Review by: Ahsan Nabi Khan
Johanna Spyri is a Swiss born writer popular among the children for her fancy fairy-tale like stories and novels. Her life was spent in a village overlooking the Lake of Zurich with a spectacular view of the Swiss Alps, which made the setting of her novel of an innocent, happy and loving girl Heidi. The author’s name is not much familiar among the modern sci-fi and paranormal stories’ readers, but her work is rather quite different and touching. Her particular skill was to delineate history of an innocent world apart from the deception, greed, double standards and moral depravity of the modern culture.
In fact, her life has been little known to the world. When she was asked to write an autobiography, her honest reply was,
“The external path of my life is quite simple, and there is nothing special to be mentioned. My inner life was full of storms, but who can describe it?”
Madame Spyri had quite a happy childhood, but in contrast with her married life when she lost her only son as he grew to be twenty-nine. At her home in the rural setting, she enjoyed a rich culture and developed her love for books. After her marriage, the couple continued to mix with the literary and art-loving people in Zurich for the remaining of their lifetime—She died at their Zurich home back in 1891.
Johanna felt a child’s instincts and wishes which she illustrated in her picture of Heidi. Johanna’s love for younger children made her well known with the publishing of her three volumes of Heimathlos, with the title page saying it is written for those who love children, as well as the youngsters themselves. Other of her books count to more than twelve. In all the stories she wrote, she wanted the children be preserved from mistaken kindness that hinders the natural development of their lives and misunderstandings that prevent the attainment of true happiness. Her writing has been appreciated to be like noted contemporaries of her time: Louisa May Alcott for her development of female characters, and Robert Louis Stevenson for her setting and plot.
The late nineteenth century saw the convention of having invalid or orphan in stories. Spyri’s characters often were according to these literary conventions. They conveyed her spiritual depiction of death as a “release from earthly misery”. The little people’s natural life seemed to be delivered by the author as if she herself lived among her characters in the charm of the mountains.
Heidi is often taken as the first book from Johanna Spyri, even though she wrote so widely for children. This is because Heidi got so famous that all the rest was forgotten. As it was published in 1880, copies were soon available in English. Anyone who reads it gets the feel of the very basic human instincts and needs, like individual versus society, health and illness, wealth and poverty. This was a perfect recipe for the most successful children book of all time.
So what does Heidi do anyway? This friendly, sprightly orphan was brought to live on the Alps with her excessively gloomy and introvert kind of grandfather. She breaks all the darkness of the gloom with her sparkle and lightens up everyone that she meets, especially the goatherd, Peter. Each sunset and sunrise, both the grand-daughter and her guardian welcome in their home amidst abundant flowers, ancient fir trees, broad meadows, and breezes and heavy snow, to top it all. Their fascination lets nothing be taken for granted.
As always, the happy moments are sliced by vices and evils. Here these are selfishness, hypocrisy, and materialism as embodied completely in less important characters like the aunt, the head housekeeper at Peter’s home and the villagers. Heidi’s aunt, a selfish and callous character, whisks her away to live with Clara, a sickly daughter of a wealthy family at Frankfurt. This did not prevent Heidi from her loving disposition as she grows to like Clara too, but with sad recollections of the happy times in the Alps with her old grandfather. He also could not live happy without her. Nevertheless, the story does not have a sad end.
The good characters are complete in their virtues of love for others, faith in God, thankfulness, humility, and respect for nature. Heidi, her grandfather, Peter’s blind grandmother, the invalid girl Clara, and her father give their own different pictures of inspiring goodness. Basically, the moral sense in the characters derives from the underlying Christian religious themes. God controls all that His subjects go through, making it best for them even when they know not.
The book encourages seeking solace in prayers as the answer to life’s troubles and frustrations. One has to ask God’s help whenever he finds a problem and also thank Him when in safety for all the blessings He gave. The Golden Rule is dramatized in the novel as the characters get the greatest happiness from helping others. In our times of Godless chaos haunting the modern fiction, this is a spiritual flight to the past themes. One can hope for inspirations form such works to fill in the gap with innocent joys again.