“I’ll always come out on top.” Although Lindgren never referred to herself as a feminist per se, Pippi’s staunch independence, and her gusto for life, one lived entirely according to her own calibrations, reveals a progressive interpretation of gender that remains relatively conspicuous even today. It’s a staggeringly solitary life for a nine-year-old, but Pippi isn’t frightened: “Don’t you worry about me,” she assures everyone who indicates solicitude. The child of a mother who died when she was a baby and a ship captain father who is lost at sea, Pippi lives alone with a pet monkey, and she resists with vivacity adults’ attempts to corral her into conventional childhood activities.įor instance, she refuses to attend school, eludes those who would toss her into foster care, and she goes to bed whenever she pleases (she also drinks coffee). And she wields wild, magical strength-she can easily lift a horse-although she adheres to a code of pacifism. She wears her freckles proudly and is offended by beauty products vowing to eliminate them. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, her plaited hair blazes a combustible red- though, unlike Anne, she is perfectly content with her appearance. By 1945, the first book, named for the titular character, was published to great acclaim, although one reviewer, aghast, referred to Pippi as “psychotic.”Ĭertainly Lindgren’s character would have been unconventional in any case, but she is all the more extraordinary for her femaleness. Her daughter, Karin, seven years old at the time, was confined to her bed with pneumonia, and yearning for entertainment. Disgusted by the ways in which adults “browbeat” and “trampled on” their children, she dreamed up Pippi, “the strongest girl in the world,” in the winter of 1941. Perhaps one of the most uncompromising-and uncompromised-children’s heroines from the twentieth century is Pippi Longstocking, literary creation of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren.

Plucky heroines abound across Anglo and American children’s literature, yet their own struggles with gendered strictures and the trajectories of their comings-of-age often present conflicting narratives.

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