March 2020 | SMITHSONIAN 69For seven years Stratton-Porter
delved into everything moth-related,
and this infl uenced not only her nov-
el A Girl of the Limberlost—the teen-
age Elnora and her widowed mother
emerge from metaphorical cocoons
to become their better selves—but
also her nonfi ction Moths of the Lim-
berlost, which included reproduc-
tions of her painstakingly hand-col-
ored photographs. “Her observations
are scientifi cally valuable, her narra-
tive is entertaining, her enthusiasm
catching, and her revelations so stim-
ulating that one readily forgives some
minor defects in bookmaking,” said a
review in the New York Times. (Today,
dozens of her moths and butterfl ies
are on display at her old Limberlost
cabin, including a spicebush swal-
lowtail butterfl y, a red admiral and an
io moth suspended in fl ight.)
Twenty years before the Dust Bowl
of the 1930s, Stratton-Porter fore-
warned that rainfall would be aff ect-
ed by the destruction of forests and
swamps. Conservationists such as
John Muir had linked deforestation to erosion, but she linked
it to climate change:It was Thoreau who in writing of the destruction of the
forests exclaimed, ‘Thank heaven they cannot cut down
the clouds.’ Aye, but they can!...If men in their greed
cut forests that preserve and distill moisture, clear fi elds,
take the shelter of trees from creeks and rivers until they
evaporate, and drain the water from swamps so that
they can be cleared and cultivated , they prevent vapor
from rising. And if it does not rise, it cannot fall. Man
can change and is changing the forces of nature. Man
can cut down the clouds.Writing nature studies stirred Stratton-Porter’s soul, but
her fi ction, she felt, inspired people to higher ideals. She paidlittle attention to the literary establishment when
it criticized her novels for having saccharine plots
and unrealistic characters. She insisted that her
characters were drawn from genuine Indiana folks.
Unlike her contemporary Edith Wharton, she once
wrote,“I could not write of society, because I know
just enough about it to know that the more I know,
the less I wish to know.”
At the same time, despite all her rustic pursuits,
Stratton-Porter, like Wharton, was no stranger to
the prerogatives of wealth, both hers (from book
sales) and her husband’s. Ironically, perhaps,
while she was writing about the disappearance of
the Limberlost, Charles was adding to his fortune
selling oil from 60 wells on his farm.
In 1919, Stratton-Porter moved with her husband to South-
ern California. She’d been unhappy with the fi lm adaptations
of her novels, and she established Gene Stratton-Porter Pro-
ductions to control the process herself. She built a vacation
home on Catalina Island and started building a mansion in
the area that’s now Bel Air.
In her extensive career, the most puzzling and most damag-
ing thing she created was the racist theme of her 1921 novel Her
Father’s Daughter. The heroine, a high-school student named
Linda, makes derogatory remarks about a Japanese classmate
who is on track to become valedictorian. (The brilliant Asian
student is later revealed to be a man in his 30s who is posing
as a teenager.) “People have talked about the ‘yellow peril’
till it’s got to be a meaningless phrase,” Linda says. “Some-
body must wake up to the realization that it’s the deadliest
peril that has ever menaced white civilization.”
Did these views belong solely to Stratton-Porter’s fi ctional
characters, mirroring the rac-
ist sentiment that would give
rise to Japanese-American in-
ternment camps in the 1940s?
Or were these Stratton-Porter’s
own views? No Stratton-Porter
scholar I spoke with was able to
defi nitively answer this ques-
tion, and none of the many let-
ters of hers I read off ered any
clues. Her Father’s Daughter is
a disturbing read today.
Stratton-Porter’s next book,
The Keeper of the Bees, was
more in line with her earlier
work—a novel about a veteran
of the Great War who healed
his spirit by becoming a bee-
keeper. It appeared serially in
McCall’s, but she did not live
to see it published as a book:
She was killed in Los Angeles on December 6, 1924, when her
chauff eured Lincoln was struck by a streetcar. She was 61.
Her London Times obituary noted that she was “one of the
small group of writers whose success, both in England and in“HER OBSERVATIONS ARE SCIENTIFICALLY
VALUABLE, HER NARRATIVE IS ENTERTAINING,
HER ENTHUSIASM CATCHING, AND HER
REVELATIONS SO STIMULATING
THAT ONE READILY FORGIVES SOME
MINOR DEFECTS.”
“In the economy of nature,
nothing is ever lost,” Strat-
ton-Porter wrote in 1923,
shortly before she died.