H.H. is the early pen name often used by Helen Hunt
Jackson who was born the very same year as Emily
Dickinson and in the very same town, Amherst,
Massachusetts. The girls attended the same primary school
and retained a lifelong acquaintance. They were cohorts of
an age and writers of an era.
The big question for me is how the reclusive, self-isolating
Dickinson, who did not write for publication, rose to
posthumous literary fame while Jackson’s well published
works fell through the cracks of the postmodern English
literary canon, as well as several preceding canonical eras.
My own K-12 through grad school education certainly did
not expose me to the work of Helen Hunt Jackson. That
came 30 years after college when I fell upon some
charming poetry by a writer, “H.H.” Being curious, I
researched and was surprised to discover H.H. was a
woman—Helen Hunt Jackson
Jackson’s body of work includes poetry, fiction, non-
fiction, historical fiction, travel books, children’s books,
and even oratorical writing; the latter in the form of an
address to Congress. Unlike Dickinson, H.H. Jackson was
not an unknown entity during the 19th century. Her oeuvre
is massive; her writing well-crafted; her stories engaging,
and her essays full of wit and wisdom. Jackson’s
signature work is the fictional novel, Ramona, inspired by
her political activism for the rights of native American
Indians.
77In a very small, inadequate nutshell, Ramona, is the story
of a girl—half White, half Native American—brought up
on a Spanish estate in Southern California. Ramona
ultimately chooses a life among the Indian people, having
fallen in love with Allesandro, a full-blooded Indian
“educated in the White man’s ways.” It is within the
context of this story that Jackson was able to demonstrate
how native Americans were diminished by missionary
Christianizing efforts, were defrauded of their land by the
U.S. government, and became the target of genocidal
atrocities by military forces and Western settlers.
One enduring remark concerning Ramona, a remark born
from the very intentions of Jackson herself, is that
Ramona (1884) was to do for the American Indian what
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
did for the slave. While there is evidence Ramona
broadened awareness of the government’s mistreatment of
the indigenous people of the Continental U.S., the book
was received as more a “romantic novel” than a piece of
“protest literature” vis-à-vis Stowe’s work.
Significantly, however, Ramona had a prequel in Jackson’s
highly researched, nonfictional work, Century of Dishonor
(1881), sub-titled: “A Sketch of the United States
Government’s Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes.” In the
very first sentences of the Introductory chapter, Jackson writes:
The question of the
honorableness of the United
States' dealings with the Indians
turns largely on a much disputed
and little understood point. What
was the nature of the Indians'
right to the country in which theywere living when the continent of
North America was discovered?
For the next 30 pages she reveals first, a history of
understandings among various conquering nations
concerning the rights of indigenous people to own the land
being conquered; she then moves into how early
“Americans” interpreted such rights; and then into how
the U.S. Government constructed laws protecting such
rights; how treaties were written and the promises therein
broken along with the protective laws the government
legislated. And finally, how the U.S. military betrayed and
brutalized the very persons they were commissioned to
protect.
The book goes on for another remarkable 420+ pages. Therein
are facts, witness accounts, historical documentation, letters,
legal renderings and other evidence all of which serve Jackson’s
plea to the Congress of 1880 to be the first “to cut short our
nation’s record of cruelties and perjuries! the first to attempt to
redeem the name of the United States from a stain of a century
of dishonor!” (sic) At her own expense, she sent a copy of the
book to each member of Congress, and was later invited to
address Congress on these matters.
Ramona realized early success, with more than 15,000
copies sold in the first ten months of publication. There
have been more than 300 reissues to date and the book has
never been out of print. Further, Jackson’s story has been
adapted into film five times and a play adaptation has been
performed annually since 1923 at what is today known as
the Ramona Bowl Amphitheatre in Emmet, California.
Finally, the 1912 edition of Ramona published by Little,
Brown, and Company, includes this jacket cover blurb by
the San Francisco Chronicle: “The greatest story of
California ever written.”
79While “Century” and Ramona are certainly remarkable
achievements, I found other very worthy books and essays
in the stockpile of Jackson’s prodigious output. One in
particular, Bits About Home Matters (1873) speaks, in
part, to childrearing practices that experts and authorities
today – 150 years later! – have mapped to abnormal,
deviant, often criminal behavior, to say nothing of
conditions that usher so many into drug, alcohol and other
life-threatening addictions. The first four essays, in this
collection of forty essays, deal with “The Inhumanities of
Parents”: Corporal Punishment; Needless Denials;
Rudeness; Breaking the Will. The entire collection is quite
a study, and it is likely Jackson’s other works would
reveal her astute capacity for divining the trajectory
America was on should so many social, political, cultural
conditions and traditions go unchanged during her era.
A thorough study of the life and works of Helen Hunt
Jackson begs to be undertaken. Such a project would
provide a richer and more valuable understanding of life
in the 19th century, as well as the challenges faced by 19th
century women writers, than does the massive amounts of
scholarship provided us from the study of Emily
Dickinson and her life. Jackson’s was a rich life
experience filled with loss and emotional hardship, illness,
love, travel and adventure which, for the sake of brevity,
awaits your discovery outside the margins of this essay.
https://www.gutenberg.org/Helen Hunt Jackson’s works,
Ramona,“Century”, her poetry, stories, essays may all be
found on-line at the Free eBooks | Project Gutenberg
website. Dip in. I promise, you will not only be surprised,
but some enlightening and entertaining reading awaits
you.
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