Pollyanna

Pollyanna is unusual in being a children’s book populated with adults and in having a child protagonist who enters the world of adults and solves problems she is too young to have any personal experience with. The third person narrative continually emphasizes her childishness, describing her girlish habit of dancing on her toes and continually giving her the epithets “little” and “small”, thus making her a diminutive fairy-like presence amongst the adults she interacts with. For example, passages describe how “eagerly Pollyanna’s small feet pattered behind her aunt” and regard her from an adult perspective and sets her childishness apart from the world of adults (24).

In addition to continually establishing Pollyanna’s physical difference from the adults around her, the text makes her a cipher of childhood, who forces her adult peers to look at their lives afresh and become rejuvenated. Although Pollyanna goes to school and interacts with children her age, the narration does not show her relationships with her peers in any detail, emphasizing that “in spite of her delight in her new work, Pollyanna did not forget her old friends” and refocusing on Pollyanna’s interactions in the adult world (133).