \> . 70.
Bigelow, "Wildernviss ," TiOj. 310.

reviewers in 1938 b.-^H addressed Mariorie Kinnan RaVvlir.gs
as a regional ist author, yet, as one whovvrote ''unlike
the average regional novelist,' for The Yearling as
another stated, "represents :.he best of the so-called
regionalism school.""^

Thus, during, the 1930 's there was a regional
reaction to a national threat, and based not only upon
the personal writings of Mar i one Kinnan Rawlings, but
also from the writings of literary historians and
scholars as well as from reviewers of her book. The
Yearling was an integral part of this movement.

The Study of Regional Literature
as RJietorical Discourse

Functioning as a response to a change in the
social and cultural situation is but one aspect of the
rhetorical nature of The Yearling. In 197 2, addressing
the direction of rhetorical criticism, Barnet Baskerville
noted that ''we now enthusiastically advocate the rhetori-
cai criticism of literature." ■ Baskerville maA' have

Durham North Carolina Mornin^^ He--aid, April
3, 19 58.

Chjj^ago Illinois >feu5 , April 6, 19 3S.

Barnot Baskerville, "Rhetorical Criticism,
1971: Rhetrospect, Prospect, Introsr-ect . " Southern Spe;
CommanijC_at_i_on_Jou_rn,al , 2 7 (Wintei , 19 71), 115.

2.1

revived an anachxonis cic debate c one erring the relatively
obscure distinction betv/een rhstoric and poetics. Not
only have time and proximity, as well as usage, tended
to blur the distinctions betv/een these two areas, but
also the various attempts to discriminate betueen these
two modes have proven unsatisfactory. The interface
between rhetoric and poetics is even more obscured by
Kenneth Burke, who, according to Baskerville, "seems not
to acknowledge alleged distinctions," for in Burke's
philosophy "effective literature could be nothing else
but rhetoric." Then the obvious conclusion must be
Bryant's, for though thecrists and critics have sporadic-
ally attempted to keep apart rhetoric and poetic and to
deal with the;i as separate entities, "the two rationales
have had an irresistabie tendency to come together."

Continuing the fccuy on the rhetorical qualities
of literi'.tuve , other t'u;jri?ts have articulated their
op ir ions, Wayne Booth argues "that the author cannot
choose to avoid rhetci ic ; he can choose only the kind of
rhetoric he will cnploy. He cannot choose whetlier or not
to affect his readers' evaluation by his choice of

'^"ibid. , p. 115.

Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (New York
Harcourt, Braco, igil), p. Zb^f.

"^^Hryant, p. 34.

narrative matter; he can o:\ly choose whether ro do it
■well or poorly."'" Black, in his tiro vocative article,
"The Second Persona," provided further evidence concern-
ing the rhetorical aspects of literature, foi', as he
wrote, everL the person "who aspires to be nothing more
than a simple chronicler stili must maKC decisions about
perspective.""^ Thus, not only the historian, but the
literary author as well, meets Bitter's concept of
rhetoric as

. . . ? mode of alter in j reality,
not by ;he dlrec!: applica L icr of energy
to objects, but by the creation of dis-
course which cha.iges reality through
the mediation o '^ thought and action.
The rhetor alters reality bv oringing
into existence a disccurse of such a
character that the audience, in thought
and action, is so engaged that it be-
comes mediator of change. In this,
rhetoric is always pcrsuasiv

Again, the Black article amplifies Bitzer's concept of

rhetoric as a m.ode of altering reality, for Black vievfs

discourse as having

enticements not sii.ipiy to believe
something;, but to be something. We

4 '
^ Wayne Booth, T?ie Rhetoric of Fiction '^ Chic ago

University of Chicago Press", 1961) , p. 149.

^"^Edwin Black, "The Second Persona," Quarterly
Journal _oj.__ Speech , 56 ( Ap r J. 1 , 1970), 109.

^"^Bitzer, p. 384.

are solicited b/ the disccurse to fai-

fiil its_blar.di ^h~?- 1 s ^-ich our very
selves , ■^'■

So then did these v,Titers add^ress the rlietorical qualities
of literature.

To Bifev a rhf^toiic^l ivf rk roi?es into being "as
a response to [a] si'-uition . , . the natural context of
persons, events, objects, relations and an exigence wiiich
strongly invites utterance."" Regionalism as a response
to the conditions of tlie 1930 's was likewise a rhetorical
response, persuading the audience of the value of an in-
dividual struggle with nature and self in an environment
removed from a dehumanized and mechanical society. Citing
the relationship of literature to the culture and simul-
taneously defining rhetorical discourse, C. Hugh Plolman
expressed the point that in the Regional Agrarian move-
ment of the 1930's, the artists "were making a literary
use of economics and politics. They have taught us that
artists respond to the pressures of their culture, not
by making political gestures or by accurate reporting,
but by imprisoning through their talents its themes and
its subjects." Thus, as an artist responding to the

45,

lack, p. 119.

.17

B i 1 2 o r , p . 3 o '

Holm.-jn, "Literature jid Culture," p. 19

cultural pressures v/ithin ■'-'■e context of the 1930'5,
Maiori-e Kinnan Rawlings created rhet-oricil disccurse ■
which addressed the universal struggle of nature and
self played out in the world of the middle landscape —
the land between the jungle and civilization.

Methodology

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings atterr.pted to evoke a
predetermined response through her manipulation of
language in The Yearling. in this study, her readership
will be debriefed in order to ascertain achievement of
the specific effects upon which the author had predicated
her personal theory of composition. Debriefing was a

term used by Munro in a paper read at the 1969 CSSA Con-

4 8
vention. Later, the term was elaborated upon by Tompkins

49
in "The Rhetorical Criticism of Non-Oratorical Works."

Both critics defined the term in the militaristic sense
cf questioning or interrogating or seeking to obtain knowl-
edge or inforniation from an audience; for unless critics

"'"Hugh P. Munro, "The the Wall, Enthymeme!" Pacer
read at tlie 1969 CSSA Convent iorx, St. Louis.

Non - 0 r a 1 0 r 1 c a 1 >■/ ,■.. r k s / ' OK^r t: ^ :ly J^jm al of Speech , S 5
(December J 19 69), 431- 1^9. "

have access Lo the audience, as To:rpkins pointed out, they

are in a pC'Or position to explain the effect of language

50
nanipalat ion or other rhetorical strategies. The focus

of this investigation shall not be into the discourse
itself, but into the intention of the author and the
resultant reaction of the readers to the discourse. In-
tent lonality is clearly an integral part of the rhetorical
function, for as Bryant has stated in his now- familiar
definition: "the rheccrical function is the function of
adjusting to people aad of people to ideas. "'^

Cha^-tsr Two will focus upon the delineation of
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' theory of composition and
articulation of the rhetorical impact she sought. These
shalL be de^-ived. from the autobiographical writing of
Marjorie Kinnar Rawlings, froi.i her speeches, lecture
notes, articles, and from various secondary sources.
Her concept of the creati\/e act was predicated upon het
personal theory of language usage necessary to achieve a
result or create an effect. Investigation of her in-
tent ioriali ty is consonant with Kenneth Burke, the icono-
clast, who defines rhetoric as "the use oi language in

•'^^'ibid. , p. 435
^^ Bryant, p. 19

sucli a way as to produce a desired impression (ipon the
hearer or reader."

Frovn her lecture notes as a visiting professor
at the University of Florida teaching creative writing,
and from various articles she has authored, Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings delineated those constraints under which
an author must operate so as to achieve, through her per-
sonal theory of composition, a predetermined effect upon
her readership. 'Jcilizing Bltzer's concept of a rhetori-
cal situation, constraints are one of the three constitu-
ents of a rhetorical situation, the other two being
exigence and audience.

Standard sources of constraints
include bexiefs, attitudes, documents,
facts, traditions, images, interests,
motives, and tlie like; and when the
orator enters the situation, his dis-
closure not only harnesses constraints
given by situation but provides ad-
ditional important constraints — for
example, his personal character ,_ his
logical proofs, and his style. ^-

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' theory of composition was a
constraint that regulated or United her writing. Wayne
Booth has stated that the author's '"attitudes towards
the three variables, subject miatter, structure, and tech-
nique, depend finally on notions of purpose or function

Lirice, p. 26 S

■^Sitzer, p. oSS

cr effect"; and thus Chapter Two vvill be addressed to
articulat ioji of Marjorie Kinnan Ravv'lings' "notions of
effect" or theory of composition.

The focus of Chapter Three will be upon debriefing
her readership through utilizing of the correspondence
in the substantial ifarjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection
housed at the University of Florida. The methodological
approach for this impact study is similar to the debrief-
ing of a readership for their situationally bound reac-
tions as employed by Carpenter in his study, "Alfred
Thayer Mahan ' s Style on Sea Power: A Paramessage Conducing
to Ethos." As in the Carpenter study, the extent of
effectiveness will be based upon the reactions of her
general readership to her language usages. For as Car-
penter stated, achievement of effectiveness is "most
accurately discernible in the responses of people for whom
the discourse was intended"; and therefore, the methodo-
logical focus of this investigation is not on the dis-
course itself, but rather on debriefing the readership.^

t^ootn, p. 57.

^^Ronaid Carpenter, "Alfred Thayer Mahan 's Style
on Sea Power: A Paraceosage Conducing to Ethos," Speech
Monographs. 42 (August. 1975), 191 -20:.

''^Tbid.,

p. 19..

Since The Yearling is currently in publication.,
all correspondence in the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Col-
lection from her general readership relating to the novel
was examined. The bulk of the Collection, however,
covers the period from the original publication of The
Yearling in 1938 to her death in 1953. Only those re-
sponses dealing specifically with areas of composition
or v'hich indicate relationship to language usage shall
be utilized in order to focus in on the achievement of
the specific effect. Comments by the readership dealing
with the process of her language manipulation in The
Yearl ing were catalogued and analyzed to indicate recurring
patterns. Through analysis of these responses, an attempt
will be made to establish the causal relaricnship between
technique and effect in Chapter Three.

Chapter Four will focus on the responses of her
professional readership, such as critics in newspapers,
magazines, and periodicals. Six large scrapbooks con-
taining the reactions of these critics are a part of the
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection. Phillip Tompkins
refers zo these critics and revic',vcrs as "a sizable im-
portant body of receivers v-ho 'debrief themselves volun-
tarily."' The methodology for cataloguing and analyzing

^^ompVM^s, V. a;

the reactions of this professional readership shall pro-
ceed in the sair.e manner as follov/ed with her general
readership. This professioaal readership, according to
Tompkins, brings to the novel a fainil iarity \vith the
genre and a psi -cepc ioi-. more soon Is ticated than the average
reader which "makes them even m^ore useful in rhetorical
analysis; [for] they do, aft*)?- all.- reveal their percep-
tions and valae judgments of the art form under analysis."^
Several rhetorical critics have found the approach of
debriefing critics most useful. William Jordan in re-
views of the novel, To Kill a .Mockingbird, Phillip Tomp-
kins in reviews of In Cold Blood, Patricia Weygandt in
the reviews of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.*^
The results of this study should indicate that
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings accomplished her rhetorical
function as intended or not as intended, or that her
rhetorical function was not accomplished. The metho-
dolog/ employed is similar to tb.at proffered by Carpenter,
for the focus of this study is upon establishing a metho-
dology whereby documents as responses to discourse may be

'''^Ibid. , p. 4 36.

"William Jordan, "A Study of Rhetorical Criticism
in the Modern Novel," Debut Paper, SAA Convention, 1967.

Fhillit.) Tompkins, "In Cold Fact." Esquire, 6S
iJi:nc, 19661, 12*5.

Patricia Ueycjandt. , "A RheLoricaL Criticisju oi
St. Pepper'-. Lonely Hearts Club Band." Unpublished paper,
1969, Kent State L'uivor .sity .

analyi'ed in ordex- to asceri:airi whether a predetermined
effect has been achieved by that rhetorical effort.

Ut i 1 ization of tlie
Ma r 3 o r i e K ihvi a a R a w 1 i n g s Collection

In order to ac::orplish this studv, the Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Collection in tne Universitv of Florida
Manuscript Collection vvill be fully utilized. The Rawlings
Collection is composed of extensive correspondence, from
famous people as well as from he-^ readers; also manu-
scrips of books, short scories, and unpublished poems.
Her personal scrapbooks, as well as two previously kept
by relatives and one forwarded from another library,
photographs, newspaper clippings, early drafts cf speeches
and lecture notes, as well as personal memorabilia are
likewise included in this large collection, which co\-er5
m.ainly the period from 1950 to 1953.

Although there has been some published scholarly
vvork on Marjorie Kinnan Ra'-/lings, m.ost of the tneses and
articles that have been written tend to investigate her
work in a purely literary or biographical sense. Indeed,
even the Collection itself has been only slightly employed
for these purposes. The first, and only, extensive study
of her v;ork v/as publislied by Gordon Sigclow in 1966.
Tills volume. Frontier Hden, "though scholarlv in the sense
I [Sigelov/I tried to gather ail the facts I rBlgelov:]

could find," is considered more a riography t'nan a research
or scholarly docunent since it lacks documentation through
either fcctnotes cr bibliography. I-Iowever, the Eigelow
book was not just the first extensive study of both her
work and life but also the only study. The Bigelow book
employed the Collection, yet the recent minor study of
v/orks by Sanuel Bellman did not. Through the Twayne
Authors Series, Samuel Bellman published in 1974 a bock
entitled, Ma r i or i e K innan Ra wl ing s , which dealt mainly
with her writings. Bellman described her motivation for
creativity as "bliglited motherhood ... a basically un-
fulfilled . . . deep need ... of having and nurturing
a young male child." Bellman in no way utilized the
Collection and acknowledges his one visit with Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings' three paternal aunts as, in his own
v/ords, his "major source of inspiration."

Other research studies on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
are housed within the University of Florida Libraries.
The doctoral dissertation of Ambolena Robillard, Nla^v e 1 1_
Evarts Perkins: The Author's Editor, contains original

Bigelow, Hjontier, p. xiv.

^ ^Samuel Bell.nan, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlinj^s (New
York: Twayn*:' Publisheri., I'v-^' . '''^''-r), pp. .:)o, > .

^"tbid. , Preface.

correspondence between Marjorie Kinnai'. Rav/lings and Max-

iv'ell Perkins, her editor, and i.s catalogued in the Rare

'5 5 _
Book Room. ihe other four manuscript studies were

written as partial fulfillment of graduate degrees in

the Engli5-h Departm.ent of the University of Florida.

The earliest stud/ was the Master's thesis by William J.

Mc G u i r e , A Study of Flo rida Cracker Diale ct Based Chiefly

on the Prose Vvorks of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, which was

published m 1939.^'' During the 19S0's, two Master's

theses from the English Department were published:

Joseph Peck, The Fiction- V/iltirg A rt of Marjorie Kinnan

Rawlings , 1954; Mary Louise Slagel, The Artistic Use of

rr- 6 5

.Nat Lire i

n the Fiction of Mariorie Kinnan Rawlings, 1953

The most current manuscript study seems to be the Master
thesis of Car] Purlcv.', Folklore Elements in the Florida

^'Ambclena H. Rob il lard, Maxwell Evarts Perkins :
Authors' Editor, Doctoral Dissertation, University of
FlorTda '(Gainesville, 1954).

^'William J. McGuire, A Study of Florida Cracker
Dialect Based Chieflv on the Prose IVorks of Mariorie

Kinnan Rawl in g s .. " Mas t e r ' s"""TTi."e s i s", ■Jniversity ot Floiida
(Gainesville," 19 39) .

^ ^Joseph R. Peck, The Fiction V;ri ting Art of
Ma r i o r i e K innan Raw 1 ing s , Master ' s TTie'sis , University of
Florldxi (Gainesville, 1954).

Mary Louise Slagel, The Artistic Use of Nature
in the Fiction of i^larjorie Ki nnan Raw! mgs , Master ''s
Thesis, University of Florida "(Gainesville, 1953).

Writings of Marjorie Kinnar. R;;w]. ings , 19 6 3. . A i t h o ;j g h
these investigators dealt raaiiily with such aspects as
the listings of flora and fauna, the main focus of their
studies was the literary element of h.er writings. Beyond
these, only a few other prof c^'s lonal articles have been
written that were piiiriariry concerned with her. Margaret
Figh's article in the 19^'7 Souther.;. Quarterly and Lloyd
.Morris' article in the 1953 North /merican Review were
the main and only liteiary studies until Bigelow's article
on "Marjorie Kinnan Rav/lings' Wildern^s.," in 1965 in
the Sewanee Review and Bellman's article in 1970 in the
Kansas Quarterly. Thus, scholarly investigation into
intentional symbol manipulation for predetermined effect-
or investigation even tangentially related— has not been
accomplished.

Carl Furlow, Folklore Elements in the Florida
Writings of_M arjorie Kinnan~Rawlings , Mast e r 's Thes is, "
University oF Florida (Gainesville, 1965).

Margaret Gill is Figh, "Folklore and Folk Speech

in the Works of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings," Southern Folk-
lore Quarterly, 11 (September, 1947), 201-2^T, '

Lloyd Morris, "A .New Classicist," The North
American Review, 246 (September, 1938), 179-1X4"!

R igeiow, "Wi Idcrncss . "

Samuel I. BelJman, "Marjoi'ie Kinnan Rawlin.^.?:
A Solitary Sojourner in the Florida Backwoods," Kansas
QiiarT.fcrly , .: ( 1 9 7 0 'i , 7 8 - ;^ 7 .

Conclusion

All published works have been concerned either in
a biographical sense with ?Marjcrie Kinnan Rawlings or with
her works in a purely literary sense. Moreover, some of
these autliors. such as Bigelov/ and Bellman, have dealt
with the themes o£ The Yearling as well as their sources.
None have focused upon the rhetorical function of language
manipulation to achieve her predeterinined effect. Conse-
quently, this investigation shall be into effects of
language manipulation and not into tnci.ies and sources of
the novel itself.

Because Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was a writer in
response to a need or exigence. Chapter Two will investi-
gate the limits or constraints under which she operated.
Chapters Three an':^ Four will investigate the two segments
of her audience and the ways in which they responded.
These chapters will establish the causal relationship,
if any, between technique and effect. Finally, Chapter
Five will illustrate the various language techniques in
her novel, summarising their effect upon readers and
suggesting further perspectives on the novelist as rhetor.
By investigation of The Yearling and 'varjorie Kinnan
Rawlings m tliis way, we cone to a fuller understanding
of the suasory fvinction of language in her novel as well
as the particular coi:ipositional m.eans by which she achievec
h.er iritended goal.

CHAPTER TWO
MARJORIE KINN.ANJ R.'^VvLINGS ' THEORY 0? COMPOSITION

^ ^ The Rhetcric ox_ Fj.ct.ion , '.V a >• n e Booth stated
that "the author cannot choose to avoid rhetoric . . .
cannot choose -.diether or not to affect hi.? readers . . .
can onl)' choose whether to do it well or poorly."^ In
so doing, Booth •./as arguing that the achiev-enent of effect
is, in part, determined by the author's ai/areness of the
necessity for audience adaptation. Since Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' effect-oriented theory of composition ha? as
an integral element h.er awareness of the reader, her
theory would be congruent likewise with the Henry Janijs'
quotation upon which the Booth book is based: "The author
makes his readers, just as he makes his characters."
Booth elaborates upon this quotation, adding that "every
stroke [of the author's pen] will help moid tlic reader
into the kind of per<;on 'auited to ai)preciate .such a
character and the book he is .vriting." Drawing upon tl\e

Kayne- bootii, _i_^f kt m .■)r .'>. o i i- i.c^i : -.u! i^'
The University of Chichi gc~"Pre.ssr"T96TT, p. Hr9.

'■^IbKl., p. S3.

lecture notes cf I'larjorit! Kini^.r/n Ra;v'l iri'js , her aucobio-
graphical arcicle-, Uer correspondence, her speeches,
and reported mterviex'.'s . her personal theory of ccinposi-
rion V'.'ill be articulated and frciri it ivill be derived a
theory of audience adaptation by vrhich the novelist at-
tained her rhetorical objectives.

^i '^ graph ical Sketch

As 3.n added insipht into the author and her
theory, it is perhaps appropriate at this point to consider
briefly the background from which the novelist e^ierged.
In 1928, Marjorie Kinuan Railings found her Yoknapa tawphaw
County, her unturned stone, on 72 acres betiveen two lakes
in central Florida, in a small, isolated, Florida- style
clapboard house in an orange grove at Cross Creek, Florida.
Here, after thirty- tv/o years of northern cities, journa-
listic professionals, and abortive literary attempts,
she found the source from v/hich her creativity was to
flow and through which she was to receive international
recognition.

Before her v.iove to Florida, Ms. Rawlings had sold
stories and i-ad published cth.er types of material; in
fact, at eleven, she wlmi a tViO dollar prize for a story
thai: was published in the IV a s h i n g t o n Post. At the uni-
versity of ■v'isconGin, sne served on the editorial staff

of both the yearboolc and the Lit [literary) F.agazin.e.
Her playwright credits inciuded the conposition of a panto-
mime fantasy, '■'Into Nowhere," that was perforriCd by her
classnates. After graduation iron th.e University in 191S,
she soiight ''tlie best of everything" in V.cw York City. She
relates the episode wherein all her money and valuables
were stolen, but ironically, the thief left her manuscripts
intact. In New York City, she worked as an editor of the
National Board of the YWCA until in 19ir she married
Charles A. Fiawlings, her college sweetheart, and moved to
his home in Rochester, Net/ York.

During the next decade, she v/rote for both the
Louisville Courier and Journal and the Rochester Journal
American. Her daily syndicated feature, "Songs of a
Housewife," promoted such joys as:

Baby Sue's Bath

I vow, Sue no more needs a bath
Ihan any sweet Killarney rose!

But rub the foamy lather on

From golden head to sea-shell toes

She stretches out her dimpled hands
To catch the bubbles as the/ rise.

Each ripple is a miracle,

Bach soap splash a gay surprise.

Yes, let Aunt Annie watch the run
Before we tuck Sue up in bed.

See how the sunlight blues her eyes
And gilds her water- towsled l\eadl

Now wrap her snugly for her nap,

In her all. lovelaness erinieshed.
Her bath does me ir.ore good than Sue

It always leaves me so refreshed!

June 18, 19 26
Roc h_e s ter Times Un i o n

Even though she attempted to publisli short fiction
she vvas unable to break into the literary market. At this
poinc in 1928, she and Charles purchased the 72-acre prop-
erty at Cross Creek, Florida, and here the literary chron-
icle of Marioric Kinnan Rawlings begins.

Less than tv;o brief years after her move to Cross
Creek, Scribner's Magazine purchased "Cracker Chidlings"
and "Jacob's Ladder." Maxwell Perkins, the great editor
of Scribner's and the editor of the great — Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Vv'olfe — begari a correspondence with Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings that admitted her to the small circle of
creative literary giants of the 1950 's v/hom Perkins nur-
tured. In 1933, she won first prize in the 0. Henry
Memorial Awards for "Ga] Young Un," and her first novel.
South Moon Under, was published as a Book-of - the-Montri
Club selection. She v.'c^s to have other novels chosen as
Book-of -the-Month Club and Literary Guild selections,
she was to win the 0. Henry Award again ("Black Secret,"
1945), and she was to publish three other- novels before
her death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1933; however,
1953 through 1939 were hex years of greatest literary
achievement, for with the puolication ot The Yearling came
zhc recognition and success she had sought for 42 vears.

wareness oi

Critical to the formulation of her theory of com-
position v/as M'ariorie Kinnan Rav/lings' awareness of and
concern with the reader and the process of audience
adaptation. From a thorough reading of her personal doc-
uments, which are housed in tlie Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Collection of the University of Florida Library, it became
evident that her theory was predicated upon basic assump-
tions pertaining to the reader as a vital part of the
creative process; as she wrote, "The honest author writes
to meet his own preferably severe standards, true, but lie
must have an audience if he is to communicate.""^ Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings attempted to adjust and modify her writing
not only to her own standard, but to t'nose of her audience
as well. The importance she placed upon the audience was
paramount: "Let dilletantes prate as they will of the
'ivory tower' of writing for himself, a book is not a
book until it is read, just as there is not sound v.'ithout
an ear to hea r it."

•^Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, "Autobiographical
Sketch." (flereafter, unless otherwise stipulated, all
references (cited with the initials M. K. R.) are from
documents in the Marjorie Xinnan Rawlings Collection,
University of Florida Library.)

^Ibid.

Another cf the several quota r ions found in her
papers indicating av/areness cf the reader as audience was
the following: "Just as music is only music when it is
heard, so characters ia a book only come to life xvhen the
reader takes them to his heart " Ker a;vareness of the
effect-oriented nature of composition was consonant with
that of Francois ^lauriac, upon v;hom. Vvayne Booth also
relies in The Rhetoric of Fiction: "An author who assures
you that he writes for himself alone, and tiiat he does not
care whether he is heard or not, is a boaster and is de-
ceiving either himself or you."

A major element of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
literary focus was involvemiont with the readers and ai'/are-
ness of the rhetorical process of "adjusting ideas to
people and people to ideas," as defined by Bryant [see
Chapter One). For example, she felt that specific revision;
should be based upon reader reaction (prepublication) at
Scribner's. When Max\;ell Perkins, her editor, suggested
eliminating some of the hunting scenes in The Yearling,
she replied, "Their inclusion or elimination should be
determiiaed solely by the answer to the question: 'Does
the reader recognize the beginning of another hunting

I. X. R. , "Lecture Notes on Characterization,

^Sooth, p. 88

episode v/ith pleasurable anticipa t ion, or is \\e bored at
the thought of another and impacient to be en with the
narrative?'" Vvriting, re'.;riring, and editing were all
dependent upon their effect en the reader, for neither the
book, nor the writer, nor the reader exist in isolation;
each cciT.pl CiTi.ents and- completes the other.

As Majorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote to Maxwell Per-
kins, in May of 1958, "Readers thei-iselves , I think, con-
tribute to a book. They add their own imaginations and
it is as though the writer only gave them something to
work on and they did the rest." This mutually advantageous
association of reader and author was dependent upon both's
fulfilling an obligation, for the reader's duty was "to
open his mind to what the author was trying to say, if it
was plain that the author's intention was sincere and

earnest." In a 1938 letter to Nornan Berg, an Atlanta
editor, she expanded on this audience concept: "By that
[reader's duty] I mean the obligation of the reader to
give hLmself, mind and soul, to the honest writer so that
he should be open to receive everything offered." Though
referred to her as "reader's duty," she also called it

To Maxwell Evai t Perkins iron M. K , R., Deceniber
29, 19.^7.

M. v.. K. , "Lecture Notes on Characterization."

"tlie reader's delight to give hiiiiself to a book, to exer-
cise his own iTnaginaticn on the unliving material."

Her concern '.vith the reader's imaginative partici-
pation xvas a critical element of her effect-oriented theory
of composition, since achievement of effect was, in a large
part, dependent upon' the awareness of the audience. In
The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth quotes the author and critic
Ford Maddox Ford, as saying, "You must have your eyes for-
ever on your Reader. That alone constitutes Technique." ^

Comm.unication of Beauty Through Reality

As a thorough investigation of her papers revealed,
beauty was the effect Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings attempted
to comiffiLinicate to her audience. However, in writing of her
ov/n personal concept of beauty, she v,'as aware that her con-
cept might differ from that of her readers; consequently,
she was concerned about tlie difficulty in transmitting her
concept of beauty to her readers. Her lecture notes on
"Tiie Relativity of Beauty" address this concern: "I do
not know whac is beautiful o-'- what is ugly, I only know
what seems beautiful to m.e . As a writer I can only try

■"ibid

to 3:ocus ia.'' Nev'erti.eJ.esi , sh-'i knew she had the ability
to "focus in," to make visible the invisible, to irake
others see the natural Florida with the "inner eye," for
she stated in her lecture, "I seen to have the gift for
i?,aking others see. ..."

Marjorie Kinnan Rau'lings may have called her ability
to share what she perceived as beautiful v.'ith others a
gift, but it was not by so amorphous a trait as a gift
that she w.-s able to convey beauty to her audience.
Within her definition of the artist lay the means whereby
she achieved the results: "No one is immune to beauty.
The artist is one -v/ho tries to share, by giving it con-
crete expression, the particular form of beauty that has

, ■ • ,,12
stirred mm."

In order for tJie reader to be stirred as she had
been stirred, in order for the reader to see beauty as she
had seen it, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings felt she must formu-
late a reality for those forms of beauty wliich have
stirred her and through tlii.s reality share that beauty with
tho I'eader. Reality was no simple fidelity to actuality,
however, for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings attempted to create
for the reader a sense of reality into which the reader
might: oring the imagination to play. This, then, is not

M. K. R. , "Notes for Lecture on Creature Writing."

^^M. K. R., "Le.-r.,r.^ v,.rM< ,.., i^.l,rivMv Ml- K,^;M,fv."

mere factuaiitv, but ver is irp Llit.-de . As she defined it,
"the sense is only the imaginative awareness of actuality,"
which is both vivid and natural. Here, then, was total
reader participation, for the reader brought into play
the imagination which finalized and actualized the reality
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had attempted to formulate.
Through this perceived sense of reality she was able to
transmit to the reader the beauty evoked in her by the
Florida Crscker.

Without this vividness, the communication of beauty
can be difficult to achieve. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ad-
dressed this point: "Perhaps that is the secret of fic-
tion. When people written about miove in reality before
our eyes, touch us, then anything they do becomes vivid
and important." "^ In her lecture, "Facts, Verses, in
Fiction," she also stated, "it is difficult to be stirred
by something w^e have never seen or that is not recreated
for us with great vividness." ^ So then does she attempt
to share her concept of beauty with the reader through
the creation of a vivid sense of reality.

M. K. R., "Facts, Verses, in Fiction."

"'''To Maxwell Evart Perkins from H. K. R., undated^
Lpproxim.ately January, 1937.

M. K. R. , "Facts, Verses, in Fiction."

Def init ioT! o f . B e a u ty

The predetei-ir.ined effect Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
sought in her writing was the communication of beauty to
her readers. In this study, beauty is defined through
the perception of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. To her, the
designation of the title "artist" was predicated upon the
ability to communicate the effect of beauty; for the artist
was one who shared with the audience as the writer was
one who shared with the reader. Since, for the writer,
beauty was always in terms of reader or audience percep-
tion, then the definition of the artist v.'as consonant with
her earlier assumptions that the creative product did not
exist until it was received. To her, all people were
susceptible to beauty; however, the true artistic impulse
was in the sharing. To illustrate this sliaring, this
communication of beauty, she related to her lecture class
the following incident.

I took some negio boys into my
orange grove to pick up the dropped
fruit. One ragged dirty little darky
found an orange- tree snail, no bigger
than a pea. He brought it to me and
said, 'Lady this here is purt)-. Do
you want it? ' ^^

Upon recitation of this anecdote, she stated, "Incidentally,

that is probably an example of the true artistic impulse.

"•^M. K. R., "Relativity of Tieautv,

The artist is one who tries to share ..." for the crea-
tive iinpulss does not exist in isclatlon, but in conjunc-
tion v/ith an audience."''

The beauty u-hich she, as an artist, atterapted to
ccmnunicate to the reader was more important to her tJian
truth, for truth may- not be validated aesthetically. When
beauty has been commiinicated , the result can be authenti-
cated, for as she stated, "beauty is more valid, more
important, more trustworthy than truth, because whJ.le we
cannot be sure of truth, we know w^ith our own minds and
senses when we are aesthetically or spiritually stirred
and by what."'^ In a 1935 speech delivered at Florida
Southern College, she expressed her feelings of inadequacy
as an artist ivhenever she was unable to communicate the
sense of beauty to her readers: "I always feel that I've

failed completely as an artist when I've left anyone with

,,19
a sense or ugimess.

Although .''!arjorie Kinnan Rawlings' goal as an

artist was to share with the reader that in which she

found beauty, she asked the folloviu'- question in a

18 p „,

i-i. K. R. , "':^reative isriciag. •

19-

M- K. R. , "Flor j c' ian.: Tbe Invisible i-'lorid3

Tyr-ed scrint of- soeech. 1955.

lecture: "n'hat hope :.? there :--;r ?n;- writer to pass on
the particular beauty that happens to stir him?" In reply
to her own query, she stater., 'It is in his fierce de-
termination to make inrangible beauty tangible"; there-
fore, comsriunication to the reader of the sense of beauty
lies for Mariorie Kinnan Rav\rlings In the adherence to her
personal theory of composition."

In dealing v/ith the concept of beauty, usually
the aesthetic and not the rhetorical dimension has been
inv'olved; however, Marjorie Kinnan Ravvlings' concern was
with the communication of beauty, and it is therefore her
concept and her definition of the term that this study
uses. As the author herself stated, "I do not know what
is beautiful or what is ugly, I only know what seems
beautiful to me. As a writer I can only try to focus in.""
And it was through the formulation and utilization of her
effect -oriented and personal theory of composition that
sfie attempted to "focus in," and communicate to her read-
ing audience that sense of beauty she felt was essential
to art.

Respc)nse.s to Beauty

The existence of beauty for Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings was defined not only by her own reaction, but

M. K. R., "Relativity of Beauty."

Ibid.

also by the reaction of her readers. Since Marjorie

Kinnan Raivlings i-ecognized ''the obligation of the reader

to open his mind to what the author was trying to say,"

then reader reaction was in part dependent on the artist's

intention, which at that point was the communication of

beauty.

Marjorie Kinnan Raw! ings perceived beauty in the

interaction of tlie Florida Cracker with the natural environ-

p.ent; however, in order to share this beauty, she had to

communicate it to the reader. Since to her beauty existed

not in isolation but in reaction, it was by this reaction

that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings defined it.

Beauty is anything that stirs an
emotional reaction to an extent that we
are conscious of a spiritual excitement
over and above the sensory perception . 22

Stressing once more the resultant effect, she views beauty

as that which "stirs the imagination of the beholder."'"^

In her 1935 speech delivered at Florida Southern College,

she again addressed the resultant "spiritual excitement"

to beauty that occurs in those to wliom the invisible is

raade visible, for "beauty must be seen with spiritual

as well as physical eye. It is invisible to those

unfortunate folks who ... do not have the inner eve with

""M. K. R. , "Creative IVriting."

ibid.

which to see." By these emotions, then, shall beauty be
known to have been efcected. Mien the reader has experi-
enced or has expressed the experience so then shall the
reader have seen with "the inner eye."

Basically, though, this effect is ach.ieved through
techniques that are a part of her personal theory of coinpo-
sitiw.i. Thus, when a reader has experienced beauty, tlie
resultant effect will manifest itself through a stirring
of the iraagination as well as an emotional and spiritual
excitation. And what are the sources of beauty which the
author communicates? To Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings the
interaction of a small group of people In a specific
locale provided a wealth of such beauty.

Sources of Beauty Particularly in The Yearling

Although her avowed objective was the achievement

of the effect of beauty on the reader, Marjorie Kinnan

Rawlings realized that beauty was a relative quality.

for her personally, the beauty ihe sought to share was

explicit within the Florida Scrub.

I find them [the people of the
Florida backwoods] beautiful because
they are an integral part of their
background, buautiful in cheir repose,
their dignity, their self-respect . . .
They joke about hunger and death. But
they are distinctly conscious of their
harmony with their .surroundings. Many

,of then are deifiniteiy conscious of
the nat;j7-a.l beauty ai'Qund them and of
t. h e ]\ a r m o n y of L h e i r 11 v e s . - 4

Hov/ever, her concept of beauty might be dissinilar to that

of hei' readers. She v;rote in her notes on Creative Writing

"It means that beauty is not absolute, but is distinctly .

relative, and, that what fails to stir rr.o , may constitute

beauty for you."" She v/as , ho\v-ever^ quick to point out

some particular benefits to the relativity of beauty as

far as her personal focus ivas concerned.

Peihaps it's just as well that
everyone doesn't see beauty as we do,
for it" everyone was stirred deeply as
some of us by the hammocks and the
rivers and the marshes , the state
would be overpopulated. -'6

Although recognizing the possibility of differing perspec-
tives between the reader and the writer, Marjorie. Kinnan
Rawlings had three main parameters within which she, her-
self, found beauty; and as revealed in her papers, these
areas may be designated to the following categories: (a)
the simplicity of the Cracker people, (b) the natural
Florida setting, and (c) the harmonv of the people v;ith
this setting or background.

K. R. , "Relativity of Beautv

'^M. K. R., "Creative Writing."

"Floridian.

The < ircplicitv cf the Florida Cracker was one of
the main foci o£ beauty as perceived by Marjorie Kinn^'^n
Rav/lings. When asked, in a radio interviev; in 19-il, her
reasons for remaining in Florida, she praised "the natural
beauties and a certain sirriplici t>- of life m the rural
sections.""' Con-^inualiy sac both v.'rote and spoke about
the beauty of these people: "I see the simplicity and
courage and natural fight behind these people. Other
writers see ot}\er things.""'' Vvhen as;:ed why she wrote of
these people, she answered, "They were a part of something
that I found entirely beautiful; I '.vrote of the people
and the background I found stirring and admirable.""

For all her interest in the simplicity of the

Florida Cracker, she had been chastised by the Florida

Commerce Department which apparently failed to see this

beauty.

When I began to write of the
simpler people more and their simpler
life, I was condemned for emphasizing
a side of life tiiat was not believed
to be helpful to the state's develop-
ment. 30

^^M. K. R., "Radio Interview." Typed Script, li'41

2 8

M. K, R. , "Lecture Notes on Charac uci' izar i on . "

29,, ., ., ,,,,■■ r

M. K. .'! . , "u;)'.::o ' i:r r rv i (V; . '

'"ibid.

It riar.tered little tc Marjorie Kinnan Ra'ivlings. She knev:
siie liad fv'^'and. beaury when she saw the people, and decided
"I n\ust v.Tite o£ this land and these people as I saw them,
stirred by ny nevv love."'"' According to a personal inter-
viev. by Harry Evans, "'The things Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
wanted to write about were so simple she doubted her ability
to make them, interesting.""'"'" That this fear was ill-founded
is evident in the interest -holding qualities of the fol-
lowing speech, in which, she described the sense of beauty
she found in the simplicity oc the people.

You must have seen some v\'ithered
old woman in a gray and white percale
dress standing in the doorv/ay of an
unpainted pine shack under a live oak
or a magnolia, and felt that she was
a strong and lovely part of a sturdv_
and admirable and a difficult life.^-^

It was of this beauty that she attempted to write and to

preserve before it vanished into time.

The true Florida Crackers are al-
most gone and I regret it, because they
are an integral part of their background,
and beautiful in their repose, their dig-
nity, their self respect. -"'4

l\. K. R., "Autobiographical Sketch."

"Harry tvans , "^uariorie Kinnan Rawlings," Th;
j3mn.lj^_Circ_:L_e , 1 (May 14, 1943), unnumbered scrapbooK
:opy .

"■f!. K. R., "The f-'loridian."

■^"Ibid.

Thus, it was in the vanishing Florida backwoods people she
fourxd a major element of lier concept of beauty.

The beauty Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings sav«; v;as also
within the natural setting of the Florida Scrub, for as
she stated in one of her speeches, "To those of us who
find the natural Florida so lovely, everything about it is
beautiful, its v;ild life and even its few remaining back-
woods inhabitants." Enveloped by the beauty of the land,
the fJora and the fauna of her environment pervaded her
literary approachi. As a personal interviewer remarked,
■'Siie wanted to write about flowers, ferns, frogs, and the
people who lived close to them..""^"

As cited previously, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings v/as
aware that there were some wlio could not see the beauty
she saw: "those unfortunate folks who are blind or blunted
to many forms of beauty because they do not have the inner
eye with which to see."' It is ciitirely possible that
her work in The Yearling reflects an attempt to make what
■■may have been invisible beauty to some, visible to others.

To Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, beauty also existed
in the harmony of the Fiorida Cracker v/ith the Florida

•^^Ibjd.

" Evans, "!Iarjorie Kinnan Raivlings, Family Circle

•^''m. K. n. . "The rioridim."

Scrub She stated ^his ijhilosonhv m a 1941 radio ir,tov

1 have a tiieory that t!;ere is an
affinity betv/een people and places.
Each of us is entitled to live in a
place aeamst a pnvsical background
tliat is h.arrionious v;itl: our own nature. -^"^

This Iiarmcny of people and environment, this balance and

affinity, vas the beauty she saw and of v;hich she v/rote.

I was struck at once b}- a harmony
between the people and their backaround.
The poorest Cracker? had a sense of one-
ness with the country itself, the scrub,
the piney woods, the haniriocks, the prair-
ies. TJK'y '.vere a part of _^somet hi ng I
fouTid entirely beaut if ul . -^9

What she saw in the people and their background she believed

was shared by the people theraselves, for she felt they

were aware both of this beauty and of their harmony with

It. To her, one aspect of beauty was this very awareness,

"the feeling of those people for a natural and liarmonious

a 0

background . " ' "

Ker rendering of the closed svsten of The Yearling

-s discussed previously in Chapter One, elaborated on her
oncept of beauty of the individual interacting with
he environ;:ien :. ft is this harmony of the Flo'-ida Cracker

'^l- k. R. , "Radio Interview

Ibid .

To Norma 7: S. '^''.'vo from id. 1

v/ith the Florida Scrub whijh Mariorie Kinnan Rawlings sougi-it
to share and nhich is the beauty that personally "stirs

an er.otional reaction [and brings about] a spiritual ex-

^1
citement over and above the sensory perception.''

The<

?ry

Compos it ■

ion >

leces

sary

Achieve

Effe..

Deauf,

,' ini

roug!-

i Lre.

atioi

1 01

: Real It V

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' theory of composition
was the raeans whereby she, as an artist, was able to
create a sense of actuality by which beauty was comn-iuni-
cated to the reader. The salient facets of that theory cf
composition are the process of characterization, the use
of facts and details, and the use of objectivity, simplicity,
and dialect. To Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings these elements
of language manipulation helped achieve rhetorical effec-
tiveness by creating a reality for the reader whicli conveved
her concept of beauty.

Through the Pro c o s s o f Characterization

Concerned witii a ''sense of actuality," specific-
ally reality in characterization, Mariorie Kinnan Rawlings
adhered to the definition of characterization proffered
by Kclman that characterization i.3 "the creation of images

'^^U. K. H., "Creative V/riting."

by imaginary persons 5o credible that: they exist for the
reader as real within the linits of the fiction. The
ability to characterize the people of his imagination

successfully is one of the primary attributes of a good

. ■ ^ ,,42
novelist . "

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings attempted to achieve
reality through the process of characterization. She
viewed this element as of primary importance: "In the
novel of people, of life and living, nothing is m.ore im-
portant than charactorizar.ion. ''"^^ Her approach to the
novel mirrored this statement. Elsewhere, she compared
the characters in her novel to piano keys, for tlie charac-
ters ivere the instruments by ivhich the story vvas brought
forward. ' Ultimately, "the success of the novel of ideas
depends on whether the characters are sufficiently alive

.1 c

to carry tnose ideas . . . ho\; real,'

Characters, to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, "are
like people in a long friendship or in a m.arriage; if
the author's job is well done, they become a part of you,
so that you never forget them." Various lectures of

"'.villiam F. Thrall, Addison Hubbard, and Hugh'
Holnan, A Handbook to Liiierature (New York: The Odvssey
Press, 19o0j , p. / 9 .,

4 3
' M. K. R. , "Characterization."

4 4. T 1 - 1
^^Ibid.

hers and letters were addressed to the process of charac-
ter i2:ation. It was of major concern, since by this
process, she attempted to achieve the sense of reality
fron; which caiTie the effect of beauty. Investigation of
primarily four of her lectures ("Characterization," "Facts
Verses, in. Fiction, "■ "The Mechanics of V/riting," and
"Creative Writing") , as well as several pieces of her
correspondence, yielded tliree broad principles of charac-
terization to which she adhered:

(1) The characters are "true- to- life" :
although the characters may have so:r:e
basis in reality, it is by the infusion
of the author's artistic imagination
that the character achieves "a sense

of actuality."

(2) The major characters function not
only as particular but also as the
universal, acting in ways identifi-
able as Every Person.

(3) The characters are used as cohesive
units encompassing v\-ithin their per-
sonalities the individual limits of
their thoughts and actions.

True- to- 1 ife c haracteri tat ion

Characters may have some basis in rrutli, but it
is through the infusion of the artist's creative imagina-
tion that the characters begin to "move in reality."
Except for the doctor, the characters in The Yearl ing are
all fictitious, more fictitious than any she had used
previously, ■•ihc to\d ar, i :, r r r\ i tnvor ; iio.vcver, Jody did

have some basis in truth, lor he embodied the memory of
two old men, one of whom had told Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
about his youth arid of the destruction of his pet deer
which threatened the family's meager crop of corn; and as
she stated: "I ciystalliied their tales into the story of

a boy who m.ight have. lived that uncomplicated life in the

4 7
scrub." This was the basis of her story. The situation

involved in the creation of characters for The Yearling

was the subject of one of her lectures.

Sometimes an idea or an emotion or
a situation or a set of dramatic incidents
cries out to be written about. In that
case, the writer creates the characters
to express the idea, the emotion, the
situation or the set of dramatic inci-
dents . ^^

Through the addition of artistic details by the author,

through the infusion of the creative imagination of the

author, these characters take on a reality. The reality

stems, not from, a j ourna 1 istic- like reportage, but from

an artistic rendering. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings stated,

there is "more activity required in making truth artistic

4 9
than starting f^-om scratch."' She would begin with

Aut.tior unknown, "Author Tells of Hot Trip

from Bimini," undated scrapbook copy.

Author unknown, "Today's Woman/' Christian
Science Monitor, September 4, 1940. "

M. K. R., "Facts, Verses, in Fiction."

^"'m. K. R. , "The Mechanics of Writing."

an idea or perhaps with the seiublance of a character from
reality and then create the personage her narrative required
Addressing rhis matter, she stated in a lecture: "V/hat
often happens is tiiat he [the artist] adds his own thoughts,
for his own purposes, to characters he has knovvn."

Out of her own imagination she then "fertilizes by
the creative germ" the character she has created. The
artist hopes "then in actual writing to transfuse your vvork
v/ith your own personality ... a process of osmosis, to
filter vshat you have to say through your characters."'
The resulting character, then, is mainly fictitious — the
creation of the artist, who "may begin with an actual
living person, but his imagination takes him further to
adapt the character to his own creative needs so that
the final character, even though dozens of people claim
to recognize him or her, is fiction." "

Though she has often denied it, many have assumed
to recognize characters as being copied from life, but,
in fact, none of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' characters is
a "life copy," nor does she feel that otlier authors have
copied characters. "i think no writer has ever com[)letcly

■"m. K. R., "Facts, Verses, in Fiction
" .M. K. (I., "Creative Writing."
■^ fi. K. R. , "Autobio.p.i-.'.iphical Sketch."

copied a true character- . . . Many of ny own characters
are based on people I knov;, but not a single one is a life
copy." "^ Ihe created character has been supplemented by
the author's point of view, infused by the creative imagina
tion, and placed in "an abode in tine and space." Like-
wise, charactei'S are. changed and adapted for coherence
to the author's intention.

Univers ality in characteriza t ion

Another general principle of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings was the portrayal of the major characters as
representative of a fusion wlierein the individual func-
tions both as the particular and the universal, or as the
literary term states, the concrete universal. Her defini-
tion of the role of the ivriter embodies the concept of
universality of characterization to which she adhered.

For the producer of literature is
not a reporter but a creator. His con-
cern is not with presenting superficial
and external aspects, however engaging,
of an actual people; it is ivith the inner
revelation of mankind, thinking and moving
against a backdrnp of life itself v/ith as
much dramatic or pointed effect as the
artistry of the writer can command. 55

-^U)_id.

"M. K. R., "Characterization."

Maricrie Kinnan R.awlings, "Regional Literature of
.h," College English, 1 (February, 1940), 3S1-389.

The individual J iiiteracting v/ith the environment,
reflects the macrocosm of total humanity ^ interacting v/ith
the ur. iversi.. The closed S'/stem of the novel. The Yearlins^

detailed in Chapter One, existed as an attempt to order

the Ciiacs of life. As she stated in her address to the

National Council of Teachers of English,

The creative v;riter filters men and
women real and fancied through his imagina-
tion as through a catnlytic agent to re-
solve the confusion of life into an ordered
pattern, the coordinated meaningful design
colored with the creator's personality,
keyed to his own philosophy that we call
art. "56

Characters may function on several levels either

as the specific individual or as the universal. In an

early lecture, Marjorie Kinnan Ra\\/lings states,

Character can be strictly an indi-
vidual or as a character can typify m.an-
kind in various situations of defeat or
success, tragedy or joy, love or hate,
or any aspect of human conflict within
itself or in relation to other people or
to life. 5^

The major characters in The Yearling function on the uni

versal level, whereas the minor characters function more

on the specific factual level. In a 19 1? interview she

stated specifically the universal function within t)\e

closed system of The Yenrlinq:

56lbid

^^M. K. R , "Characterir.at ion."

. . . life (is represented by his
pet, the deer), love (the real signifi-
cance of i'.is father's love and his o\\m
love of the deer], death of Iiis father,
and loneliness . 5o

Expressed througn Jody is the universal premonition of

maturity that Marjorie Kinnan Rav,lings first experienced

on her father's farm. long years before. The youth and

adolescence of Jody function to reflect the remembered

common emotion.

At the beginning Jody is twelve years
old. In the year covered by the book he
experienced the thing I remembered exper-
iencing that April day back in Brookland
. . . that definite premonition of matur-
ity ... I referred to it a while ago as
ecstacy tinged with sadness. 59

Her youth and her father were, as she stated, the basis

of her feeling of universality, for "from, him I learned my

love of nature . . . and a sense of kinship with men and

women everywhere who live close to the soil."' Thus,

through the generalization of the particular, Marjorie

Kinnan Rawlings attempted to achieve in The Yearling the

universal, typifyiag those human emotions common to all

people in all ages witliin a chosen character.

Evans, "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings," Family Circle.
"M. K. R. , "Autobiographical Sketch.''

Up. i ty in characteri :.a tion

The third aspect of characterization to which
Marjorie Kinnan Ravlings adiiered was the functioning of
the characters as cohesive units. The concept of unity
of characterization in a novel is the organizing principle
that the characters are integrated and liave, as stated
by Holrian, "a necessary relationship to each other and an
essential relationship to the whole of which they are
parts." The totality of character is achieved by the
cohesiveness of action and plausibility of motivation.
Credibility is resultant from coherence; in other words,
the characters do nothing in contradiction of their
roles, thereby achieving a reality of harmony and unity.

The Yearling was told tlirough the perspective of
a tv/elve-year-old boy, and in order to achieve unity,
Marjorie Kinnan Raw] ings is constantly cautious of using
too mature a vocabulary or too complex a perspective for
a twelve-year-old. She felt her previous work. Golden
Apples , had failed because of a disharmony and a lack of
unity, for as she wrote Maxwell Perkins on July 11, 1956,
"1 am sure you are wrong about the reason for Golden
Apples not doinjj better. People recognized unconsciously
in it d i sharinony — and every one is hungry for harmony and

^Mhr.-il], Hibbard, and Holman, p. 54 S

unity." She worked to nake sure this v/ould not be the
case with The Yearling. On July 3, 1956, when she wrote
Maxwell Perkins of her plans for her nevv' book, she stated:
"It will be absolutely all told through the boy's eyes.
I want it through his eyes before the age of puberty
brings in any other factors to confuse the simplicity
of viewpoint." Although she later considered changing
her approach, she realized the possible disharmony and
loss of unity that could result. "But I dare not sv/itch
the interest that way; that is, begin from the father's
point of \'iew, then take it up from the boy's; for the
father continues throughout the narrative, but it m.ust
be as the boy's father, not as the chief protagonist.
. . . " "^ A change could be inconsistent with the reality
of the novel.

For Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings harmony and unity
result from adequate reinforcement of character with de-
tails, since as she expressed it, in a novel, "character
doesn't stand alone; character mast be backed up."
Though she had the background, and basically the idea for
The Yearling, she had to work hard to achieve unity. In
1935, she was aware of the hard work that would be involved

1936

f-i. fv . K. , '^naracter.i zaticn

Its success v/ill dep«".d, I should say,
almost altogethei" or how real, how vivjd,
I am able to niake individuals whose lives
move along . . . [.-^nd it involves] treraen-
dously hard work in delineating anything
like a reality. 61

Two years later, she felt the characters were not adequately

created and she had not achieved unity of characterization,

so she rewrote much of the novel.

I had to discard everything of The
Yearling ... to give it cohesion. My
first thoughts had been to plunge into
more or less exciting events. Then I
realized that they were not exciting un-
less the boy and his father and his
surroundings were so real, so familiar
that the things that happened to him took
on color because it ail came closer home
in its very f amiliarit/. *^^

One of the basic precepts of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' writing was the value of characterization: "In
a novel you can't get away from the importance of charac-
terization." The careful delineation of character to
achieve unity was a major factor in characterization,
and to accomplisii it, often, "infinitely apparently snnall
details require rewriting to give a final harmony of char-
acterization." The character functions as an integral

To Maxwell Perkins from M. K. R. , undated, approx

imately December, 19.35

■^To Maxwull Perkins from M, K. R.. undated, approx-

imatelv January, 1947.
06

.M. K. R., "Characterization."
M. K. R. , ".^utobio^jraphical Sketch."

and cohesive unit, supplementing and complementing the
total novel. In an autobiographical sketch, she stated,
"None of my novels has satisfied me, [however] The Yearling
is probably the most coordinated of my books."

Through Use of Facts and Details

The use of facts and details to achieve a sense of
reality by which the effect of beauty is accomplished was
another major element of her theory of composition. The
place of fact or scientific details in fiction was manifest
throughout her papers; for example, the title of one of
her lectures was "Facts, Verses, in Fiction," which, as
indicated on the folder in the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Collection, she had filed originally under 'Facts vs.
Fiction.' To Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings all the facts that
surround the writer are source material; but those facts
may be "fertilized by the creative germ" and "transfused
with your own [author's] personality." "Even the still-

life painting is transformed with the personality of the
painter." These facts were a part of the adjustments
made to actuality so that, as stated by Marjorie Kinnan

68,, . ,
Ibid.

M. K. R. , "Facts, Verses, in Fiction."

M. K. R. , "Creative IVriting."
'°Ibid.

Rawlirxgs, ''it better fitted the quality of mind I wanted

catch . . . yet that quality of mind is true. . . ."

Writers are like great teachers, who have transfused facts

with their own creative personality and "have found beauty

in ideas, in what pass for facts."'"

The botanical details of the Florida Scrub, the

agricultural information pertinent to farming, the data

important to day-to-day existence, and the folklore that

pervaded the lives of the Florida Cracker were, to the

surprise of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, that which greatly

interested her readers. Her surprise was in part due to

the pleasure she also received from this type of factual

information .

It is only since Golden Apples that
I realize what it is about my writing
that people like. I don't m.ean that I
am writing for anyone, but now I feel
free to luxuriate in the simple details
that interest me and that I have been so
amazed to find interest other people. ^3

These botanical, agricultural, and social details were

those she fully utilized to infuse her writing with a

sense of reality.

M. K. R., "Facts, Verses, in Fiction."
^^M. K. R., "Relativity of Beauty."
^•^To Maxwell Perkins from M. K. R. , July 51, 1936.

Her concern vvith the problems of accuracy in the
details and facts continued to pervade many of her per-
sonal papers. Once when questioned on the authenticity
of a dance ot whooping cranes she had written about in
The Yearling, she defended herself to an interviewer by
stating, "she could not prove the story, but believed it

because it was told her by a man whose memory she found to

74
be unfailingly clear and accurate." In her continuing

desire for authenticity, she drew a geological map of the

region used in The Yearling and a "month-by-month chart

of events for the year that is covered in the book."''

Much of her energies had been spent in gathering factual

data; for example, living with different families for

weeks in the Florida Scrub, keeping journals on folklore

and pharmacopoeia and botany, informally interviexv'ing

people at the Creek. All this was part of her concern

with factual information, which was most apparent in her

letter to Maxwell Perkins one month after the publication

of The Yearling.

My secret fear about The Yearling
has just been allayed. I was so afraid
that the old-guard hunters and woodsmen
would find flaws. I know you think I
put too much emphasis on the importance

'Author unknown, "Author Tells of Hot Trip . . ."
To Maxwell Perkins from M. K, R. , March 26, 193'

of fact in fiction, but it seems to me
that this type of work is net valid if
the nature lore behind it is not scien-
tifically true in every detail. 76

And finally, in one of her lectures, she replies to her

O'.vm rhetorical question, "U'hat makes characters real?"

by stating simply, "Details.
Methods of Expression

,77

Marjorie Kinnan Railings' attempt to achieve a
verisimilitude which could bring the reader's imagination
into play encompassed the use not only of facts and de-
tails, but also of various methods of expression in her
audience-oriented style. For Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,
style was the adaptation of her language in order to
achieve mutual understanding between the author and the
reader. No effect, especially the effect of beauty,
would be possible if the style were inappropriate. In a
1940 paper written for the National Council of Teachers
of English, she discussed style as it related to a volume
by Margaret Mitchell.

Yet we ask of style principally
that it be an effective medium of ex-
pression for the material itself, and
it seems to me that no narrative, no
set of characters, could carry the

To Maxwell Perkins from M. K. R., May 14, 1937

M. K. R., "Charjcter ization,

excitement and the living conviction of
this book_unless the style were at least
adequate . "^

Marjorie Kinnan Rav/lings' style was a combination of both
the idei to be expressed and the individual language
manipulation necessary to achieve a close transmission of
the idea. Beauty vvas the idea to be expressed, and certain
personal methods were necessary in order to create a vivid
and natural reality from which to obtain the effect of
beauty in the reader. What the reader receives from the
language manipulations of the author may not only be what
explicitly was stated, but also what subtlely was connoted.

Evidence within her papers indicated specific
facets of her concept of style to achieve a predetermined
effect. These included evincing a quality of objectivity,
as well as utilizing simplicity of construction, and dia-
lect. Fully realizing that the goal of all narrative is
understanding, she stressed the advantage she had received
from her earlier career as a iournalist: "In newspaper

work, one has to write so that one is understood clearly.

79
Only a great genius is privileged not to be understood."

In her lecture to a class in Creative Writing at the Uni-
versity of Florida, she succinctly summed up the goals of

7 R

M. K. R., "Regional Literature."

M. K. R., "Writing as a Career," Bock of Knowledge

Annual. 194S, Typed Scriut.

style as follows: '"The desire to write is the desire to

say something, to say that something well, to make that

8 0
something understood."

Obi ect ivity

Objectivity is a major quality used to create a
sense of actuality with v;hich to communicate beauty to the
reader. Objectivity may be defined as that effect evinced
by a literary work when that v/riting is understood by the
readers as being independent from the emotional or personal
sentiments of the author. Personal detachment was for
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings an important technique that she

described in her lectures as tJie ability of "being able

8 1
to view it all from the outside." This type of objec-
tivity, once more, was gleaned from her newspaper work,

for in journalism, "one learns human nature in the raw.

8 2
One learns to see human beings objectively."

As she wrote in a letter to Maxwell Perkins,

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings aspired to sharing this aesthetic

distancing with another literary figure of her day, F.

Scott Fitzgerald, for she hoped to emulate his ability to

8 0

M. K. R. , "Mechanics of Writing."

^^M. K. R., "Creating Writing."

'^^M. K. R., "Writing as a Career."

"visualize people not m their immediate setting from the
hiim.an point of view — but in tine and space — almost you
might say vrith divine detachment,"'" Her aesthetic dis-
tancing was in no way accidental. In a letter to Maxwell
Perkins in 1936, three years before The Yearling's com-
pletion, she explicitly stated her goal of objectivity:
". . . it ma> sound sentimental or too symbolic to make
a good story ... I have no fear of it at all, and I
shall be careful never to sentimentalize."

Dialect

Another m.ethod Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings employed
was that of dialect. By stressing dialectical differences
in vocabulary, grammatical habits, and pronunciation, the
isolation and separation of the Florida Cracker by both
natural and social barriers ;vere ever made evident. The
resultant dialect used in The Yearling to convey the realis-
tic elem.ent of the Florida Cracker emerged over a period of
time, after her first attempts at dialect proved inadequate,
In a letter to Norman Berg she stated her awareness that

q c

"dialect is a dangerous business. ..." Marjorie Kinnan

■^To Maxwell Perkins from M. K. R., February 11,
1934.

To Maxwell Pericins from M. K. R. , undated, approx
imately October, 1936.

q C

'"To Norman S. Berg from M. K. R. , November 27, 194:

Rawlings also indicated her avvareness of the effect of
incorrectly written dialect when, in her correspondence,
she criticizes another author for giving not only the
dialogue but also the narrative in dialect: "The Llewellyn
book . . . was indeed sorry stuff . . . what invalidated
it was the use of dialect to convey thoughts as well as
speech." Likewise, in a talk to the National Council
of Teachers of English, slie stated that too deep an
involvement with dialect moves the work into a technical
or National Geographic type of study: "Elizabeth Madox
Roberts evinces such a scholarly preoccupation with dia-
lect speech as to force her work into the class of tech-

8 7
nical or erudite writings. ..."

Her use of Cracker speech functions not only as

part of her attempted creation of actuality, but also as

a symbol. As she stated, "Cracker speech is a certain

88
sign of the isolation of the Florida interiors. . . ."

The importance of the use of dialect to create the real-
istic sense of the Florida land and the isolation of the
frontier is evinced in her statement: "The Cracker speech
of long isolation is in my opinion one of the assurances

86,. . ,
Ibid.

M. K. 11., "Regional Literature."

8 P

M. K. R., "Cracker Florida." Early Autobioj^raphi -

cai Writin.'is.

of the entrenchn'ent of this frontier. Your true frontier

go
is resistant." " Within this isolation, both the Cracker

people and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings find beauty.

Dialect, even though "a dangerous business," seemed

to be a necessity to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings if she Vv-ere

to create a sense of ■ actual ity, but she was aware that

dialect must be used carefully: "I have suffered over my

own necessary (or so I thought) use of it [dialect] for

dialogue. A writer can JUST get by on using it for dia-

90
logue . . . but to carry it further is fatal." In The

Yearling, dialect was used only for dialogue.

Simpl icity

With her audience-centered theory of composition,
simplicity of style was of major importance to Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings. To complicate the text with superfluous
elements would result in a mockery of reality, and not the
sense of actuality she wished to achieve. Syntax was
determined by the goal of reality. For example, as she
stated in one of her lectures, it is necessary to use

"short, almost blunt sentences j.f I am not to lose real-

91
ity." Hov;ever, she also stated that her natural tendency

89., - ,
Ibid.

90to Norman S. Berg from M. K. R. , November 27,
1943.

-^M. K. R., "Creative Writing."

seemed to be toward' a cluttering of the text and oniy
through self -discipline was she able to accomplish the
simplicity of style she desired. In a 1939 article about
her winning the Pulitzer Prize, she xs quoted as address-
ing the concern of simplicity in a letter vvritten several
years previously.

Now I think I have discovered my
weakness ... It is a tendency to
clutter the text with gaudy colors that
somehow mock reality, like a Maxfield
Parrish print. I must work under my
own mental thumb screws, hold myself in
check when I want to gallop. 92

The various tricks of style were anathema to her simplis-
tic approach, for she felt, "tricks of technique annoy

93
rather than please." Her admonition was against the

artificial and for personal integrity and honesty in

writing. Use "integrity in fiction ... be yourself,"

94
she warned.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings stressed neither the use

of new words singly or in new combinations, nor the use

of old words in old combinations. She admonished against

the latter, saying, "The most hopeless sign in beginning

9 5
writers is the use of trite phrases." " However, she did

Author Unknown, "Pulitzer Winner, '= Independent
Woman, January, 1939, in scrapbook.

^■^M. K. R., "Mechanics of Writing."

advocate the use of old simple words m nev; combinations.

The words themselves do not seem
stale to us and we do not tire of them
anymore than we do of water to drink;
[however], certain often-used combina-
tions of words are stale. 9*^

Subsumed under the heading "Choosing a Style" in her lec-
ture on the "Mechanics of Writing," she labels saying the
obvious as "burbling." Even symbols and metaphors are
to be simplistic, but not obvious: "In my stories, not
the red of Chinese lacquer but the red [of a cardinal]."

Underplaying vv'as another aspect of this simplistic
approach. Once again, she cites the contribution her
early journalistic career made to her literary style,
for the style she learned as a journalist is the style
she advocates as a creative artist: "There was no place

for the purple prose to which all young writers are so

jj- . J ,,98
addicted.

In the type of uncluttered, simple writing to

which she often referred, "the story must be told v\fith

no waste of words and the superfluous adjectives and ad-

99
verbs dropped by the wayside." Understatement forces

Ibid.

97ibxd

M. K. R., "Autobiographical Sketch."

Ibid .

the reader to bring into play the imagination, whereas
overstatement leads to surfeit. Since to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings effective writing was often dependent upon this
interplay of reader's imagination with artistic creatioD,
then to her "most bad writing is overwriting; understate-
ment in the hands of anyone who is basically a writer is
always more effective than overstatement." Her pref-
erence for understatement is just another facet of her con-
tinued awareness of the reader and the writer's effect
upon the reader. As she told her class, the writer uses
understatement "for the simple reason that you have to
leave some play for the reader's own imagination. The
reader himself fills the gap."

The expressive technique Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
utilized to achieve a sense of reality was basically
direct and simple. The process of narrative that best
created a sense of reality was that which she had learned
through experience, for she felt tliat the complex narra-
tive used earlier had diminished tl^e effect and so was
responsible for "the fatally divided interest that we got
in Golden Apples ." '" Fo'- The Yearling :-he did not make
that mistake.

^°°M. K. R., "Creative Writing

'"ibid.

^°"To Maxwell Perkins from M. K. R. , October 10

1936.

With a predilection for wanting to bring the
audience's imagination into play, her natural tendency,
as far as narrative was concerned, was toward generaliza-
tion and implicitness, leading at times to a type of
vagueness; however, from Maxwell Perkins she learned that
reality is gained otherwise.

I had to learn what I learned from
Maxwell Perkins, the book editor at
Scribner's, is the value, no, the neces-
sity, of direct narrative, direct, not
implicit, not generalized. It is much
better to make one direct incident of
such intensity and let the one incident
speak for ail. 103

So, then, does she attempt not to generalize in her narra-
tion in order that once mere the reader can bring into
play the imagination. Thus, the reader through imagination
extends the explicit incident to a larger content.

Another pitfall to this type of direct, simple
narrative was the episodic narrative. She wrote Maxwell
Perkins of this concern on May 10, 1937: "The principal
difficulty at present is in keeping a steady flow of
narrative rather than falling into the disjointed abyss
of mere episodes." However, the narrative method of events
in their time sequence seem^ed to fit with the total harm.ony
and simplicity of the novel and evolved naturally to create
a sense of reality. "Once I have decided on the people

103

M. K. R. , "Creative Writing

who will be in the book, I think the narrative will flow
naturally of its own accord," she wrote in 1956. '

In order to create a sense of reality from which
to obtain the effect of beauty she sought expression that
utilized dialect for appropriate purposes and was basically
simple and objective. These stylistic and narrative goals
were set long before she began writing The Yearling, for
she wrote in an October, 1936, letter to Maxwell Perkins:
"The style [for The Yearling] will be very simple and
direct." For the next two years she sought to accomplish
that goal.

Conclusion

The objective of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' personal
theory of composition was to communicate beauty to her
readers. Since, to her, the artist was "one who shares
. . , the particular form of beauty that has stirred him,"
she therefore attempted to communicate to her readers that
form of beauty which had stirred her and to wliich she had
responded— the Florida Cracker interacting with the Florida
Scrub.

Marjorie Kinnan Rjwlings had defined beauty as a
soaring of the imagination as well as an emotional and

1 04

To Maxwell Perkins from M. K. R., July 31, 193 6

spii'itual excitation, and this defined also her reaction
to the Florida Cracker. Her personal definition of
beauty placed the emphasi? on the resultant effect on
the reader and by this effect was beauty known to have
been achieved. Yet, for the reader to experience beauty
as she had experienced it, a sense of actuality must be
formulated for that form v/hich had stirred her. Her
theory of composition was the means by which she created
a sense of actuality for the reader, first through the
process of characterisation, specifically focusing on the
use of true-to-life characters, universality, and unity.
Secondly, she attempted to achieve reality through the
use of scientifically accurate facts and details. And
finally, she used objectivity, dialect and simplicity.
As it functioned within these three broad principles,
The Yearling evinced an audience adaptation to attain
specific rhetorical goals, working through the reader's
imagination to communicate the beauty Marjorie Kinnan
Raw] ings recognized around her.

CHAPTER THREE
RESPONSE FROM THE GENERAL READERSHIP

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' audience-oriented theory
of ccmposition had as its goal the accomplishnient of a
predetermined effect. In the preceding chapter, her
personal theory of composition was articulated to isolate
those characteristic language usages by which she sought
CO communicate the effect of beauty. In order to determine
the extent of that possible effectiveness, the responses
of her readers must be studied, operating from the per-
spective advanced by Tompkins, in liis work, "The Rhetorical
Criticism of Non-Oratorical Works," as well as the model
provided by Carpenter in "Alfred Thayer Mahan's Style in
Sea Power: A Paramessage Conducing to Ethos," who stated
that effectiveness is "most accurately discernible in the
responses of people for whom the discourse was intended."^
Thus the methodological focus of this chapter is not on
her discourse itself but rather on debriefing the readership,

'Phillip lompkins, "The Rhetoricil Criticism of
Non-Oratorical Works," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 55
(December, 1969), AZl-'i1>T.

Ronald Carpenter, "Alfred Thayer Mahan's Stvle
on Sea Power: A Paranessage Conducing to Ethos," Speech
Monoj^raL)hi_s , 4 2 (August, 197 5), li) 2.

Hoased in the L'niversity of Florida Library, the
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings CoJ.lection contains within the
substantial correspondence from her general readership
comprehensive documentation of effects. The Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Collection also is complemented by the
papers of Phillip May, her lawyer, in which there are
additional letters she had forv/arded to him. In both
collections, all correspondence specifically related to
The Yearling was examined since the novel was currently
in publication; however, the main body of correspondence
utilized covered the period from 1938 until Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings' death in 1953. Reactions of her general
readership to the novel were the basic area of investiga-
tion for this chapter.

The Collection yielded substantial responses;
though, in som.e respects, it may have been culled. For
example, after Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' death and prior
to some of the m.emorabilia being transported from tlie Cross
Creek house to the University of F],orida Library, one box
of papers, now a valuable part of the Collection, had to
be rescued from a garbage pile. Also, coiimenting on the
relative paucity of negative comments among the response
to her work, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in the 1940 's provided
reason that the proportion of unfavorable letters from her
general readership v/as :

In inf irit?s imal portion, and the
reascii is that the person who troubles
to sit down and write a letter to an
author is almost invariably a kindly
person. I mean that is simple human
narure; people go out of their way to
do a kindly thing, and verv few go out
of their way tc be unkind . -

However, since the thrust of tliis study was focused upon
responses that suggested effectiveness and the crucial
point Av'as that for some people these techniques did work,
the letters in tlie Collection from her general readership
proved adequate.

All letters from the general readership were read;
however, only those comments dealing specifically with
areas of composition or which indicated or implied relation-
ship to language manipulation were utilized. These letters
were then cataloged to indicate recurring patterns. Let-
ters with vague, general or nonspecific comments were not
included in this investigation; such as letters that stated
the novel was "enjoyable" or "entertaining" or "interest-
ing" but in no way suggested the reason. Nonspecific
evaluations with comments of this ilk were a type of
general reaction common to any novel. Thus, through
analysis of tliose responses applicalile to audience reaction,
both this and the subsequent chapter attempt to establish
the causal relationship between technique and effect.

"Proceedings of Second Trial of Cason versus
Bask in , Alachua County Florida , 1946, inTTiTTl ip~TTa/
CoTlectior., University of Florida Library, Volume III,
p. 357.

Readership Response to Effect of Beauty

Study or the responses from Mariorie Kinnan Rav;l-

ings' general readership revealed their focus on the effect

of beauty. Perhaps one of the most explicit was from

Betty Odgers who indicated her awareness of the com.muni-

cated effect: "In some strange way the shared loveliness

of your book was an important bond in the adjustment of

my life.""^ To several of her readers the effect of beauty

was intense yet inexpressible. Hamilton Holt ivrote on

July 29, 1947, "it is impossible to express in words,"

and Bea H. also wrote in her April 2S, 1939 letter to

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, "I haven't words to describe

the way I feel about your beautiful appealing book."

Though a wounded young English flyer repeated the inability

to express his appreciation of the beauty, he did elaborate

on the effect.

Of The Yearling I can say nothing
except thank you. To try and tell you
of its beauty would be useless ... I
read it while being bombed. It brought
a light to that siielter that made a
warm glovi for us all, for ^ read it
aloud. One little cockney bey said,,
'I wish I was him, oh I wish I was. '

The EnglisJ-i flyer expressed appreciation of the effect of

To "lariorie Kinnan Rawlings (hereafter cited as
M. K. R.) from Betty Odgers, August 3C, 1945.

■^Tc M. K. R. from Perry Potter, undated.

8 5

beauty as did man\ ether respondents, so many in fact that
the letters became a type of "thank-yoii" note for beauty
received. One typical of these comments cane from a Uni-
versity of Wisconsin classmate of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
who gratefully wrote, "I finished The Yearling in a flood
of tears . . . You've done a perfectly beautiful job . . .
ny thanks for so much pleasure."

Publication of foreign editions brought similar
response to the effect of beauty from distant lands.
Sigrid Undset from Norway wrote January 19, 1942, that
Marjorie Kinnan Rav.'lings' book "makes us Europeans marvel
that America is so rich in natural beauties . . . the
loveliness of America . . . and beautiful wilderness. . . ."
From Australia in 1943 came another note of appreciation
for the beauty of the book.

I have just read your magnificent
book The Yearling and feel compelled to
write and tell you the joy it gave me
from beginning to end ... so very un-
usual it is, and so beautiful in theme
and language. 6

Thus, not only America, but also other countries, responded

to the effect of beauty in her book.

One reader did, in fact, offer to share the beauty

in a section of land that he possessed in return for the

To M. K. R. from Esther Forbes Hoskins, July 14
1938.

^To M. ^'. P. from Laura Dix, May 17, 1945.

beauty Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had given to him through
her book, for as he stated: '"We too know the beauty, the
birds, the orange trees, the ducks."

Perhaps the letter written to her on August 29,
1938 by Marjorie Douglas can serve as a summation of those
letters received that so intensely had felt the effect of
beauty: ". . . add my voice to the chorus. It is so
lovely, so finely felt. ..." Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
had defined the artist as one who shares beauty and as
such so was she defined, as indicated in a copy of a letter
Lafarge had written about her and that had been forwarded
to her: "This book is an exquisitely beautiful thing; it
seems to me a flawless v/ork of art . . . She is a great

artist." In 1945, Neil Phillips \\'as to write Marjorie

9
Kinnan Rawlings and once again define her as an artist.

Obviously from these responses, the effect of beauty had

been communicated to her readers.

Response Based Upon Perception of Reality as
Produced by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Beauty was felt because the audience perceived the
reality Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had produced. As addressed

'To M. K. R. from Henry Dozier, M.D., June 19, 1942,

To Rudolf 'veaver from Grant Lefarge, May 24, 1938,
forwarded to M. K. R. and in Rav/lings Collection.

^To M. K. R. from Neil Phillips, April 29, 1945.

earlier in Chapter II, in order for the reader to see
beauty as Marjorie Kinnan Rav/lings had seen it, she must
formulate a reality for those forms of beauty which had
stirred her and through this reality share that beauty
with her reader. From rhis created sense of reality, she
was then able to effect in the reader the sense of beauty.
The response indicative of having perceived this creative
reality was ample.

Reality was so pervasive to some of her readers
that they literally sought the specific geographic loca-
tion of episodes depicted in The Yearling. The President
of a Florida hunting club wrote of one such attempt.

We have tried to locate the exact
spot you had in mind that 'Old Slew
Foot' crossed Juniper, also the point •
that you had in mind where he crossed
Salt Spring Run. 10

The tendency to seek a geographic reality on the part of

her readers took on such force that the Cross Creek Big

Scrub became known as Yearling Country, Cracker Country,

etc. One reader v/rote requesting exact directions:

"Would you be kind enough to tell me liow, by train, I

would get to the enchanting Cracker Country?" Another

reader located the Cross Creek area not by the characters

in The Yearling, but by the animals: "To Mrs. Rawlings a

1944.

^°To M. K. R. from H. L. Nevin, May 26, I9.?8.
To M. K. R. fro.Ti Robert Corlis, Scplembov 50

welcome to the land of Slewfoct which The Yearling has

inimortalized in our hearts." " One service person wrote

in 1944:

I have enjoy [sic] oh so very much
your book on the Yearling Country. Most
of us boys away from home feel the same.
Give us more, we do appreciate them, its
like a peek at the real thing. ^^

The reality perceived was sustained in part by
the readers' ability to locate literally the geographic
parameters. Anne Brennon in a June 14, 1941 letter com-
mented on this geographic reality: "The story took us
to Florida ... it made us feel that we were right there
with Flag and Jody and Penny Baxter." Other readers ex-
tended this reality and commented upon Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' ability "to immortalize the Florida Country.""
These, then, were a sampling of the responses from her
readers indicative of their having perceived the reality
which Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had created.

Other readers expressed an awareness that they
had not only shared the reality as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
had perceived it, but also that her perception was correct

1?
"To M. K. R. from C. L. Alder son, January 3, 1939

■'•■^To M. K. R. from Errol Hunt, October 12, 1.944.

''To M. K. R. from Eugenia Pilkington, July 13,
1942, in Phillip May Collection, file number 175.

To M. K. R. from C. L. Alderson, January 3, 1939

8 9

acccrdiTig to their evaluation. A letter to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings from Betty Odgers tended to confirrn this sharing
even to the point that there was confusion on Ms. Odgers'
part over the author and the omniscient narrator of The
Yearl ing: "I love your right v;ay of living. Your atten-
tion to the real and important things."'^ This letter
did not indicate Ms. Odgers had knowledge of Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings' habits beyond having read The Yearling.
Joseph Grace assumed also that his perception of reality
was correct and that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings concurred
with him; however, he assumed also her ability must have
been attained through "some girlish great sorrow in [her]
young life in order [for her] to be able to see at a
glance how other folks live both internally and exter-
nally." Finally, another reader in a 1946 letter praised
the author's "talent for making reality translucent."

These, then, were several of the letters from her
readers that indicated Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had indeed
formulated a reality through which beauty had been communi-
cated.

1943

194 b

^ To M. K. R. from Betty Odgers, August 50;

^''Tg M. K. R. from Joseph Grace, May 21, 1944.
To M. K. R. from Mrs. Eugene Meyers, July 14,

Response lo Individual Elements of Marjorie Kinuaii Rawlin;
Theory of Co ni pasTti^

Although the audience appeared to be responding to
the created reality, it was in actuality responding to trie
elements which constituted that reality. Reality v;as the
result of the individual elements of Marjorie Kinnan Rawl-
ings ' theory of composition, and each elem.ent contributed
to the total reality through which beauty was achieved.
Marjorie Kinnan Ra^^/lings' theory of composition has been
defined in Chapter II as the means whereby the artist was
able to create a sense of actuality by which to communicate
beauty to the reader. Investigation of her papers revealed
a pattern of responses to the various elements of her
theory of composition.

Response to the process of characterization

The process of characterization was one element
of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' theory of composition by
which she attempted to create a reality for the reader
through which to convey her concept of beauty. Her readers
tended to respond as though the characters were real,
true -to -life people. For example, H. L. Nevin, a native
of the area, attempted to display his powers of observa-
tion Dy identifying those individuals whom Marjorie Kinnan
Ra'wlings had supposedly copied:

Penny Baxter can only be one person
. . , , that person happens to be Mel Lans
who has hunted with us these many years. l8

Not only are the humans identified by her readers, but

also the animals:

The dog Julia, in our minds, must be
'Old Bess' who had her side torn somewhere
on Juniper Creek and a patch of skin the
size of one's hand was hanc^ing loose when
Mel carried her into camp.^-

Written in the m.argin of this letter was a brief denial
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Several other readers responded to the realistic
portrayal of Jody, both expressing an awareness of the
difficulty in recreating a real boy and citing amazement
at a woman's ability to do so. In a copy of a letter that
had been forwarded to her by the recipient was the follow-
ing reaction:

It is one of the most difficult tasks
that she sets herself [Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings] to take you inside the very heart
of that perfectly real little boy . . .-^

Another reader in the same vein added, "How any woman could

depict a boy's mind and emotions as perfectly as you do is

0 1

beyond me."~ A January 28, 1940, letter mirrored tlie
response of both:

^^To M. K. R. from H. L. Nevin, May 26, 1938.

■^To Rudolf Weaver from Grant Lafarge, May 24,
1933, foi^wavded to M. K. R. and in Rawlini^s Collection.

^^To M. K. R. from Ihubcrt Clark, October 21, 1958

Anyone can write about a child; few
can do it with such depth and strength;
few can capture the evanescent moment
that you chose. ^^

If some readers did not try to explicitly name
the person who had been copied for portrayal in The
Yearling, they then felt Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had
created a recognizable type of flesh and blood person,
for as Laura Dix wrote to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on
May 17, 1945, "I feel I know each of those wonderfully
drawn characters, especially the lovable splendid Penny
and his equally lovable son." Other correspondents
praised Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "understanding of young
people" and her ability to "live their lives with them."""

Several of her readers reacted to the emotion

which, as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote in "Facts, Verses

in Fiction," "the ivriter creates the characters to express

Several viewed Ma Baxter in this light. Neil Phillips

wrote:

^^ The Yearling in a few unrestrained
strokes you give one of literature's great
examples of pathetic frustration— the mother
groping to share the intim.acy of the father
and the boy and telling the pointless tale
about refusing a dog because 'a hound dog
sure will suck eggs. '24

'To M. K. R. from Donald Peattie ,■ January 2S, 1950

o M. K. R. from Lorretta Ryhill, March 26, 1956
To M. K. R. from Joseph Grace, May 21, 1944.

^To M. K. R. from Neil Phillips, April 29, 194S.

Another reader also responded to the emotion Ma Baxter
represen.ted : ''Somehow so many of us are 'Ma Baxters,'
Vie'd like to be in on the big brave things, but actually
the black calico warms us just as much.""

And finally to some of her readers the characters
were so real, so true- to-life that they reacted to them as
though they were living human beings. Some w-ept over the

T 6

death of Fodderwing and later the killing of Flag."
Others felt so strongly about the father and son that they
wrote, "I can't decide whether I love Penny or Jody more,"
or "it was impossible to decide whether I liked father or
son best. . . ."

A second pattern within the process of charac-
terization that emerged was the tendency on the part of
the readers to respond to the function of the characters
both as the particular and as the universal. For Felix
Schelling, the parameters of The Yearling were extended
because of this universality, ". . . for it is so much
more than a story in its insight into common human nature."

imately 1945
26

To M. K. R. from Perry Potter, undated, approx-

To M. K. R. from Laura Dix, May 17, 1945.

"^To M. K. R. from Bea H. , April 28, 1939.

To M. K. R. from Ralph Prouty, August 9. 19 11.

^^To M. K. R. from Felix Schelling, May 27, ig-iS.

A letter from N. C. IVyeth suggested that the basis of The
L~JLlliM!A ^'i^s appeal was the functioning of the charac-
ters as not only the individual but also the universal.

It is happy augury, I think, that we
have all as a family enjoyed vour sto-^-y
deeply and mostly I think because the
larger contours of romance so imnressively
transcend locality and become superblv
universal in appeal. 29

Others reacted as did Wyeth, for The Y8arling_ through its

universality had appealed to all ages. Donald Peattie

wrote of the reaction of his two sons as he had read the
novel to them:

Congratulations! I was interested
in the way the younger one was able to
endure the death of Flag and the v^av the
elder listened to Penny's last words to
Jody. Your success was complete with
all three of us. 30

Esther Forbes commented also on the universal element in

her August 13, 195S, letter: "I think one of the reasons

it is so beloved is that it is one of the few recent books

that appeals to the entire family."

Another respondent referred to The Yearling as

"truly great literature ... a minor American classic. "^^

Agnes Hclmquest categorized the novel as ". . .in the

To M. K. R. from N. C. Wyeth, January 13, 1939.

...,.,, '° '■^- ^- ^- f-'''-'^^ Donald C. Peattie, January ^8

-""To M. K. R. from Ralph Prouty, August 9, 1944.

characters air.ong the most famous in literature.

I keep my own sacred 'hall of fame'
of my favorite literary characters. I
include Jean Valjean, Huck Finn, etc.
Among my favorites are your ^ two charac-
ters Penny and Jody Baxter. ^^

Tiie ability to transcend time limitations, to affect and

appeal to people in a later time, was the focus of a 1943

letter.

It must make you happy to realize
that all over the world, perhaps for
centuries of time, you may be affecting
people's lives. 34

So, then, did readers react to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' attempt to achieve the universal through general-
ization of the particular by typifying those human emotions
common to all people in all ages within a chosen character.
A final letter from a thirteen-year-old boy who related
directly to the story was indicative of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' degree of success.

I always thought that Daddy liked
the girls better than I. I suppose I
didn't pay as much attention to Dad as
the girls. When I began to read this
book The Yearling of deep love between
Penny and' Jody, father and son [sic].

■^"To .M. K. R. from Agnes Ilolmquest, July 22, 1958,
^■^To M. K. R. from Ralph Prouty, August 9, 1944.
■^''to M. K. R. from Letty Odgcrs, Auv.ust 30, 1943.

He worked with his father and made over
him. I think this book will start a^_
better love betv/een my father and I.^^

A third pattern of responses within the process
of characterization tliat emerged was reaction to the
characters functioning as cohesive units. As explained
in Chapter II, the totality of character is achieved by
the cohesiveness of action and plausibility of motivation;
in other words, the characters do nothing in contradiction
of their roles.

Several letters addressed the unity of the novel
by stressing the "perfection" they found ^^fithin it. Two
readers responded to the author's ability in depicting
"the mind and emotions as perfectly" as Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings had accomplished and also to her ability in taking
"you inside the very heart of that perfectly real little
boy." Another addressed the total harmony, for she wrote,
"The whole thing seems quite perfect and I think you must
be happy about it yourself.""^' Perhaps, though, the letter

To }[. K. R. from Frank Kelly, January 29, 1939.

To M. K. R. from Hubert Clark, October 21, 1938.

To Rudolf iveaver from Grant Lafarge, May 24,
1938, forwarded to M. K. R. and in Rawlings Collection.

To M. K. R. from Esther Forbes Hoskins, July 14,

.938

^^To M. K. R. frovTi Bea H., April 28, 1939

from ilariorie Douglas more succinctly expressed the unity

she found within the novel: "It is ... so beautifully

unified and sustained . "■^'" This harmony and unity resulted

from adequate delineation of and reinforcement of character

and it was to these that Hamilton Holt addressed his letter

of 1958.

. . . moved me so . . . I have never
read such art in character delineation.
You have made the characters speak for
themselves and have never acted the part
of the Greek Chorus in explaining them.
How you entered into the heart of those
people whose exteriors must be alien to
you is . . . evidence of your genius. -^^

Perhaps the unity and the totality of the whole

was best expressed by Robert Herrick, for he perceived

The Yearling as "all of a piece — people, background,

animals, woods, flowers, everything" all functioning as

a cohesive unit. Thus did her readers respond not only

to universality and true-to-life depiction, but also to

unity within the process of characterization.

Response to facts and details

A second element of Marjorie Kinnan Fvawlings'
theory of composition to which her readers responded was

To M. K. R. from Marjorie Douglas, August 29,
1938.

•^^To M. K. R. from Hamilton Holt, May 14, 1938.

"^'Ho M. ;(. R. from Robert Herrick, May 14, 193S

the use of facrs and details to achieve a sense of reality
by which the effect of beauty was accomplished. A letter
from the president of a local hunt club was attested to
her accuracy of detail: "I congratulate you on your
splendid descriptions of not only the Juniper County but
your marvelous descriptive power of bear and deer hunt-
ing." Her pleasure in receiving this letter ^^fas mani-
fest in her reply:

I trembled in my boots for fear the
old guard hunters would find too many flaws.
I'd rather please the people who kno^v that
life and section than all NY Cities rolled
together. 42

Not only did the old guard respond to this accuracy, but

also a zoologist from the Museum of Comparative Zoology in

Cam>bridge, Massachusetts, as well as a nationally known

naturalist. Hubert Clark, the zoologist, wrote:

As a former boy and as a zoologist
I take off my hat to you ... I am amazed
at the accuracy of your natural history
. . . Not once in reading The Yearling
have I detected a careless or inaccurate
statem.ent. Yet your descriptions of
scenery, vegetation, animal life and a
boy's reactions to them are simply de-
lightful. 43

"^■"■To M. K. R. from H. L. Nevin, May 26, 193S.

"To H. L. Nevin from M, K. R., May 30, 1958,
copy in Rawlings Collection.

'^^To M. K. R. from Hubert Clark, October 21,
1938.

The naturalist too added his ccngratLilations for accuracy

of fact and detail:

I might add, since it is in my line
. . . few can stand up to Nature as you do.
Fevv can look at it as it is. People play
with its prettiness; they paint its colors,
they read in it something that is not writ-
ten there. You are a minute observer of
Nature. . . . '• "^

Several other readers com.mented on the pleasure received

from, "such a wealth of intimate detail" and the knowledge

gained, for as one reader wrote, "I never had an idea what

flowering Dogwood or Hemlock pines were like until reading

45
The Yearling."

Thus did readers respond to the botanical details
of the Florida Scrub, the agricultural information perti-
nent to farming, the data important to the day-to-day
existence, and the folklore that pervaded the lives of
Florida Crackers; in other words, those facts and details
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings utilized to infuse her writing
with a sense of reality.

Response to objectivity;;

A third element of Marjoris Kinnan Rawlings'
theory of composition t:> which her readers responded was

To M. K. R. from Donald Per.ttie, January 2S,
1940.

^^To Rufolf Weaver from Grant Lafarge, May 24,
l9^'/i, forwarded to .M, K. R. and in Rawlings Collection.

To M. K. R. from Sigrid Undset, Jinuary 19, 1942

100

the techniqii? of objectivity. Earliex", objectivity was
defined as that quality within a literary work that may
be understood as being independent from the emotional
or personal sentiments of the author. Perhaps the letter
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings received in 1938 most parallels

the reader reaction with the definition when it praised

46
the author for never becoming '"sappy."

However, in a wore literary fashion, Hamilton
Holt, the President of Rollins College in Florida, com.pli-
mented Marjorie Kinnan Raivlings for "the art of creating
subjective characters by objective descriptions."'^'' One
reader wrote of her as "a conscientious reporter, under-
standing, wise, and brave" i\[hom, another reader, found,
gave a wealth of essentials but was never "obstrusive . " ^
So then did readers respond to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
attempt to achieve objectivity in order to create a sense
of actuality with which to communicate beauty to the
reader.

193S

940,

^^To ^[. K. R. from Esther Forbes Hoskins, July 14

'" To M. K. R. from Hamilton Holt, July 1, 1938

To M. K. R. from Donald Peattie, January 28,

To Rudolf Weaver from Grant Lafarge, May 24,
1938, forwarded to M. K. R. and in Rawlings^Collect ion

ICl

Response to simplicity

A fourth eleiTient of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'

theory of composition to which her readers reacted was

simplicity, for she attempted an uncluttered, simple,

writing style \v'hich v\ras determined by her goal of reality.

To this simple style her readers responded, some in an

explicit manner, others more subtlely. A service person

in a Quebec hospital sometime during World Ivar II addressed

the simplicity of language directly in his undated letter.

People like you who write so simply,
so close to the little people mean a great
deal to people like us who live so close
to the edge — we never know just what's
over the edge. 49

However, others were less explicit and a pattern of lan-
guage emerged in which a number of letters referred to
the simple people, the simple life, the simple background.
This letter from Ralph Prouty exemplified the response:

The grand thing is they are not spec-
tacular persons who flash across the pages
of literature like a comet, but plain,
simple people. Simple they may be, but
they are undoubtedly great. 50

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings advocated use of short,

almost blunt sentences if she were not to lose reality.

On reader remarked that her language in The Yearling had

'^^To M. K. R. from Perry Potter, undated.

^^To M. K. R. from Ralph Prouty, August 9, 194.

102

the attributes of a prov'erb — that is, a short pithy saying
express irjg a truth or fact — for, as he wrote, "many words
and sentences have become proverbial in our daily conver-
sations." Such was typical of the response of her reader-
ship to the simplicity that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had
utilized in her attempt to communicate reality.

Conclusion

Thus, the response of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
readers focused on the effect of beauty. However, beauty
was communicated to the audience because they had perceived
the reality Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had produced, and it
;vas from this created sense of reality that she was then
able to effect in the reader the sense of beauty. The
audience reaction to the created reality was reaction to
the individual elements of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' theory
of composition. Therefore, the response of her general
readership to these individual elements of characterization,
facts and details, and methodology, each contributed to
the total response of the audience to the composition,
that is, a response of beauty as perceived through these
elements .

CHAPTER FOUR
RESPONSE FROM PROFESSIONAL READERSHIP

Another source of information about reader response

was Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' professional readership.

Just as the letters of individuals served as an index of

effectiveness, so likewise did the reviews by professional

critics, who, through their experience with the craft and

their knowledge of the genre, functioned as a valuable

body of receivers. Tompkins, who also found this segment

of the audience vital to rhetorical analysis, argued that

though this "sizable important body of receivers who

debrief themselves voluntarily" are

. . . atypical of the average man
audience . . . , on the basis of the two-
step flow of communication and influence,
their very eminence, their atypicality,
makes them even more useful in rhetorical

analysis
some ei

is . . . They do, after all, have
ffect on other receivers.^

Carpenter, in his study on the effectiveness of style,

utilized fully the file o[' newspaper and periodical reaction

Phillip Tompkins, "The Rhetorical Criticism of
Non-Oratorical Works," Quarterly Journal of Si)eech, 5S
(December, 1969), 438.

103

104

in the Alfred Thayer Mahan Collection in the Library o£

Congress as a part of his investigation." In "The Rhetor-
ical Criticism of Non-Oratorical Works ," Tompkins cited
several other investigations of non-oratorical art forms
in which the approach of debriefing critics was both valid
and fruitful . "^

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection contains
a substantial number of clippings housed in six large
scrapbooks. These newspaper and periodical clippings \vere
acquired from three sources: (1) the estate of Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings, (2) a compilation of clippings by Grace
I. Kinnan and V/ilmer Kinnan, and (3) a compilation of
reviews by Pat Smith, Director of Public Information at
the University of Mississippi [although the Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Collection provided no reason for this
compilation or for tPie forwarding of these reviews by

"Ronald Carpenter, "Alfred Thayer Mahan 's Style on
Sea Power: A Paramessage Conducing to Ethos," Speech

Monographs , 4 2 (August, 197 5), 192.

William Jordan, "A Study of Rhetorical Criticism
in the Modern Novel," Debut Paper, SAA Convention, 1967.

Phillip Tomokins, "In Cold Fact," Esquire, 65
(June, 1966), 125-127, 166-171.

Patricia Weygandt, "A Rhetorical Criticism of
of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." 'Jnpublished
paper, 1969, Kent State University.

Pat Sir.ith). The reviev;s and clippings from the Marjorie
Kinnan FlaKlJags estate arc, in themselves, quite compre-
hensive, for Sci ibner ' 5 had forwarded to her from its
clipping services reviews pertaining to the publication of
The Yearling. A survey of other periodicals of the period
revealed that the Collection contained most of the reviews
which the book provoked.

All reviews and critical articles in the Collection
related to The Yearling were examined; but the primary area
of investigation covered the year of publication, 1938.
Since few reviews extended beyond the fev\r months following
publication, and successive reviews were often merely re-
issues of previous ones, this period was considered most
crucial. The newspaper and periodical files proved to be
a generous sample of that important body of receivers who
[according to Tompkins] "reveal their perceptions and value
judgments of the art form under analysis." In the main
these responses were positive, and although Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings had provided an explanation of the paucity of

4
Scrapbooks; two leatherbound volumes compiled by
Grace I. Kinnan and Wilmer Kinnan in the Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings Collection, University of F-'lorida Library.

Scrapbooks; four volumes compiled by Pat Smith,
Director of Public Information at University of Mississippi
Rawlinys Collection, University of Florida Library.

Clippings and newspaper materials, Rawlings Col-
lection, University of Florida Library.

Tompl'.ins. "The Rhetorical Criticism," p. •l.'S8.

106

negative response on the part of her general readership,
no such explanation v,as either offered or suggested for
the dearth of negative criticism from her professional
readers. Perhaps the prepublication announcement of a
volume having been chosen the Book -of -the -Month Club
selection was, in the late 1930' s, a type of literary
intimidation. Nevertheless, the extensiveness of the
newspaper and clipping file including not only the col-
lection of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, her publisher and
relatives, but also a voluminous compilation by the
information officer at the University of Mississippi
argued against the possibility of the deletion of negative
criticism.

Using the same criteria previously applied to the
letters of the general readership, only those articles
dealing specifically with areas of composition, or which
indicated or implied relationship to language manipula-
tion were utilized. Articles meeting these criteria were
then catalogued to indicate recurring patterns. Thus, by
analysis of the response of her professional readership
through their reviev/s of The Yearling, as by the analysis
of the response of her general readership in the preceding
chapter, this chapter will attempt to establish other
dimensions of the causal relationship between technique
and effect.

107

Professional Readership Response to
Effect of Beautv

In the summer of 193S, a reviewer wrote this of
The Yearling: "The greatness of the book lies in its
striking evocation of beauty." A thorough investigation
of Marjorie Kinnan Rav.-lings' papers (as accomplished in
Chapter Two) had revealed that her concept of beauty was
the effect she attempted to comiaunicate to her audience.
This review vvras just one of a number of professional
articles that acknowledged that effect, thereby cor-
roborating the responses of the general readership.
Though the quality of beauty is both nebulous and subjec-
tive, the utilization of the term by this and other pro-
fessional readers seemed consistent. One professional
reviewer was most articulate in expressing the resultant
effect of beauty. In a newspaper article entitled, "Novel
is Characterized by Beauty and Reality," Carl Roberts
elaborated :

One other thing incessantly forced
its way into our minds — beauty. The word
as applied to this story is not a static
or une.xplainable thing, for you will find
it wherever you go with Penny and Jody.
It is alive ... It shows itself in
tranquility in Jody's favorite haunts and

Halfcrd Luccock, "Through the Novelist's Window,"
Yale Divinity School, Christendom, Summer, 193S, in scrap-
books, Marjorie Kinnan"Rawlings Collection, University of
Florida Librarv.

108

the ver>- life of Jody ' s little friend . . .
There is quiet beauty in Penny's philosophy,
spiritual beauty ... in Penny's prayers
. . . beautiful things. 7

This was among the first reviews, for it was written only

a few days after the novel's publication date of April

1, 1938. This reviewer's involvement with the beauty

communicated through Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' novel was

by no m.eans unique, however, for other reviewers also

immediately focused on this effect.

Richard Daniel used a vocabulary similar so that

by which Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had defined beauty.

It is Mrs. Rawlings' spiritual
mystic insight into the unseen life in
the forests and streams that lifts her
book to new heights . . . She has found
beauty in our backwoods and has preserved
it for future generations to enjoy. ^

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had included the spiritual

heightening as a response to beauty, "an emotional reaction

to an extent that we are conscious of a spiritual excite-

9
ment." Also focusing heavily on the spiritual quality of

beauty, another reviewer in Vermont reacted to The Yearling

as capturing a "spiritual quality," for.

' Dayton Ohio News , April 3, 1938. (Hereafter,
unless otherwise stipulated, all references are from newspaper
clippings from unnumbered scrapbooks in the Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.]

Jacksonville Florida Times Union, April 3, 1938.

-'M. K. P., ''Lecture Notes on Creative Writing,"
Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

above and beyond the breathless beauty
of its physical background and the stir-
ring scenes m which the tale abounds,
there is a spiritual meaning which gives
the v\:hole narrative a special quality »
and makes reading it a unique experience.

So although they may have been using terminology with con-
siderable potential for ambiguity, several reviewers even
used some of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' own adjectives.

Eleanor Follin praised both the spiritual and
dramatic qualities in her 1958 newspaper article: "In
The Year] ing one finds a spiritual quality which can never
be forgotten, drama, conflict, tragedy, humor, and beauty."'^''"
Follin was not the only critic to react to the dramatic
aspect of beauty. Paul Oehser granted the novel "great
beauty and dramatic process"; and Govan repeated the re-
action of several of the general readership, stating that
it was "a picture so dramatic, so utterly beautiful and
sympathetic as to move one to tears." Continuing to
address the dramatic quality of beauty, Wagner envisioned
the book "mounting to its height of tragic beauty"; how-
ever, Hoult best expressed the dramatic quality of beauty
in the April 1, 1938 review.

Eurlington Vermont Xews , April 9 , 1 9 5 S .

Winston Salem North Carolina Journal and Sentinel

April 10, 1TI5T

•Was hi
Source unknown, April 10, 1958.

^^Washington, D.C. Post, April 17, 1938

110

But she has done more; she has taken
us into a Floi'ida swamp, created human
beings, made the struggle of the Baxters
for a bare living as dramatic as good
theater and invested the whole drama with
a sense of true values and beauty which
is rare for drama to give. 13

Thus did several critics react to the dramatic quality of
beauty within her novel.

While citing beauty as the major effect, other pro-
fessional readers liberally utilized the term throughout
their reviev/s. Groverman Blake found the story "movingly
[sic] v/ith freshness and beauty"; whereas another found The
Yearling "recaptures the beauty which marked her first
story"; while others reviewed the novel as "filled ^'/ith the
wonder and beauty of nature." Additional examples of
this reaction were Gladys Solomon who wrote of the novel
as "tender and beautiful" or the Atlanta Journal^ reviewer
xvho claimed Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had "discovered
beauty" or as several wrote quite simply, the novel was
"beautiful." From these responses and reactions of her

-'••^New York Mirror, April 3, 1938.

New York Sun, approxim.ately April 1, 1938.

Cincinnati Ohio Times Star, April 6, 1938.

Star tVashington, D.C. , April 3, 1938.
IVinston-Salem North Carolina Journal and Sentinel

April 10, 1933

xNew Haven Connecticut Register, April 10, 1958,
Atlanta Georgia Journal, April 10, 1938.
Source vsnknown, April 10, 1933.
Yale Divinity School, Christendom, Summer, 193i

Ill

professional readership, as well as those from her general
readership as documented in Chapter Three, it is obvious
that beauty had been corp.niunicated to these readers, for
beauty, though an omnibus term, had been discussed by
both sets of readers in a manner consonant with Marjorie
Kinnan Rowlings' formulated goal.

Responses Based Upon Perception of Reality

As a reviewer in the Chicago Journal Commerce
wrote, "There is a beauty of absolute truth in this fine
story . . . This idyll of the wilderness is completely
beautiful and real." In so writing this critic had
addressed that which was expressed earlier in Chapter
Two, for in order that the reader see beauty as Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings had seen it, the author must formulate
a reality for those forms of beauty which had stirred
her and through this reality share that beauty with her
reader. Through this created reality, she was then able
to transmit to the reader a sense of beauty; i.e., beauty
is the communicated effect and perception of reality a
moans to express it. This reality was not simple fidelity
to actuality as in newspaper reporting, but verisimilitude,
or as she defined it, "the sense is the imaginative

Chicago Journal Commerc e, ^prii 9, 195 'J

112

av/areness of actu;.l ir^. "^ ' Like those previously noted
from the general readership, the response from critics
and reviewers indicative of their having perceived this
created reality was ample.

Critics reacted immediately to the "quality of
verisimilitude," that is, the sense, of actuality. In
reviewing The Yearling as "a real piece of life,""^^ a
Washington, B.C. critic's response was quite similar to
the reviewer who wrote, "the problems they face are real
. . . [for] The Yearling emerges as an impressively true
picture of a life that is hard."^^ Others wrote with an
indication of their awareness of the use of verisimili-
tude; Carl Robers wrote that the novel

takes the reader to the 'Hammock'
country of inland Florida. And that
expression is not an idle one . . .
you will actually live with them in the
year of their lives which the story
describes . ^0

Butcher addressed also the sense of reality for she wrote

^'- K. R. , "Facts, Verses, in Fiction." Notes
-n Rawlmgs Collection, University of Florida Library.

New York Sun, April 1, 19 53.

19e. ,. , -

b.-ar 'vasnmgton, Dj^^ , April 3 , 1938.

Ne^-vv Orleans Times Picayune, April 10, 1958.
Djrv-ton Ohio News, April 5, 1958.

] 13

"one rarely meets people as simple and real as those on

the primitive pine island vvhere its cliaracters live their

''1
lives."" These critics, as did the general readership,

indicated by their response an awareness of the sense of

reality that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was trying to

create .

Another group of critics, in a manner similar to
that of the general readership, addressed not only the
reality, but also the truth or honesty of her novel as
a part of that reality, thereby seeming to equate and
define the two conditions as one, Marjorie Kinnan Ravv'lings
was defined as an "honest writer," for she "invested the
whole drama with a sense of true values. "-" To others,
the reality was heightened because the volume had "veracity'
and "rings true at every point. """^

Two other critics viewed the created reality as
a realistic study, perhaps perceiving Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' writings almost as anthropological, like Margaret

"^Chicago Tribune, April 9, 1938.

^^New York Post, Juno 10, 1938.
New York Sun, April 1, 1958.

^•^Ncw York World Telegram, April 1, 1938.

Horschel Brickell, "Books on Our Tabic, Marjorie
mnan Rawlinjis' Fine Novel," source unknown, undated.

114

Mead's works on Samoa. Gladys Solomon cited the volume
as "an excellent study of those people"; likewise, another
critic conimented that "what results is a superbly realis-
tic study . . ."" Though these professional reviewers
did not seek the literal geographic location of the novel
as had several of the general readership, both groups
were parallel in their reactions. Such opinion on the
part of her reviewers that the novel was in part nonfic-
tion attested further to her success in achieving her
goal, for they had indeed responded to the reality she
had created. Altogether, these responses and reactions
from both the critics and the general readership indicated
that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had formulated a reality
through which beauty had been communicated.

Response to Individual Elements of Marjorie Kinnan Rawling:
Compos ition

Although these professional readers appeared to
be responding to the created reality, they were reacting
as well to the elements of composition by which it was
achieved. A thorough investigation of professional reader
ship responses within the Collection revealed a pattern of
reactions to the various elements of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' theory of composition.

New Haven Connecticut Register , April 10, 1938.

Toledo Ohio Blade, April 14, 1938.

Response to the process of characteviza t i o n

The process of characterization was one element
of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' theory of composition by
which she attempted to create a reality for the reader by
;vhich beauty might be conveyed. A principle of character-
ization to which Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings adhered was that
the characters were "true- to- life . " Although the characters
in the novel may have som.e basis in observed reality, she
felt that only by the infusion of the author's imagination
could the characters achieve a sense of actuality, or
verisimilitude, for the reader.

Just as her general readership had attempted to
identify those whom Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had sup-
posedly copied, some of her professional readers similarly
decided the resultant "true- to-1 ife" characters were

"neighbors and friends she had studied with care and

^ 5
affection."" Several critics labeled the character por-
trayals "valid," "convincing," "accurate," or "true";
and Charles Poor's column in the New York Times best
summarized the "true- to- 1 ife" effect of the characteriza-
tions :

All the people come vigorously to
life. Her sensitively written accounts
of his inner life, his private forays in

^Record Philadelphia, April 2, 1938

116

the country, his feelings of despondency
or elation when things go right or wrong
are beautifully done . . . All her char-
acters are true. 26

Poor's final statement was reflected in a substantial

number of professional responses; two of these expressed

the idea that "the people are real," and especially that

1 7
"his father and mother are real people.""

Another pattern of professional response indicated

that portrayals of "true- to-life" characters stemmed from

the author's insight into human nature. Marjorie Kinnan

Rawlings was reported as an author "who sees deeply into

human hearts," thereby writing "a story everyone will

2 8
enjoy for its people are human. ..." In a review en-
titled, "Graphic Characterization of People," another
critic also addressed the ability of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings to describe characters with accuracy and insight:

1958 .

Madison Wisconsin Journal, April 17, 1938.
San Diego Sun, April 17, 1958.
Toledo Ohio Blade, April 14, 1958.

'■) n

'' ' New Orleans Times Picayune , April 10, 1958.
Co_ld S prings New York News Re corder, April 14

7J3

^ >'ew York Post, June 10, 1958.

Fairfield California Republican, April 7, 1958

117

Mrs. Rav;l ings has described them
with the art of a great writer. She has
sworn vvhen they swore, cried vs'hen they
cried, laughed and talked only as these
people could. ^^9

Where her general readership had reacted on a inore personal
level (identifying a local person, Mel Lang, as the charac-
ter from whom she had copied Pa Baxter) and had established
a more emotional relationship with the characters (being
unable to decide whether they loved Penny or Jody more as
well as weeping over the death of both Fodderwing and Flag)
her professional readership had to a degree maintained a
m.ore objective response to the characters. But to both
these groups of readers, the characters in The Yearling
were true- to-life .

Another principle of characterization to which
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings adhered was the portrayal of the
major characters as representative of a fusion whereby the
individual could function both as the particular and as
the universal. A substantial number of her critics re-
sponded to the universality of the characters. Though
all re\;iewers were quite explicit in their reactions,
Ruth Carter was most articulate:

When a writer succeeds in making
a sectional novel so universal that the
people become man and women and young
folks of all time, anywhere in the world

San Diego Sun, April 17, 1958.

lis

yet retain the flavoi- of their country,
she has indeed transmuted words into
art. This is what Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings has accomplished in The Yearling,
a novel of the backwoods FloriHa region. oO

Samuel Tupper found "almost every page sounds quite another
note of universal recognition as Mrs. Rawlings touches the
depths that lie below ordinary things."

Extension of the time dimension as an element of
universality was the focus of several critics. As men-
tioned in Chapter One, iMarjorie Kinnan Rawlings saw herself
as more than a regionalist writer. Halford Luccock de-
scribed her novel as a "regional story . . . yet almost
tim.eless and universal"; and affirming this critic,
llerschel Brickell cited that "every line . . . lifts it out
of the limitations of time and space into the higher
realm of universal experience." " With reaction to the
extension of the time param.eters, "t imelessness" became
a common word in the reviews of The Yearling. The Toledo
Blade called the novel "as timeless as the forests and

Atlanta Georgia Georgian , April 10, 1938.

•^^Atlanta Georgia Journal, April 10, 1938.

Yale Divinity School, Christendom, Summer, 1938

Brickell, "Books on Our Table."

119

swamps it describes," whereas the Nevv York Herald Tribune
called it simply, "the old timeless story . """'■^

To many of the professional critics as to many of
the general readership, Jody was the generative source of
universality, "for he is Everyboy and so touches in Every-
man those lost portals of recall through which reality

34
lingers but a moment and is gone forever." Several cited

the novel as "a delicate picture of youth finding itself,"
"typical of all boys . . . [in] a universal springtime";
however, not just a joyous story, but also "the old time-
less and oftimes tragic story of youth grown to m^aturity."
That this was found to be the story of youth, personified
through the character of Jody, vvas evidenced not only in
the response of the general readers, but also in revieivs
such as the following, which advised the public to "add
Jody Baxter to your gallery of immortals, for he belongs
with Huck Finn and all other real bovs." Another critic.

•^•^Tolcdo Ohio Blade, April 14, 1938.

New York Herald Tribune, April 5, 1938.

•^^New York Mirror. April 3, 1938.

Source unknown, April 10, 1938.

Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal, April 10, 19 38.

Cincinnati Times Star, April 0, 1938.

New Haven Connecticut Register , April 10, 1938

120

Eleanor Foilin, also invested Jody with the universal
qualities usually associated with other literary immor-
tals, writing that he would "live forever in the hearts
of all, as did Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.""^ A
Connecticut critic added, "We are reminded at once of the
Mark Twain boys, though the treatment is quieter and
subtler at once."-^'^ The term, "classic," linking The
Yearling with Kim, Green Mansions, Huckleberry Finn, and
Tom Sawyer, uas a continuous thread throughout the reviews.
Lois Bennett Davis' review in the Macon Georgia Telegraph
summarized the reaction of the critics to the principle
of universality for Jody functioned in the novel not only
as a twelve-year-old Cracker boy, but also as a symbol
of youth undergoing the rites of passage.

The author has plumbed the depth
of human misery and human need, but
just as a Greek play leaves no place
for wishful imagining so does this
novel affirm the truth that life is

Winston-Salem North Carolina Journal and Regis-
ter, April 10, 1958. " —

193S

New Haven Connecticut Journal Couri e r , April 7 ,

Providence Rhode Island Journal, April 3, 1958
New York World Telegram, April 1, 1958.
Chicago Daily Tribune, December 3, 1938.
New- York Herald Tribune Books, April 3, 1958.
Book- of- the -Month Club News, March, 1938.

121

irrefutable, inexorable. Far more than
a picture of life in inland Florida, ~
Jody's story touches the universal. 4o

Thus, the reactions of the general readers and professional
readers confirmed that the characters in The Yearling func-
tioned on both the particular and universal levels.

The final principles of characterization to vvhich
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings adhered was unity as achieved by
the cohesiveness of action, integration of characters,
relationship to background, and plausibility of motivation.
Thus, the characters functioned in no v^/ay contradictory to
their roles. Various critics addressed the cohesiveness
of the total novel and suggested several reasons that the
novel had been as one stated, "given unity." For ex-
ample, Samuel Tupper suggested that although "one waits
intensely for the destroying false note, this note is
never sounded ..." for there is "no artificiality,
nor self-conscious folklore." " Several critics affirmed
that which her general readership had stated; for these
cited unity as a function of the cohesive interaction of
character with the environment, since Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings "created characters who wero . . . living men and

Macon Gcorsia Telegraph , Ai:» r i 1 1 , 1 9 3 S .

Charlotte North Carolina News, April 17, 1P3S

Atlanta Georgia Journal, April 10, 1938.

122

women whose relationship to their particular environment

was credible and natural." "^ The Tampa Morning Tribune

called this harmony "a vivid perfect picture of the people

and the pine xvoods."

Frarces IVcodward mirrored the response of the

general readers in this review which addresses the total

unity depicted in the character of Jody through cohesive-

ness of action and plausibility of motivation.

Her Jody Baxter lives, a person
within the boundaries of his own years
and his oivn world . . . Even a Thoreau
cannot report on the world outdoors as
a child might. The naturalist sees only
those things which concern his informed
eye. To a child the barn and the wood-
shed are as much a part of the natural
workable landscape as the lizard under
the log. Mrs. Rawlings has done a small
miracle in that she knows this . . . she
never once steps out of Jody's person-
ality . . . She has captured a child's
time sense in which everything lasts
forever and the change of season takes
him always unaware. "^^

Another reviewer confirmed Vvoodward's review of the total

unity and harmony in characterization, for to this critic

the people, the problems they face and the background

"all are naturally intertwined . . ., the denouement is

^•^Star V;ashington, D.C., April 3, 1938
'Tampa Morning Tribune, May 20, 1938.

The Atlantic, undated,

123

fitting, his return is as natuial as his running a'-vay.
There is nothing iir.plausible about the whole bock."
By these patterns of response, the professional readership
reflected agreement with the general readership that Mar-
jorie Kinnan Rawlings had communicated not only true-to-
life depiction and universality, but also unity within
the process of characterization.

Response to facts and details

A second element of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
theory of composition was her use of facts and details
within the novel to communicate a sense of reality. Like
her general readership, Rawlings' professional readers
also responded favorably and commented on the accuracy
of her descriptive powers. To her critics, the wealth
of facts and detail, though substantial, never bogged
down the novel but instead was an aspect of sustaining
it. As one critic put it, "Mrs. Rawlings has written a
fine poignant story . . . grounded on uncncyclopediac
[sic] yet never merely academic knowledge of their way
of life." Similarly emphasizing how Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' details maintain the story, another critic wrote

New Orleans umes ticayunc, April 10, 195S.
New Haven Connecticut Journal Courier, April 7

]958.

124

that, "It gets effects without [the details seeming to

become mere] documentation"; for as still another critic

explained :

. . , detail is piled upon detail
and incident upon incident with such
cumulative purpose, that the reader
knows the feel and sound of the country
and identifies his experience with that
of the Baxters. . . .^^

In his article entitled, "The Yearling is Refreshingly

Pungent and Detailed," Charles Niles summarized several

critics' perceptions concerning the heightened qualities

accomplished by use of details:

Nothing has escaped the author in
her endlessly detailed picture, whether
it be the whirring of frightened birds
or the picturesque fluttermill. The
same detail might seem wearisome reading
at first, like tramping down tall grass
to find clover, but The Yearling grows
on one and the pungency . . . creates an
impression that will not soon be erased
from the memory. ^^^

To the majority of her critics, then, Marjorie Kinnan

Rawlings' facts and details were not merely a parade of

inf orm.ation , but a vital aspect of the novel.

The range of both the professional and general

readers' reaction to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' use of

facts and details was similar. Like one segment of her

'' 8

The _ A_ t If |Jilic__ _g o okshelf , undated.

Macon Georgia Telegram, April 1, 19 38.
^^Hartford Connecticut Times, Auril 9, 1958

125

general readership, several critics seenied almost surprised
by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' ability to use facts and de-
tails. For example, "Mrs. Rawlings seems to knov; the
country with amazing thoroughness," and she has "a rare
gift for picturing animal life." One critic referred
to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' ability as "a natural gift,"
adding that she had knowledge of "the intimate affairs
of Florida wildlife."^" Just as within the general
readership wherein both a zoologist and a naturalist re-
acted to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings as a skilled, scientific
professional observer of her environment, so too did a
segment of her professional readership. That which had
been referred to by some as "feeling" was to others "skill,'
and that which had to some seemed "a gift" was seen by
those critics as "result of keen observations . "~''' Within
this scientific framework the novel was praised for the
"obvious accuracy of its detail" from an author who
"observes meticulously" and therefore, "the background is

^^New York Times, April 1, 1938.

Yale Divinity School, Christendom, Summer, 195S.

Source unknown, April 10, 1938.

Chicago Journal Commerce, April 9, 19 38.
Cincinnati Enquirer, April 7, 1938.

126

faithfully recreated." '^ Much of the focus on this metiiod
of observation v.'as concerned with Marjorie Kinnan Rav/lings'
emphasis on precise detail. One critic referred to the
"close observation" or "candid camera" focus on "detail";

this critic also noted the "intimate description of Pa

54
Baxter's snakebite.""

Response to objectivity

A third element of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
theory of composition to which her professional readers
responded was the technique of objectivity. In Chapter
Two, objectivity had been defined as that effect evinced
by a literary work when the writing is understood as
being independent from the emotional or personal senti-
ments of the author. A large segment of her professional
readers responded to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' objectivity.
That her novel "never slips into sentimentality" ^<as
echoed in tlie comments of critic after critic, one of whom
stressed that "no sentimental bathos tarnishes" the novel,
or as another stated, she was neither "pretentious nor

•^Record Philadelphia Pennsylvania, April 2, 1938
New York Post, June 10, 1938.

New Orleans Times Picayune, April 10, 1938.
See also Herschel Brickell.

'^Bocks and Bookmen, undated.

sentimental . . . the story she tells clutches at your
heart witl;out ever playing with banal seatinentalities . "
Several other critics extended to include tliat "Mrs.
Rawlings brought to it . . . her sympathetic understanding
and as one critic described, "unhysterical judgment."
These critics reacted to the author's "unflinching sincer-
ity" and "fine sense of detachment" for Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings was an author who, as one critic commented,
"never moralizes in the footnotes," or, as another wrote,
"never stops to interpret."

Both her professional and general readership re-
acted similarly to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' use of ob-
jectivity; there was, however, a discrepancy in the per-
centage of reaction. A substantial number of the profes-
sional readers responded to her use of objectivity;

"Brickell, "Books on Our Table."
Cincinnati Times Star, April 6, 193S.
Toledo Ohio Blade, April 14, 1938.
Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1938.

^^Source unknown, April 10, 1938.
The Atlantic Bookshelf, undated.

Atlanta Georgia Journal, April 10, 1938.
New York Herald Tribune books, April 5, 19 38
New York Post, June 10, 1938.
The Atlantic Bookshelf, undated.

128

whereas the response from the general readership was less
marked. Obviously, the professional readership, in their
concern with the art form and their involvement in quali-
tative evaluation, would be more likely to examine such a
technique as objectivity. However, based upon both sets
of responses, to these readers, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
use of objectivity xvas noticeably effective.

Response to dialect

A fourth element of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
theory of composition to ivhich her professional readers
responded was the use of dialect to create a sense of
actuality. Critics point out the novel was "couched in
the rhythmic, homey accents of these woodland people,"

or quite simply stated without explanation or qualifica-

58
tion that tlie novel was in dialect. Some critics, how-
ever, carefully explained that the novel was "told in the
racy idiom of the Florida Scrub," in, as Henry Canby
added, "a racy dialeci; not overstressed and easy to

follow," or according to Fanny Butcher, "written in dialect

59
a racy, uncouth speech, full of vividness." Though some

1958

New Haven Connecticut Journal Courier , Ap r i 1 7 ,

Star Vv'ashingtpn, D.C., April 5, 19 58.

Yale Divinity School, Christendom, Summer, 1958

Chicago Illinois News, April 6, 1958.
Book-of- the -Month Club News, March, 1958.

129

critics, as noted, pi-ovided a simple description of the
characters' dialect, others \vaxed poetical, for to another
critic, "there is far more than convincing dialect to the
things they say. The dialect of the soul is there."

The colloquial speech of the people of the Florida
Scrub was thus an effective means for Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings to create a vehicle of realism. More specific
were critics like Hansen, who observed that "Its people
speak arriusing dialect, but Mrs. Rawlings stops short of
caricature." Another critic added, "The dialect does
not degenerate into 'local color' language." "" Such state-
ments may be seen as evidence that Marjorie Kinnan Rawl-
ings' desire to avoid caricature in the use of dialect
was accomplished.

Providing reasons for their approval of Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings' use of dialect, several commented on the
facility with which they were able to read it, for pre-
viously, to many, literary dialect had been burdensome.
For example, to the Chicago Journal Commerce critic, "even
the dialect which is often so difficult to follow in
ijovels made up entirely of dialect is so simple, here it
becomes the only natural means of expression." "^ The

Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal , April 10, 1938,
^^New York World Telegram, April 1, 197.8.

Atlanta Georgia Georgian, April 10, 191^8.
^^Ncw York Times, Anril 1, 1958.

130

New York Tines critic was in agreement and also used the

term "natural" to describe the dialect.

Although ^v^e dislike dialect novels,
the dialect in The Yearling is easy to
understand and has its function. It is
not hurled at the reader, rather it
creeps over him so that he takes it in
as naturally as he does the air of the
Florida swamp. 65

Mary Sheridan affirmed that the "dialect [was] easy to
follow and . . . colorful and piquant as well." Edith
Walton decided Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had "a marvelous
ear for the flavor of some cracker dialect [for it] m.akes
one see and smell the lonely arid scrub." Charles Poore
agreed, for as he observed, "the talk is well done. It
begins by sounding like the stage's hillbilly dialect.
And yet page after page or two it is natural." ' Perhaps
these reactions to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' use of dia-
lect were best summarized by Pauline Corley who wrote,
"The dialect is absolutely right."

Though the professional readership responded to
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' use of dialect, investigation of

193!

Cold Springs New York News Recorder , April 14

Madison iVisconsin Journal, April 17, 1938.
Nev; York Herald Tribune , Ap r i 1 3 , 1 9 3 S .
^'"^Miami Herald, April 24, 1938.

13:

rhe general readership in the prev"ious chapter found no
response to this facet of her concept of style. Hovv-ever,
the reviews from the professional readership may provide
insight into the lack of response from the other segment
of readers, for the very "naturalness," "simplicity,"
"facility," and "readability" upon which these critics
commented and to which they reacted would offer explana-
tion for the dearth of comment from the general readership
Apparently the dialect blended and melded so well into the
perceived reality of the novel that it passed unnoticed.
Although one can only speculate upon the reason for the
omission of direct reaction to dialect on the part of the
general readership, the reviews from the professional
readership indicated that to them reality had been created
in part by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings through the use of
dialect.

Response to simplicity

The fourth element of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
theory of composition to which her professional readers
responded was her use of simplicit)-, for according to an
interview, she felt that to complicate tlie text with
superfluous elements would result in a mockery of reality.
Several of the critics addressed the general simplicity
of the novel. Por example, the Tampa Tribune stated,
"the novel is simply great and greatly simple," or as the

132

Wisconsin State Journal put it, The Yearling is "presented

without artificiality."

Other critics were quite explicit in their comments.

Addressing specifically the simplicity of content in The

Yearling, some critics focused on the background. Norah

Hoult indicated the effect of the novel stemmed from the

simplicity of the background for the quality and beauty

of the novel came "out of the simplest and most fundamental

material." Similarly, Groverman Blake wrote in the

Cincinnati Ohio Times that the quality of the novel was

evoked from "her use of simple homey things":

the hoeing of cow peas, the excitement of
the hunt, the feel of spring in the air,
a sudden never to be forgotten glimpse
of cranes dancing in the forest. . . .^^

In a review that attempted to explain the characters in

the novel, Henry Canby called The Yearling "a simple story

of simple, but by no means incomplex people." " Continuing

in the area of simplicity of context. The New York News

Recorder ' s critic reacted to "the narrative with no involved

plot" which the reviewer in the Ohio Blade cited as a major

reason for the simplicity of the novel, for "no formal

Tampa Morning Tribune, May 2 0, 1938.

Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal, April 10, 19 38

Nev/ York Sun, April 1, 1938.

7 1

Cincinnati Times Star, April 6, 193 8.

'^"Bock-of-the-Month Club News, March, 1933.

133

plot disturbs the magnificent simplicity of this novel." "^
One reviewer stated flatly and briefly, "The plot is very
simple."' A Chicago Journal Commerce critic responded
to the simplicity of dialect (an aspect of her theory of
composition addressed earlier in this chapter): "the
dialect is so simple here, it becomes the only natural
means of expression." TJius a substantial number of her
professional critics responded to the element of simplicity

In contrast to the perceived simplicity of the
plot and content, another group of professional readers
focused on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' simplicity of vv'riting
technique. One critic in 1938 perceived the inherent
restraint of style (of vv^hich Mariorie Kinnan Rawlings was
later to speak to her class in her 1940 lecture), stating,
"no trite cliche mars her perfect prose ... no garish
touches spoil her flawless sense of color." Another
reviev/ which seemed to parallel Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
intent was that of Ernest Meyer, who wrote that she was
"a writer who observes meticulously, yet never weights

1938.

Cold Springs New York News Recorder, April 14
Toledo Ohio Blade, April 14, 19 38.
^ Book-of-the-Month Club News, March, 1938.
Chicago Journa] Commerce , April 9 , 19 5 8.
Cincinnati Ohio Times Star, April 6, 1938.

134

the text with wooden details."' Another critic wrote
"The effect [of The Yearling] is achieved not so much by

the plot of the book as by the author's simple but beauti-

73
ful prose. . . ." While Lois Bennett Davis complimented

the simplicity of comiposition in that "the narrative un-
folds so quietly and easily," other critics narrowed the
narrative effect to "the utmost simplicity of style and

structure" or to "the grace and clarit)' of the style and

79
the simplicity of the story." Specifically, in this

area of technique, one reviewer responded to the sentences

in a manner affirming Marjorie Kinnan Rav;lings' previously

stated intent; for the critic observed, "It is written

in deMaupassant sentences — short, simple, clear, many

8 0
less than a line long." As indicated in Chapter Two,

Marjorie Kinnan Raivlings had stated in a lecture, "it is

necessary to use short, alm.ost blunt sentences if I am

8 1
not to lose reality." Margaret Mitchell forwarded to

^^New York Post, June 10, 1938.

7 8

Source unkncv;n, April 3, 1938.

Macon Georgia Telegraph, April 1, 1938,

Author unknown, "Pulitzer Prize Novel to be Pre-
sented in Post , " New York Post, June 1, 1938.

Cincinnati Encaiir e r , Ap r i 1 7 , 193 8.

8 0

Jacksonville Florida Times Union, April 3, 1938.

M. K. R., "Creative Writing." In Rawlings Col-
lection, University of Florida Library.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings an undated reviev; by Virginia
Pohil Purvis, and though the origin of this newspaper
clipping is not known, perhaps it best summarizes the
reactions of many of the professional critics: "I think
I never read a book tl^at seemed more simple and yet indi-
cated so much."

The reactions of her professional readership thus
were in harmony with the response of her general readership
for according to the reactions of both, Marjorie Kinnan
Rav/lings had created a reality, using simplicity as one
aspect of her concept of style, in order to communicate
to her audience that sense of beauty she felt v\:as the hall-
mark of an artistic work.

Conclusion

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' professional readership
reacted to the individual elements of her theory of compo-
sition, with fevv- exceptions, in a manner quite in accord
with her general readersliip. Similarities between both
sets of readers were found. In dealing with the elements
of characterization— inc luding true-to-lifc depiction,
unity, and universality — as well as with the element of
facts and details, her general readership tended to re-
spond in a more personalized or subjective manner, as
opposed to the more objective manner of her professional
readers. With elements involved in her concept of style—

136

simplicity, objectivity, and dialect — the reactions of
the professional readers indicated a greater involvement
with the genre and the techniques of the craft, especially
in the area of dialect, than her general readership.

Thus the response of the professional receivers
to the elements Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings used to create a
reality, as v;ell as their positive response to the communi-
cated beauty for which that reality was the literary
vehicle, are both indicative of her success in achieving
her predetermined goal. T?ie ambiguity of such a concept
as beauty notwithstanding, the debriefing of the profes-
sional readership reveals that this audience — as did the
general readership— perceived the created reality in a
manner colinear vvith the author's intent and their response:
revealed that beauty corresponding to that definition set
forth in Chapter One was the communicated effect.

CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION

Summary

In summary, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote The
Yearling with a preset concept of effectiveness. As
evinced by. her personal papers, a theory of effectiveness
vi^as basic to her attempt to communicate the effect of
beauty to her readers. This theory of composition, based
upon the creation of a sense of reality which she believed
necessary in order to communicate beauty, incorporated the
process of characterization which included true-to-life
depiction, universality, and unity; use of facts and de-
tails; and the use of objectivity, simplicity, and dialect

Her general readership vv-as apparently influenced.
As they addressed the individual elements of her theory
of composition, their letters indicated many responded
as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had intended. For example,
in seeking the geographic reality of the novel, readers
wrote not only asking specific directions to the land now
identified as "The Yearling Country," but also locating
points within it, like, "the exact spot . . . that 'Die

137

138

Slew Foot' crossed Jur.iper." The specific passage to

which this reader referred described the attempt of th'

besr to escape Jody and Penny.

The bear moved '.vith incredible speed.
He crashed through thickets that slowed
the dogs. He was like a steamboat on the
river, and the dense tangle of briers and
thorny vines and fallen logs was no more
than a fluid- current under him. Penny
and Jody were sweating. Julia gave tongue
vvith a new note of desperation. She could
not gain. The swamp became so wet and so
dense that they sank in muck to their boot-
tops and must pull out inch by inch, with
no more support perhaps than a bull-brier
vine. Cypress grew here, and the sharp
knees v/ere slippery and treacherous. Jody
bogged down to his hips. Penny turned back
to give him a hand. Flag had made a circle
to the left, seeking higher ground. Penny
stopped to get his wind. He was breathing
heavily.

He panted, "He's like to give us the
slip."

When his breath came more easily, he
set out again. Jody dropped behind, but
across a patch of low hammock found better
going and was abie to catch up. The growth
was of bay and ash and palmetto. Hummocks
of land could be used for stepping stones.
The water between was clear and brown.
Ahead, Jjlia bayed on a high long note.

"Hold him, gal! Hold him!"

The growth dissolved ahead into grasses.
Through the opening old Slewfoot loomed
into sight. He was going like a black
'whirlwind. Julia flashed into sight, a
yard behind him. The bright swift waters

To M. K. R. froia H. L. Nevin, March 26, 19 j8,
.awlines Collection, Universitv of Florida Library,

139

of Salt Springs Run shone beyond. The bear
splashed into the current and struck out
for the far bank. Penny lifted his gun and
shot twice. Julia slid to a stop. She sat
on her haunches and lifted her nose high in
the air. She wailed dismally, in misery
.and frustration. Slevvfoot was clambering
out on the opposite shore. Penny and Jody
broke through to the lovv' wet bank. The
black rounded rump was all that was visible.
Penny seized Jody's muzzle-loader and fired
after it. The bear gave a leap.

Penny shouted, "I teched him!"

From this passage, one reader was motivated to seek the

specific geographic location.

Responding to true-to-life depiction, some of her

readers wept over the characters as though they were

human beings. One reader who cried over the death of

Fodderwing was perhaps reacting to this segment from the

novel :

Fodder-wing lay with closed eyes, small
and lost in the center of the great bed.
He was smaller than when he had lain sleep-
ing on his pallet. He was covered with a
sheet, turned back beneath his chin. His
arms were outside the sheet, folded across
his chest, the palms of the hands falling
outward, twisted and clumsy, as in life.
Jody was frightened. Ma Forrester sat by
the side of the bed. She held her apron
over her head and rocked herself back and
forth. She flung down the apron.

She said, "I've lost my boy. My pore
crookedy boy."

Charles Sc

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling (New York:
cribner's Sons, 195«) , p. TTCT

140

She co\'ered herself again and swayed
froifi side ro side.

She moaned, "Tlie Lord's hard. Oh, the
Lord ' s hard ."

Jody wanted to run away. The bony face

on the pillow terrified him. It was Fodder-
wing and it was not Fodder -wing. Buck drew
him to the edge of the bed.

"He'll not hear, but speak to him."

Jody's throat worked. No words came.
Fodder-wing seemed made of tallow, like a
candle. Suddenly he v.'as familiar.

Jody whispered, "Hey."

The paralysis broke, having spoken.
His throat tightened as though a rope
choked it'. Fodder-wing's silence was in-
tolerable. Now he understood. Tliis was
death. 2

Other readers were aware of the universality, for they
wrote that the novel was "so much more than a story for
its insight into common human nature." The third aspect
in the process of characterization by which they were in-
fluenced was that of unity, and several comm.ents of the
general readers were to the perfection and harmony of The
Yearling for the novel was "all of a piece — people, back-
ground, animals, woods, flowers, everything."

^Ibid. , p. 2 03.

■''to M. K. R. from Felix Schnelling, May 27, 193;
in Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

^To M. K. R. from Robert Herrick, May 14, 1938,
in Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

141

The letter citing ?!a.r; orie Kinn:in Rawlings as a
"minute observer of Nature" v.as but one sample of how her
readers perceived her use of facts and details. Those
responses provided no indication, however, that the general
readership was influenced by the element of dialect so
basic to her theory of composition. One possible explana-
tion for the silence on the part of the general readers
was found in the continual reference by the professional
readers to the "naturalness" of the dialect or to the
facility with which it was read. Thus, in not reacting,
the general readership may have overlooked this element of
her theory of composition because another element was
functioning even stronger; and this second element, sim-
plicity, perhaps negated the recognition of dialect for
some of her readers.

Her use of objectivity as an element of composi-
tion to create a specific effect seemed to be successful,
for as one reader wrote, she vv-as "never obtrusive."
And finally, dealing with her use of simplicity, this let-
ter from a service person in a Quebec hospital was an
example of her success: "People like you wlio write so
simply, so close to the little people mean a great deal

^To M. K. R. from Donald Peattie, January 2S, llUO,
in Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

^To Rudolf Weaver from Grant Lafarge, May 24, 1938,
forwarded to M. K. R. and in Rawlings Collection, University
of Florida Library.

142

to people like us who live so close to the edge." Thus,

the respon.'ses from her general readership tended to con-
firm that for these readers, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
accoraplished her predetermined goal.

Her professional readership also was influenced
positively, for their reviews also responded to the vari-
ous elements of Marjorie Kinnan Rav;lings' theory of compo-
sition as she had intended. Though the range and degree
of reaction to these elements was similar to the general
readership's, the professional readership was, in general,
more explicit, articulate, and judgmental, perhaps reflect-
ing their greater experience with and deeper perception of
the art form under analysis. One reviewer indicated a
sensitivity not only to the general effect of beauty but
also to the perception of reality which Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings had utilized as a means of attaining tliat effect:
"There is a beauty of absolute truth in this fine story

. . . This idyll of the wilderness is com.pletely beauti-

q
ful and real."' Another, addressing true-to-life depic-
tion in the process of charac cerization , complimented
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings as a great writer for "She has
sworn v/hen they swore, cried Vv,rhen they cried, laughed and

To M. K. R. from Perry Potter, undated, in Rawlings
Collection, University of Florida Library.

9
Chicago Journal Commerce, April 9, 1938, m
Railings Collection.

talked only as these people could.""'" Reacting to the
second aspect of characterization, universality, many
critics responded as one did, labeling the novel "time-
less"; or as another pointed out, more poetically, "every
line . . . lifts it out of the limitations of time and
space into the higher realms of universal experience."
Indicative of the professional leadership's awareness of
unity within the novel was the reviewer who noted that
the people, the world they inhabit, the problems they
face, "all are naturally interti^ined . . . there is nothing
implausible about the whole book." "■ Another cited Jody's
decision to return home as an element of unity.

A memory stirred him. He had come here
a year ago, on a bland and tender day. He
had splashed in the creek water and lain,
as now, among the ferns and grasses. Some-
thing had been fine and lovely. He had
built himself a flutter-mill. He rose and
moved with a quickening of his pulse to
the location. It seemed to liim that if he
found it, he would discover with it all
the other things that had vanished. The
flutter-mill was gone. The flood had
washed it away, and all its merry turning.

San Diego Sun, April 17, 1938, in Rawlings
Col lect Lon'.

Yale Divinity School, Christendom, Summer, 1938,
in Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

Herschel Brickell, "Books on Our Table, Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings' Fine Novel," source unknown, undated, in
Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

New Orleans Tiine^ Picayune, April 10, 1938,
in Rawl ing"s Col l o '■•"< 'T ' " ,''^i * v": "f- ^-' '> v of Florida Library.

144

He thou;jht stubbornly, "I'll build me
another. "

He cut t\/igs for the supports, and the
roller tc turn across them, from the wild
cherry tree. He whittled feverishly. He
cut strips from a palmetto frond and made
his paddles. He sunk the up-rights in the
stream bed and set the paddles turning.
Up, ov-er, dovm. The flutter-mill was turn-
ing. The silver v/ater dripped. But it
was only palmetto strips brushing the water.
There was no magic in the motion. The
flutter-mill had lost its comfort.

He said, "Play-dolly "

He kicked it apart with one foot. The
broken bits floated down the creek. He
threw liimself on the ground and sobbed
bitterly. There vr^as no comfort anyxvhere.

There was Penny. A wave of homesickness
washed over him so that it was suddenly in-
tolerable not to see him. The sound of his
father's voice was a necessity. He longed
for the sight of his stooped shoulders as
he had never, in the sharpest of his
hunger, longed for food. He clambered to
his feet and up the bank and began to run
down the road to the clearing, crying as he
ran. His father might not be there. He
might be dead. With the crops ruined, and
his son gone, he might have packed up in
despair and moved away and he would never
find him.

He sobbed, "Pa— Wait for me."

The comments of this reviewer concerning unity were, in

part, based upon the above passage.

Another compositional element by v;hich Marjorie

Kinnan Raw! ings influenced her readership was that of facts

"^Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearlin;

14S

and details; for as one critic noted, "Nothing has escaped

the author in her endlessly detailed picture. . . ."

One re\^ie'.%'er wrote how he was influenced by the use of

facts and details in the narration of Penny's snakebite.

Penny stopped short. There was a stir-
ring ahead. A doe-deer leaped to her feet.
Penny drevsr a deep breath, as though breath-
ing were for some reason easier. He lifted
his shotgun and leveled it at the head. It
flashed over Jody's mind that his father
had gone mad. This was no moment to stop
for game. Penny fired. The doe turned
a somersault and dropped to the sand and
kicked a little and lay still. Penny ran
to the body and drew his knife from its
scabbard. Now Jody knew his father was
insane. Penny did not cut the throat, but
flashed into the belly. He laid the car-
cass wide open. The pulse still throbbed
in the heart. Penny slashed out the liver.
Kneeling, he changed his knife to his left
hand. He turned his right arm and stared
against the twin punctures. They v/ere now
closed. The forearm was thick-swollen and
blackening. The sweat stood out on his
forehead. He cut quickly across the wound.
A dark blood gushed and he pressed the warm
liver against the incision.

He said in a hushed voice, "I kin feel
it draw "

He pressed harder. He took the meat away
and looked at it. It was a venomous green.
He turned it and applied the fresh side.

He said, "Cut mc out a piece o' the
heart . "

Jody jumped from his paralysis. He fum-
bled with the knife. He hacked away a por-
t ion.

Hartford Connecticut Times, April 9, 1938,

in Rawliagi~ir6TIectxon, Trrriversity of Florida Library

146

Pennv said, "Another."

He changed the application again and
again.

He said, "Hand me the knife."

He cut a higher gash in his arm where
the dark swelling rose the thickest. Jody
cried out.

"Pa! You'll bleed to death!"

"I'd ruther bleed to death than swell.
I seed a man die "

• The sweat poured down his cheeks.

"Do it hurt bad, Pa?"

"Like a hot knife was buried to the
shoulder . "15

It was the above-cited passage to which the reviewer re-
ferred when complimenting and reacting to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' use of facts and details.

As previously explained, perhaps the concern of
the critics with facets of style was a function of their
professional involvement with the craft, for they responded
incisively to her use of objectivity, dialect, and sim-
plicity. V/hile working on The Yearling, in 1956, Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings had v/ritten to her editor at Scribner's,
Maxwell Evart Perkins, that though the story of the novel
"may sound sentimental ... I shall be careful never to

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling, pp. 146-
147.

147

sentimentalize." In a later letter to Maxwell Perkins,
continuing to refine her concept of objectivity, she added

that she hoped to "visualir.e people . . . almost you might

1 7
say v^ith divine detachment." The reaction of her critics

to this objectivity attested to her achievement of this
goal, for they addressed not only "iier fine sense of de-
tachment," but also the fact that she "never slips into

1 8
sentimentality."

As an example of the reaction to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings' use of dialect, one critic wrote "the dialect
. . . is so simple here it becomes the only natural means
of expression." Simplicity, the third facet of her con-
cept of style and last element of her theory of composi-
tion, proved successful, for as one critic wrote, the
quality and beauty of the novel come "out of the simplest

To Maxwell Evart Perkins from M. K. R., undated,
approximately October, 1936, in Rawlings Collection, Uni-
versity of Florida Library.

^ To Maxwell Evart Perkins from M. K. R. , Febru-
ary 11, 1934, in Rawlings Collection, University of Florida
Library ,

^^Xew York Herald Tribune Books, April 3, 193S,
in Rawl ings CoTTection,~lJnivers ity of Florida Library.

Herschel Brickell, "Books on Our Table, Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings' Fine Novel," source unknown, undated, in
Rawlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

1 9

Chicago Journal Commerce, April 9, 1938, in

Rawlings Collection, UnTverslty ot Florida Library.

148

and most fundamental material,'' or as another explicitly
stated, "the hoeing of cow pea5, the excitement of the
hunt, the feel of spring in the air."" Similarly, several
reactions emphasized "the utmost simplicity of style and
structure," for as one critic observed , "The effect is

achieved not so much by the plot of the book as by the

21
author's simple but beautiful prose. . . ." Thus did

these professional critics substantiate the success of
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' implementation of her theory
of composition.

Precisely v\'hich passages in The Yearling did the
professional and general readers have in mind when respond-
ing to the various elements of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
theory of composition? Perhaps a passage which had been
referred to by some readers can be illustrative of several
of these elements, especially the modes of expression:
objectivity, simplicity, and dialect. In the following
selection from a closing chapter of the novel, a year has
passed since the boy, Jody, built his flutter-mill at the

New York Sun, approximately April 1, 1938, in
Ra\vlings Collection, University of Florida Library.

Cincinnati Ohio Times Star, April 6, 19 38, in
Rav;lings Collection, University of Florida Library.

New York Post, June 1, 1938, in Rawlings Col-
lection, University ot "Florida Library.

Untitled nev;spaper article. April 3, 1938, in
Rawlings Collection, Universitv of Florida Library.

1*9

sprirxg. His pet deer, Flag, has grown to be a yearling

and has, no matter what desperate measures Jody has taken

to the contrary, partially destroyed the Baxters' young

crop. To save the family from the threat of starvation,

Ma Baxter has been forced to shoot the deer; but she has

only wounded it and Jody now must complete the task.

He turned on his father.

"You went back on me. You told her to
do it."

He screeched so that his throat felt
torn.

"I hate you. I hope you die. I hope
I never see you again."

He ran after Flag, whimpering as he
ran.

Penny called, "He'p me, Ory. I cain't
git up "

Flag ran on three legs in pain and ter-
ror. Twice he fell and Jody caught up
to him.

He shrieked, "Hit's me! Hit's me!
Flag!"

Flag thrashed to his feet and was off
again. Blood flowed in a steady stream.
The yearling made the edge of the sink-
hole. He wavered an instant and toppled.
He rolled down the side. Jody ran after
him. Flag lay beside the pool. Fie opened
great liquid eyes and turned them on the
boy with a glazed look of wonder. Jody
pressed the muzzle of the gun barrel at
the back of the smootli neck and pulled
the trigger. Flag quivered a moment and
then lay still.

Jody threw the gun aside and dropped
flat on his stomach. He retched and vom-
ited and retched again. He clawed into

150

the earth with his f ir.ger-nails . He beat
it with his fists. The sinkhole rocked
around him. A far rcr.ring became a thin
humming. He sank into blackness as into
a dark pool . 22

This was one excerpt froi.i The Yearling, typical of the work
to v;hich the readers responded. Thus, according to those
responses investigated, both her general and professional
readers corroborated that Marjorie Rinnan Rawlings accom-
plished her purpose as intended.

Regionalism v;as the literary vehicle Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings chose for her novel, and in so doing, she
responded rhetorically to what Bitzer would call an
exigence, in accordance with the constraints of her per-
sonal theory of communication. Regionalism, at that point
in history, served as a response to a crisis; that is, the
untenable situation of a population in the midst of
society's ills during the Depression-— with the city as a
symbol of those ills. Her writing had as its purpose the
com.munication of the beauty which Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
found in the Big Scrub country and its people, and by
extension, of humanity in harmony with the environment.
That Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' purpose v.-as effectively
achieved has been borne out in this and previous chapters;
that this purpose vvas rhetorical in nature is evidenced

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling, p. 410

151

by the successful accomplis'nment of the author's predeter
nined goal.

Perspective

In achieving such effectiveness with language,
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings seems to fulfill Kenneth Burke's
concept of the rhetor as one \\?ho "used language in such
a way," based upon her preset concept of effectiveness,

"as to produce a desired impression," that being the

73
effect of beauty, "upon the hearer or reader."" For as

Wayne Booth argued in The Rhetoric of Fiction, a novelist,
whether realizing it or not, and therefore with suasory
intent or not, performs a rhetorical function." Another
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings scholar addressed the merging of
these two great modes of discourse, for to Bigelow, all
attempts to discriminate between the literary and the
rhetorical have been unsatisfactory. So, too, has Barnet
Baskerville, speaking to the direction of rhetorical criti-
cism, noted that:

2 ^
'Kenneth Burke, C 0 un t e r - S t a t eme n t (New York:

Harcourt, Brace, 1931), p~.~2 6 5 .

^"^iv'ayne Booth, The Rhetoric oF Fiction (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 19G1J , p. 14y .

Gordon Bigelow, "Distinguishing Rhetoric from
.f'oetic Discourse," in Contemporary Rhetoric, cd . Douglas
.f-hninger (G)envicv/, 111 inois : Scott, Fb'resman and Co.,
1972) , pp. 87-88.

152

This blurring o£ old distinctions,
this extension of the terms 'rhetoric' and
'rhetorical,' has obvious iinplications for
criticism. Where Wichelns once protested
against the literary criticism of oratory,
we now enthusiastically advocate the rhe-
torical criticism of literature . 26

The present study into the rhetorical effectiveness of a

novel, operating from the perspective advanced by Tompkins,

pursued the functional as opposed to the structural approach,

for it has been asking the functional question, "How do

sender, message, and receiver interact in concrete, veri-

fiable ways?"" With few exceptions, according to Tomp-
kins, rhetorical studies have tended to deal with the

structural school of criticism, being interested mainly

7 8
in the text or message variables." However, this study,

though concerned with the structure, x-zent beyond it and

sought, "in addition, the im.pact of that structure upon

29
receivers." Only by accomplishing this can "we explicate

a specific attempt to adjust ideas to people and people to

Barnet Baskerville, "Rhetorical Criticism 1971:
Retrospect, Prospect, Introspect," Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 37 (Winter, 1971), 115.

Phillip Tompkins, "The Rhetorical Criticism of

Non-Oratorical Works," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 55

(December, 1969), 438, tW. ''

"^Ibid. , p. 438.

-■'Ibid. , p. 439.

155

ideas. ""^' The very title of the Tonpkins article, "The
Rhetorical Criticism of Non-Oratorical U'orks," was sug-
gestive of the emerging body of research that advocated
a rhetorical approach to literature. As Baskerville noted,
this emerging rhetorical approach places "an emphasis upon
the persuasive element in poetry [and other types of liter-
ature] and upon the part played by the 'audience.'"'^

Earlier discussion elaborated upon the discourse
of literary authors fitting the rhetorical paradigm of
"a mode of altering reality," since literature often func-
tions either as a reflection of or a reaction to a situa-
tion, thereby providing the audience with the means to
escape from or modify the exigence which generated the
discourse, or to accept the influence of the exigence. "
Ernest Bormann, in "Fantasy and Rhetoric Vision: The
Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality," provides insight
into such rhetorical effectiveness of a novel. Though
for the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' novel studied, the
ultimate effect the author intended to communicate to

^"^Ibid. , p. 439

Baskerville, p. 115,

^^Lloyd Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation," in
Contemporary Theories of Rhetoric: Selected Readings ,
edited by Richard Johanncsen (Tiow YorF: Harper and Row ,
1971) , pp. 385-386.

33Ernest Bormann, "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision
The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality," Quarterly
Journal of Speech (December, 1972), 396-407.

154

the audience was beauty, her "cheor;/ of composition dictated
that only by creation of a reality perceivable to the
audience could this effect be attained. In speculating
about this type of created reality, Bormann provided an
account of how dramatizing communication or fantasy chains
created social reality for groups of people. These fantasy
chains consisted of characters-real or fictitious -play-
ing out a dramatic situation in time and space, a situa-
tion analogous to the characters in The Yearling. So, then,
according to Bormann, through the novel or fantasy "one
has entered a new realm of reality-a world of heroes,
villains, saints, and enemies-a drama, a work of art."^^
Whether as individual reactions to works of art, small
group reaction, or larger group reaction, these dramati-
zations "serve to sustain the members' sense of community,
to impel them strongly into action ... and to provide
them with heroes, villains, emotions, and attitudes . "^^
As had been suggested, the novel to a degree provided its
own reality for its audience and in so doing, a mode of
altering reality, for as Bormann added, fantasy themes and
rhetorical visions "help people transcend the everyday and
provide meaning for an audience. "^^

Ibid. , p . 598

3 c

"Ibid. , p. 3 98,

^^Ibid., p. 402,

155

Unfortunately, the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collec-
tion was not a place in which to find extensive evidence
of the extent to which people did alter their realit>-.
To be sure, the Collection offers some indices of how the
readers projected the themes of The Yearling to their own
lives. In an August 1943 letter to Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings, Betty Odgers related how "the shared loveli-
ness of your book was an important bond in the adjustment
of my life." Ms. Odgers added this was in part due to
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' having written of the "right
way of living [and of her] attention to the real and im-
portant things." Another letter, undated, from one of
her readers. Perry Potter, told of a young boy who, upon
having the book read to him and yearning to exchange his
world for that of Jody, said, "I wish I was him, oh I
wish I was." Among readers who responded with emotion
to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' work, Laura Dix wrote on
May 17, 1945, "I wept over the passing of Jody's little
Fodderwing and later Flag," One of those who found the
simple way of life purported by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings'
novel admirable or worthy of emulation was Ralph Prouty
who wrote August 9, 1944. His praise of her "plain
simple people" included the comment, "simple they may
be, but they are undoubtedly great." These examples sug-
gest how the novel well may have provided "heroes, emotions
and attitudes [which] help people transcend the everyday

156

and provide meaning for an audience."" But the Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings Collection could not be the most appropri-
ate place to explicate Bormann's concept of the altering
of reality, for that examination would have to investigate
"how people who participated in this rhetorical vision
related to one another," and correspondence in the Col-
lection gave very little indication of such possible inter-

3 8
action. Moreover, for the reviewers, the solitary nature

of their craft and the time element of their having written

almost immediately preceding or following the publication

of the book limited the interaction between them. However,

Gordon Bigelov;, her biographer, did directly address the

novel's effectiveness in altering reality and positing an

alternate world view to the existing Depression.

In a time of great social and economic
stress, of moral confusion and uncertainty,
her stories quietly reasserted a familiar
American ethic . . . The pastoral vision in
her books is of a world of natural beauty
free from the stench and ugliness of modern
cities. . . . -^^

On December 3, 1938, an article in the Chicago Daily

Tribune stated that The Yearling as well as several other

^' Ibid. , pp. 398, 402.
38,

Ibid. , p. 401.

Gordon E. Bige

University of Florida Press, 1964) , pp. 156, 157.

"Gordon E. Bigelo^v, Frontier Eden (Gainesville

157

novels from 1938, "

. . . have a certain staunch reality
about them and at the same time 'have been
escape literature in the sense they have
lifted the reader out of his own life into
scenes so exigent that they make him for-
get his surroundings and their demands.

Anotlier suggested that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings presented

a more simple ivorld, a world that we had lost, for,

. . . by choosing this locale, the
author is abie to awaken the reader to
the realization that American boys lost
something charming and real when movies,
cars, radios, and electricity replaced
the crude pleasure giving contrivances
of the pioneers. ^0

These were some of the responses that did offer some indi-
cation of how readers accepted the world vieiNT of The
Yearling as an alternate to the reality of their own
existence .

Thus, the characters in The Yearling did seem to
have an impact for readers. Indeed, Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings may well have typified the Flenry James quotation
upon which the Wayne Booth book. The Rhetoric of Fiction,
was based: "The author makes his readers just as he
makes his characters." Moreover, she illustrates the
rhetorical function of what Edwin Black has called a
"Second Persona"; for in the auditor or respondent implied

'^^Portland Maine Express, April 2, 1938

158

by a discourse such as TPie Yearling, there is "a model of
what the rhetor would have his real auditor become.""^
Just as the author makes her readers, so too, according
to Black, can the language of an ideology imply an auditor
who might share that ideology; for "actual auditors look
to the discourse they are attempting for cues that tell
them hovv' they are to view the world, even beyond the ex-
pressed concerns, the overt propositional sense of the

4 "*
discourse." " So, then, may a discourse not only alter

both the reader's perception and manner of apprehending
the world, it may also provide, through implication, an
image or character to be im.itated. This would be espe-
cially valid for a discourse with a structure determined
by a preset concept of effectiveness. Thus, we have seen
how this investigation into the rhetorical effectiveness
of a novel fits into the context of a broader scheme of
rhetorical perspective that people such as Booth, Black,
Bormann, and others are speculating about today.

This study has attempted to illumine the rhetorical
interaction of sender, message, and receiver, in which the
author of a novel determined a method or theory of

Ed'.vin Black, "The Second Persona," Quarterly

Journal of Speech, 56 (April, 1S7C), 113. '~

'^"Ibid. , p. 113.

159

composition predicated upon the effect she v.'ished to
achieve. For purposes of this study, investigation was
made into the individual theory and approach that v;as
particular not only to this one author, but also this one
work. The approach selected here will, therefore, not
be universally applicable to all authors wishing to com-
municate beauty. But, as indicated by this study, an
author can and does formulate a theory of language effec-
tiveness dependent not upon arbitrary choice but instead
designated by the particular reaction desired. Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings is the epitome of such a user of language.

On February 21, ]958, after Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
had submitted the final manuscript of The Yearling to
Scribner's, one month before publication date, she wrote
to her friend and editor. Maxwell Evart Perkins.

The things all of you write me about
The Yearl ing and the Book of the Month
Club choice, make me very happy and very
humble. The only reason I can accept it
as even remotely deserved, is that I all
but sweated blood in doing it. I do not
see how any writer could work in greater
agony and effort than I did on it and
this is strange to me, for no writer
could ever have a clearer conception than
I did of Vrhat I wanted to do and where I
was going.

In rJ.'59 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Letters for

a Novel and elected to the Academy of Arts and Letters.

IBLIOGR^^PHY

Prinarv Sources

The voluminous Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection
housed in the University of Florida Library, Gainesville,
has been the principal source on ivliich this study was based
Therefore a description of the Collection indicating the
nature and type of material may be useful. The Collection
was established by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at the Univer-
sity where she had lectured and had received an honorary
degree. The form of the Collection is in part transcripts
(typewritten) , photo copies (positive) , and microfilm
(negative) . Additional material has been received since
her death in 1955 from her estate, friends, and relatives;
however, the bulk of the Collection covers the period from
1930-1953.

Housed in twelve archival boxes are manuscripts of
her books, short stories and unpublished poems, as well
as newspaper articles she authored. Her personal, unpub-
lished papers include journal entries of her first impres-
sions of Florida, notes concerning local customs, informa-
tion for her books, lecture notes, speech manuscripts and
short stories.

Her vast correspondence is stored in nine file
drav;ers. These letters include a large number of responses
from readers as well as a personal correspondence with
friends and relatives. Among the letters addressed to her
are forty-eight from James Branch Cabell, twenty- five from
A. J. Cronin, thir-ty- three from Sigfrid Undset, and letters
from Maxwell Perkins, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Herrick,
Edith Pope, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Steinbeck, Zora Neale
Hurston, James Still, Hudson Stroke, Carl Van Vechton, Mrs.
Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, and many others equally
important. Microfilm copies of her letters to her editor,
Maxv;ell Perkins, supplement the correspondence. Additional
correspondence, records, and transcripts are to be found
in the papers of her lawyer, Phillip May, also housed in

16Q

161

the University Library. Several other file drawers con-
tain information Mariorie Kinnan Rawlings gathered for the
purpose of writing a biography of Ellen Glasgow.

Five large scrapbooks from several sources are a
part of this Collection. Though four of these scrapbooks
contain mainly newspaper and periodical clippings about the
author and her work, one scrapbook contains mainly family
photographs and information. There are, of course, included
in this large, approximately three thousand piece collection,
various memorabilia as well as one large box of artifacts.

Secondary Sources

Baskerville, Barnet. "Rhetorical Criticism, 1971:

Rhetrospect, Prospect, Introspect," Southern
Speech Communication Journal, 27 (Winter, 1971),
115.

Beath, Paul R. "Regionalism: Pro and Con, Four Fallacies
of Regionalism," Saturday Review of Literature,
15 (November 28, 1936) , 4-14.

Bellman, Samuel. "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: A Solitary
Sojourner in the Florida Backwoods," Kansas
Quarterly, 2 (1970), 78-87.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (New York: Twayne

Pub 1 i shers, Inc. , 1974) .

igelow, Gordon E. "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' Wilderness,"
The Sewanee Review, 72 (April-June, 1965), 299-
310.

. Frontier F.den (Gainesville: University of

FToriar Press, 196'6) .

_. "Distinguishing Rhetoric from Poetic Discourse
Tn Contemporary Rhetoric, Douglas Ehninger, ed.

1 tzer

(Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1972).

Lloyd. "The Rhetorical Situation," in Contemporary
Theories of Rhetor ic: Selected Readings, Richard
Johannesen ~~eT. ("New York: Harper and Row , 1971).

Black, Edwin. "The Second Persona," Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 56 (April, 1970), 113.

162

Booth, Wayne. The -Rhetor; Lc of Fiction (Chicago: Uni-
I'ersity of Chicago Press', 1961).

Bormann, Ernest. "Fan.tasv' and Rhetorical Vision: The

Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality," Quarterly
Jourjial of Speech (Decenber, 1972), 396-40T^^ '~

Bowker, R. R. Literary Prizes and Their Winners (New
York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1967).

Bradbury, John M. Renaissance in the South: A Critical

History of the Literature, 1920-1960 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1963) .

Bryant, Donald C. "Rhetoric: Its Function and Scope,"
in The Province of Rhetoric, Joseph Schwartz and
John Rycenza, ed. (New York: Ronald Press Com-
pany, 1965) .

Burke, Kenneth. Counter -Statement (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 19'51) .

Carpenter, Ronald. "Alfred Thayer Mahan ' s Style on Sea
Po^ver: A Paramessage Conducing to Ethos,"
Speech Monographs, 42 (August, 1975), 192.

Figh, Margaret Gillis. "Folklore and Folk Speech in the

Works of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings," Southern Folk-
lore Quarterly, 2 (September, 1947), 201-209.

Holman, C. Hugh. "Literature and Culture: The Fugitive-
Agrarians," Social Forces, 57 (October, 195S), 19.

Horton, Rod W. and Edwards, Herbert W. Backgrounds of
American Literary Thought (Nev\/ York: Appleton
Century Crofts, 1952) ."

Jordan, William. "A Study of Rhetorical Criticism in the
Modern Novel," Debut Paper, SiVA Convention, 1967.

Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1964) .

McGuirs, William J. A Study of Florida Cracker Dialect
Based Chiefly on the Prose Works of Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings, Master's Thesis, University of
Florida (Gainesville, 1939).

Morris, Lloyd. "A New Classicist," The North American
Review, 246 (Septem.ber, 1938J, 179-184.

163

Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilizarion (New York:
KarcoufL, 3race an'3~World^ 1954) .

Munroe, Hiigh P. ''To the Wall Enthymeme I " Paper read at
the 1969 CSSA Convention, St Louis.

Odum, Howard W. and Mocre, Harry E. American Regionalism:
A Cultural-Historical Approach to National In-
tegration (New York: H. Holt and Company, 195 S ) .

Peck, Joseph R. The- Fiction Writing Art of Marl or ie Kinnan
Rawlings , Master's Thesis, University of Florida
(Gainesville, 1954} .

Rav>?lings, Marjorie Kinnan. The Yearling (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1938).

"Regional Literature of the South," College

English, 1 (February, 1940)
. The Yearling, Study Guide by Mary Louise Fagy

and Edith Cowles, (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1962).

Robillard, Ambolena H. Max^vell Evarts Perkins: Authors'

Editor , Doctoral Dissertation, University ot Florida
(Gainesville, 1964).

Slagel, Mary Louise. The Artistic Use of Nature in the

Fiction of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Master's Thesis,
University of Florida (Gainesville , 1963) .

Staumann, Heinrich. American Literature in the Twentieth
Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1965) .

Tompkins, Phillip. "In Cold Fact," Esquire , 65 (June,
1965), 125.

"The Rhetorical Criticism of Non-Oratorical

Works," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 5 5 (December,
1969) , 431-439.

Thrall, William F., Hubbard, Addison, and Hugh Holman.

A Handbook to Literature (Mew York: The Odyssey
Press, 1960).

Twelve Southern Authors, I'll Take Mv Stand: The South

and the Agrarian TradTtTon [^Tew York: FTarpcr and
Ff others, lT50) .

164

Twelve Soutriern Authors. I'll Take My Stand: The South
and the Agrarian Tradition, (New York: Harper and
Row , 196 2).

Weygandt , Patricia. "A Rhetorical Criticism of Sgt. Pepper's
, Lonely Hearts Club Band," Unpublished Paper, 1969,
Kent State University.

Young, Thomas D., Watkins, Floyd C, and Beatty, Richard C.
The Literature of the South, (Atlanta: Scott,
Foresman and- Co., 1968).

BIOGILA.PHICAL SKETCH

Edna Louise Saffy was born March 8, 1935 in
Jacksonville, Florida, She attended West Riverside
Grammar School, John Gorrie Junior High, and Robert E.
Lee Senior High. She attended the University of Florida
and received her Bachelor's degree in 1967 and her Master's
degree in 1968. She is married to Grady Earl Johnson,
Junior, of Virden, Manitoba , Canada.

While at the University of Florida, Ms. Saffy was
a member of the President's Committee on the Status of
Women, the Student Senate, Savant Leadership Organization,
and Alpha Chi Onega Sorority.

Ms. Saffy is an officer of the South Atlantic
Modern Language Association and a founder of its Women's
Studies Section, She is a member of the Speech Communica-
tion Association, the Southern Speech Communication .Associ-
ation, and the College English Association.

Ms. Saffy's political affiliations include the
Presidency of both the Gainesville and Jacksonville
chapters of the National Organization for Women, State
of Florida Strategist for the Equal Rights Amendment,
and membership in the Women's Political Caucus.

165

166

Among the honors she has received are membership
in Lambda Iota Tau, Who's Who in American Colleges and
Universities, and the University of Florida Hall of Fame,

I certify that I have read tnis study and tha
my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of sch
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and qual
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philoso

t in
olarly
ity,
phy.

Ronald H. Carpenter, Chairpe
Associate Professor of Speec

rson
h

I certify that I have read this study and that in
my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

V'incent McGuire
Professor of Education

/^^-Z^-C-C^w /- . ■St-t^A^^Z.-f^-C

Patricia L. Schmidt
Assistant Professor of Speech and
Behavioral Studies

I certify that I have read this study and that in
my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosot

)pny

&m£3L

Donald E. Williams
Professor of Soeech

I certify that I have read this studv and that in
my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy'

Lelana:^-L;-^-^immerman
Professor of Theater

This dissertation was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
the Department of Speech in the College of Arts and Sciences
and to the Graduate Council, and was accented as partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor

of Philosophy.
March, 1976

Gr A c]/u.ai-e-^]iool

B^ B.

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