Girls and Knowledge

In thinking about comparisons between Pippi Longstocking and The Moorchild as we have done in the most recent writing assignment and in class today, I began thinking about the skills and talents of Pippi and Saaski. These girls are parentless, but they have some unique talents that bring excitement, and sometimes power, into their lives. Pippi is, after all, the world's strongest girl, and always has a way of making something normal new and exciting. Saaski has talents that come from her folk heritage. She is something of a bagpipe prodigy, and she can both see and read messages left by the folk in the town. I think it is interesting that in a time when the education of children, and especially girls, would have been quite different from what we are now used to, Saaski is privileged to some secret knowledge. I propose that perhaps her knowledge of these writings and of the bagpipes is more subversive because of her gender.

The villagers treatment of Saaski reminds me of the Salem witch trials and the tendency to fear women who are outsiders or exhibit difference. McGraw hints that gender did possibly play a part in the general conception of Saaski when she describes how Saaski was blamed for the birth of a two headed calf despite that there were also two boys present at the birth (40). Perhaps the villagers would have had the same reaction if Saaski had been accompanied by two girls, but I can't help wonder if McGraw is purposefully coding this account as an instance of gender-bias. It is not just that Saaski looks odd and happens to be around when weird things happen; she is also female.

Saaski's knowledge, like previously mentioned, is secret and mysterious. She can't explain how she knows how to play the bagpipes or where she has heard the songs before. She also does not know why she can read the signs. Tam, however, has some unusual skills, but they are not mysterious or secret. He knows how to juggle, a talent that Saaski finds so unique she declares it to be "wizardly," but he has gained this knowledge through traditional means (63). His dad has taught him how to juggle. Perhaps, then, boys can have unique skills through accepted, standard means of learning and education, but for a girl to have a profound knowledge or skill it must have mysterious origins.