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Ramona
One of the greatest ethical novels of the nineteenth century, Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona is a tale of true love tested.
Set in Old California, this powerful narrative richly depicts the life of the fading Spanish order, the oppression of tribal American communities and inevitably, the brutal intrusion of white settlers. Ramona, an illegitimate orphan, grows up as the ward of the overbearing Senora Moreno. But her desire for Alessandro, a Native American, makes her an outcast and fugitive...
Set in Old California, this powerful narrative richly depicts the life of the fading Spanish order, the oppression of tribal American communities and inevitably, the brutal intrusion of white settlers. Ramona, an illegitimate orphan, grows up as the ward of the overbearing Senora Moreno. But her desire for Alessandro, a Native American, makes her an outcast and fugitive...
432 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1884
405 people are currently reading
3633 people want to read
About the author
Helen Hunt Jackson
128 books64 followersPeople know American writer Helen Maria Fiske Hunt Jackson for
Ramona
(1884), a romantic novel concerning the injustices that Native Americans suffered.
This author, an activist for rights, wrote best about the ill treatment in southern California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_H...
This author, an activist for rights, wrote best about the ill treatment in southern California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_H...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 376 reviews
December 17, 2014
Go with me on this.
It’s the year 2060. We have our flying cars, vat-grown replacement organs and Kim Kardashian’s Skanky Grannies reality TV – but you know what we don’t have? Anybody that remembers The Great Gatsby. Not the book, not the movies – nothing. That seems like an almost impossibility, right? Having finished Ramona, and then reading about the success of this novel and its almost complete obscurity in 2014, I’m not so sure.
This is a romance novel, no doubt about it – my first foray into that genre. Helen Hunt Jackson’s book was pulled on my random selection of the 500 Great Books by Women, and despite that I can now say that romance novels aren’t my thing, I’m very glad I read it. Racial discrimination against Native Americans (first by Mexicans, and then by white Americans) is a theme played large against the backdrop of the love story that moves the action of the book – and it is what HHJ does with the oppression of the natives of Southern California that is the best part of the story.
Written in 1884, Ramona has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has never been out of print. It has been adapted into a film four times and an outdoor play based upon the novel has been in production since 1923. The book’s impact on southern California was significant – as the railroads into that area began to open in the early 1900s, fans of the novel traveled across the country to visit the land of Ramona. HHJ’s depiction of the mission-era SoCal environment is beautifully written; you can almost smell the sage and trail dust.
Have you ever heard of this book? I hadn’t, nor had any of my well-read friends. It is an important work – I really hope people continue to read it and it doesn’t go the way of 2060 Gatsby.
It’s the year 2060. We have our flying cars, vat-grown replacement organs and Kim Kardashian’s Skanky Grannies reality TV – but you know what we don’t have? Anybody that remembers The Great Gatsby. Not the book, not the movies – nothing. That seems like an almost impossibility, right? Having finished Ramona, and then reading about the success of this novel and its almost complete obscurity in 2014, I’m not so sure.
This is a romance novel, no doubt about it – my first foray into that genre. Helen Hunt Jackson’s book was pulled on my random selection of the 500 Great Books by Women, and despite that I can now say that romance novels aren’t my thing, I’m very glad I read it. Racial discrimination against Native Americans (first by Mexicans, and then by white Americans) is a theme played large against the backdrop of the love story that moves the action of the book – and it is what HHJ does with the oppression of the natives of Southern California that is the best part of the story.
Written in 1884, Ramona has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has never been out of print. It has been adapted into a film four times and an outdoor play based upon the novel has been in production since 1923. The book’s impact on southern California was significant – as the railroads into that area began to open in the early 1900s, fans of the novel traveled across the country to visit the land of Ramona. HHJ’s depiction of the mission-era SoCal environment is beautifully written; you can almost smell the sage and trail dust.
Have you ever heard of this book? I hadn’t, nor had any of my well-read friends. It is an important work – I really hope people continue to read it and it doesn’t go the way of 2060 Gatsby.
3rd book read of 500 Great Books by Women
February 17, 2010
As many of you know, one of my hobbies is to read books that were once popular but have now fallen into obscurity, trying to understand the past through what excited people at the time.
Ramona, a book that has appeared in more than 300 editions since it was first published, was made into a movie four times, and inspired an entire tourist industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, is surely such a book. I've had a copy for years, one belonging to my father-in-law, and it's long been on my to-read list.
It's quite a lovely book - a romance of the old west, and a strong indictment of the treatment of the American Indian (and to a lesser extent, the Mexicans) by the conquering Americans, who brought a long period of California history to a close.
As I wrote in the book's description (see above), the book was written after the failure of Hunt's earlier non-fiction book, A Century of Dishonor to raise consciousness about the plight of the American Indian and their disgraceful treatment by the United States government. However, the charming romance (which turns darker as the story progresses) was what caught people's imagination.
Still, it's an eye-opening look at how the conquering Americans treated the Indian and Mexican inhabitants of California. We like to think we're better than the ethnic cleansers of today's world, but our country was built on ethnic cleansing. For all its storybook romance and idealization of the Franciscan missions and the life on the Mexican ranchos, this book is a great reminder of our own history.
P.S. People who enjoyed this book might also look for The Splendid Idle Forties by Gertrude Atherton, a collection of romantic stories about old California. Another, perhaps more realistic view of old California can be found in Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana. I love the descriptions in Dana's book of San Francisco in 1837 as a wooded peninsula populated by deer and bears, with a tiny fishing village and port, but it's also great to see him refer to this area as the northern part of Mexico, and to meditate on how the things we take for granted weren't always so, and won't always continue to be so.
Ramona, a book that has appeared in more than 300 editions since it was first published, was made into a movie four times, and inspired an entire tourist industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, is surely such a book. I've had a copy for years, one belonging to my father-in-law, and it's long been on my to-read list.
It's quite a lovely book - a romance of the old west, and a strong indictment of the treatment of the American Indian (and to a lesser extent, the Mexicans) by the conquering Americans, who brought a long period of California history to a close.
As I wrote in the book's description (see above), the book was written after the failure of Hunt's earlier non-fiction book, A Century of Dishonor to raise consciousness about the plight of the American Indian and their disgraceful treatment by the United States government. However, the charming romance (which turns darker as the story progresses) was what caught people's imagination.
Still, it's an eye-opening look at how the conquering Americans treated the Indian and Mexican inhabitants of California. We like to think we're better than the ethnic cleansers of today's world, but our country was built on ethnic cleansing. For all its storybook romance and idealization of the Franciscan missions and the life on the Mexican ranchos, this book is a great reminder of our own history.
P.S. People who enjoyed this book might also look for The Splendid Idle Forties by Gertrude Atherton, a collection of romantic stories about old California. Another, perhaps more realistic view of old California can be found in Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana. I love the descriptions in Dana's book of San Francisco in 1837 as a wooded peninsula populated by deer and bears, with a tiny fishing village and port, but it's also great to see him refer to this area as the northern part of Mexico, and to meditate on how the things we take for granted weren't always so, and won't always continue to be so.
July 13, 2020
First published in 1884, and first read in 1885 by women in my family, there has always been a copy available to me. I've read this book many, many times, and it still hits my heart.
Helen Hunt Jackson was one of the very first to point a big shaming finger at the White Man when it came to all indigenous cultures on the America continent. In this book she is specifically concerned with the native tribes and cultures already settled (Mexican mostly) throughout what would become the southwestern US and upper Mexico. The beautiful valleys and mountains she described were based on her travels throughout that area, and using her notes the characters with which she peopled Ramona were burdened with the iniquities she observed on these trips and interviews. Her timeline is much earlier than her trip, where she saw ruins, elders and a few relics well-kept for history’s sake. The land was battle-scarred having changed hands from native tribes, to Mexican dons, and then westering pioneers. Jackson got a good whiff of the battles, and the sorry results. And, as a woman with the power of her own voice and pen, along with access to records, she did her research. Beyond this fictional book, she wrote a non-fictional one that was sent with all her information and data to the US government: Century of Dishonor. The sole purpose was to shame and motivate some kind of remediating and restorative action on the part of the government, both state and federal.
Decades later I was born in this valley, a white daughter of immigrants from other states, who settled in the cities built among the ruins and relics well-kept. In fact, I was trotted out to those in field trips on a regular basis, and loved being there. A spirit all its own resides and watches over those places, haunted and wary. Yet, it always draws me in. I spent many summers in the little hot towns around Hemet, which is close by the pageant amphitheater where there is an annual celebration and re-enactment of Ramona’s story. The pageant does a great job of talking more about Helen’s efforts to get America motivated and concerned about the mistreatment of California’s indigenous people. Here’s a link: http://ramonabowl.com/just-love-story/
Quoting that website:
“She called for changes in the government’s Indian policies and documented their past crimes in her 1881 book, “A Century of Dishonor”.
The outlook seemed bleak. Jackson described in vivid detail the broken treaties, brutal murders and evictions the Indians had endured. Forced onto reservations, disease and death soon took their toll. America’s Indians were heading towards extinction. “I sometimes wonder that the Lord does not rain fire and brimstone on this land,” Jackson wrote to a friend, “to punish us for cruelty to these unfortunate Indians.”
Jackson had hoped her book would lift the American people to the same sort of outrage she felt over the treatment of the Indians. When it did not, she decided to try to write a novel that would “move people’s hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books,” she wrote.”
During recent protests and plain speaking, many are moved to examine their own accountability as it relates to social conditioning and that which we were raised into, and then later adopt, evolve and develop as we live in our communities. We carry within our own personal “preferences”, standards and “beliefs” biases to which we may have been blind or have never recognized. Messages have been coming at us from all directions, for hundreds, thousands of years. I see this book by Helen Hunt Jackson as a demand for healing actions for the California tribes. She is waiting for those who have ears to hear, and as my mother always said, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Sadly, by the time anyone listened to Helen, most all of those tribes had been decimated by territorial persecution, bigotry, disease, displacement, and a careful deconstruction of their culture by newcomers.
5 stars for the hope she had that someone would hear her. Still.
Helen Hunt Jackson was one of the very first to point a big shaming finger at the White Man when it came to all indigenous cultures on the America continent. In this book she is specifically concerned with the native tribes and cultures already settled (Mexican mostly) throughout what would become the southwestern US and upper Mexico. The beautiful valleys and mountains she described were based on her travels throughout that area, and using her notes the characters with which she peopled Ramona were burdened with the iniquities she observed on these trips and interviews. Her timeline is much earlier than her trip, where she saw ruins, elders and a few relics well-kept for history’s sake. The land was battle-scarred having changed hands from native tribes, to Mexican dons, and then westering pioneers. Jackson got a good whiff of the battles, and the sorry results. And, as a woman with the power of her own voice and pen, along with access to records, she did her research. Beyond this fictional book, she wrote a non-fictional one that was sent with all her information and data to the US government: Century of Dishonor. The sole purpose was to shame and motivate some kind of remediating and restorative action on the part of the government, both state and federal.
Decades later I was born in this valley, a white daughter of immigrants from other states, who settled in the cities built among the ruins and relics well-kept. In fact, I was trotted out to those in field trips on a regular basis, and loved being there. A spirit all its own resides and watches over those places, haunted and wary. Yet, it always draws me in. I spent many summers in the little hot towns around Hemet, which is close by the pageant amphitheater where there is an annual celebration and re-enactment of Ramona’s story. The pageant does a great job of talking more about Helen’s efforts to get America motivated and concerned about the mistreatment of California’s indigenous people. Here’s a link: http://ramonabowl.com/just-love-story/
Quoting that website:
“She called for changes in the government’s Indian policies and documented their past crimes in her 1881 book, “A Century of Dishonor”.
The outlook seemed bleak. Jackson described in vivid detail the broken treaties, brutal murders and evictions the Indians had endured. Forced onto reservations, disease and death soon took their toll. America’s Indians were heading towards extinction. “I sometimes wonder that the Lord does not rain fire and brimstone on this land,” Jackson wrote to a friend, “to punish us for cruelty to these unfortunate Indians.”
Jackson had hoped her book would lift the American people to the same sort of outrage she felt over the treatment of the Indians. When it did not, she decided to try to write a novel that would “move people’s hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books,” she wrote.”
During recent protests and plain speaking, many are moved to examine their own accountability as it relates to social conditioning and that which we were raised into, and then later adopt, evolve and develop as we live in our communities. We carry within our own personal “preferences”, standards and “beliefs” biases to which we may have been blind or have never recognized. Messages have been coming at us from all directions, for hundreds, thousands of years. I see this book by Helen Hunt Jackson as a demand for healing actions for the California tribes. She is waiting for those who have ears to hear, and as my mother always said, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Sadly, by the time anyone listened to Helen, most all of those tribes had been decimated by territorial persecution, bigotry, disease, displacement, and a careful deconstruction of their culture by newcomers.
5 stars for the hope she had that someone would hear her. Still.
June 5, 2022
Ramona was a hero for her time, and there are some ways in which she could perhaps be a hero for ours. The protagonist and title character of Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel Ramona made quite an impression on the readership of late-19th-century American society – even if the author’s hopes that the novel would increase her Anglo-American readers’ interest in justice for Indigenous Americans went largely unrealized.
Author Helen Hunt Jackson is so strongly identified with the state of California, and with San Diego County more particularly, that it is strange to reflect that she was originally a Unitarian minister’s daughter from Massachusetts. Her early life was marked by loss and sorrow – the premature deaths of both her parents, her husband, and two sons – and she came to take a strong interest in the travails of Indigenous Americans in the United States.
She wrote a non-fiction book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), and sent a copy to every member of the U.S. Congress; but the book did not have significant impact on the government’s Indian policy. After relocating to California, she came to hope that, as her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851) had changed Anglo-Americans’ minds and hearts when it came to African Americans and slavery, a novel with a comparable mixture of sentimentality and reformism might do the same sort of good on behalf of American Indians. That hope eventually resulted in the novel Ramona.
Jackson’s novel works within the tradition of the “local color” literature that was popular among readers of the late 19th century. Before the Civil War, differences among American regions had seemed to threaten the Union itself; after the war, by contrast, the regional diversity of the U.S.A. became something to celebrate, and readers enjoyed the chance to travel vicariously, and to experience the cultural factors that made different regions of the United States. And what various other writers did for New England (Sarah Orne Jewett) or the American South (Mark Twain, George Washington Cable), Helen Hunt Jackson did for her part of Southern California.
Ramona begins on a Mexican hacienda, shortly after U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War has caused the former Mexican province of Alta California to pass from Mexican to U.S. sovereignty. The hacienda is administered by one Señora Moreno, a strong and proud woman who represents los Californios, the old Castilian aristocrats of Mexican California whose place at the top of the social order has been supplanted by the Americans.
Señora Moreno has plenty of reasons to dislike the Americans. Her husband died fighting them in the Mexican-American War – perhaps on a battlefield like San Pasqual, the 1846 battle site in San Diego County that is now a historic state park. A devout Catholic, Señora Moreno despises the Americans’ Protestantism as well as their dedication to money-making: “The spirit of unbelief is spreading in the country since the Americans are running up and down everywhere seeking money, like dogs with their noses to the ground!” (p. 8) The novel’s narrator thus sums up the reasons behind the contempt that Señora Moreno - and, by implication, others among los Californios - feels for the Americans:
No wonder she believed the Americans thieves, and spoke of them always as hounds. The people of the United States have never in the least realized that the taking possession of California was not only a conquering of Mexico, but a conquering of California as well; that the real bitterness of the surrender was not so much to the empire which gave up the country, as to the country itself which was given up… (pp. 9-10).
Theoretically, Señora Moreno’s son, Señor Felipe, runs the estate; and in her delineation of the well-meaning but initially weak-willed Señor Felipe, Jackson sets forth her sense of the virtues and limitations of the old Mexican order: “When it came to the pay-roll, Señor Felipe knew to whom he paid wages; but who were fed and lodged under his roof, that was quite another thing. It could not enter into the head of a Mexican gentleman to make either count or account of that. It would be a disgraceful, niggardly thought” (pp. 5-6).
In fact, however, Señora Moreno is always very much in charge of the hacienda, in large part because of her ability to manipulate people like her son Felipe, without their being aware that they are being manipulated: “To attain one’s ends in this way is the consummate triumph of art. Never to appear as a factor in the situation; to be able to wield other men, as instruments, with the same direct and implicit response to will that one gets from a hand or a foot – this is to triumph, indeed: to be as nearly controller and conqueror of Fates as fate permits” (p. 8).
It is necessary to get to know Señora Moreno before meeting the book’s title character, Ramona, because Señora Moreno’s beliefs and prejudices have an important impact on Ramona’s life and fate. Through a complex set of tragic circumstances, Ramona, who is half-Anglo and half-Indigenous, comes to live at the estate at the request of Señora Moreno’s dying sister. Señora Moreno’s sense of honor compels her to comply with her sister’s last request, but she feels no love for Ramona, who has no Mexican ancestry at all: “She did not wish any dealings with such alien and mongrel blood. ‘If the child were pure Indian, I would like it better,’ she said. ‘I like not these crosses. It is the worst, and not the best of each, that remains’” (p. 21).
Yet Señora Moreno’s disdain notwithstanding, the young Ramona, with her unfailing goodness of heart, quickly wins the reader’s sympathy, and is set forth by Jackson as a living emblem of a changing order in a new California: “Ramona was, to the world at large, a far more important person than the Señora herself. The Señora was of the past; Ramona was of the present” (p. 16).
Ramona repeatedly demonstrates her kind and compassionate nature, even though other characters in the novel so often fail to reciprocate. For instance, she tries to help Margarita, a servant on the estate, who prays frantically for divine intervention after tearing an altar lace shortly before a visit by the local traveling padre, Father Salvierderra: “As the grand old Russian says, what men usually ask for, when they pray to God, is that two and two may not make four” (p. 32). Ramona helps Margarita to repair the altar lace, but is then betrayed by Margarita out of jealousy over the attentions of a handsome young Indigenous man named Alessandro, who has come to the estate to do seasonal work there.
When Ramona first begins falling in love with Alessandro, she shows her ability to look past the sense of race-consciousness with which she has been raised: “Ramona gazed after him. For the first time, she looked at him with no thought of his being an Indian – a thought there had surely been no need of her having, since his skin was not a shade darker than Felipe’s; but so strong was the race feeling, that never till that moment had she forgotten it" (p. 54).
Señora Moreno eventually finds Ramona and Alessandro in an affectionate though safely non-sexual moment, and demands that Ramona break off her relationship with Alessandro. But Ramona, normally diffident and submissive in the tradition of late-19th-century literary heroines, stands up to Señora Moreno:
“I will give you one more chance,” said the Señora, pausing in the act of folding up one of the damask gowns. “Will you obey me? Will you promise to have nothing more to do with this Indian?”
“Never, Señora,” replied Ramona; “never!”
“Then the consequences be on your own head,” cried the Señora. (p. 100)
Ramona leaves the hacienda with Alessandro, so that the two lovers can begin their new life together, and her departure changes the whole dynamic of the Moreno household: “[T]he Señora’s power was shaken now. More changed than all else in the changed Moreno household was the relation between the Señora Moreno and her son Felipe. On the morning after Ramona’s disappearance, words had been spoken by each which neither would ever forget. In fact, the Señora believed that it was of them she was dying” (p. 200).
Realizing that he has allowed himself to be manipulated by his domineering mother, Felipe begins a long search for Ramona, traveling from one small Southern California community to another: “When he rode into the sleepy little village street of San Bernardino, and saw, in the near horizon, against the southern sky, a superb mountain peak, changing in the sunset lights from turquoise to ruby, and from ruby to turquoise again, he said to himself, ‘She is there! I have found her!’” (p. 250) Yet for a long time, each hopeful phase of his search is followed by disappointment.
While Felipe continues with his search, Ramona and Alessandro witness the process by which Indigenous lands, once guaranteed to the Indians by Mexican law, are steadily being expropriated by the Americans. Talking to Father Salvierderra about what happens when the Americans come in, Alessandro reveals the depth of his disillusionment: “They say the Americans, when they buy the Mexicans’ lands, drive the Indians away as if they were dogs; they say we have no right to our lands. Do you think that can be so, Father, when we have always lived on them, and the owners promised them to us forever?” (p. 46)
And when Father Salvierderra tries to reassure Alessandro that whatever happens must somehow correspond with God’s will, Alessandro is unconvinced: “[H]ow can it be God’s will that wrong be done? It cannot be God’s will that one man should steal from another all he has. That would make God no better than a thief, it looks to me. But how can it happen, if it is not God’s will?” (p. 48)
Alessandro had believed that his own pueblo was protected. “San Pasquale was a regularly established pueblo….It was established by a decree of the Governor of California, and the lands of the San Pasquale Valley given to it. A paper recording this establishment and gift, signed by the Governor’s own hand, was given to the Indian who was the first Alcalde of the pueblo” (p.150). But the Mexicans’ law means nothing to the Americans, now that California has passed under U.S. sovereignty; and Alessandro’s steadily increasing despair gives the reader a sense that the novel may be moving toward a tragic resolution, even as Felipe continues with his persistent search for Ramona and Alessandro.
One of the strengths of Ramona, I thought, was Jackson’s analysis of the differing forms of racism and discrimination faced by Indigenous Americans in the period covered by the novel. For Mexican aristocrats like Señora Moreno, the Indians are fine – in their place. If an Indian is proficient at sheep-shearing or horse-training, well and good – but they had best not try to rise above their station. For the Americans, by contrast, the Indians are purely and simply in the way of money-making. Nothing personal, mind you, but as far as the Americans are concerned, the Indians have got to be moved off productive land, so that land can start generating some serious cash.
I read Ramona while staying in Old Town San Diego, the old original part of California’s second largest city, now a state park. While there, I visited La Casa de Estudillo, the house where Jackson stayed while writing Ramona. The house, now a museum, contains many artifacts associated with the novel; and in the process of a visit there, one learns much regarding what a phenomenon Ramona was in its time. Young Anglo couples used to have Ramona weddings, dressing up in Native American garb to re-create the romantic wedding scene of Ramona and Alessandro. Indeed, Ramona tourism was all the rage in San Diego County for quite some time, and the story was adapted for film five times between 1910 and 1946 (and for a TV miniseries as recently as 2000).
In spite of the story’s popularity, Ramona did not awaken concern among Anglo-Americans regarding the plight of Indigenous Americans; Anglo readers instead simply enjoyed the book’s romance while ignoring the book’s politics. Yet even if Jackson did not achieve her goal of writing the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Indigenous Rights movement, she did succeed in crafting a compelling and conscience-driven story with a sense of regional detail so vivid that you are likely to find a copy of the Signet Classics edition of Ramona for sale at almost any bookstore in greater San Diego.
Author Helen Hunt Jackson is so strongly identified with the state of California, and with San Diego County more particularly, that it is strange to reflect that she was originally a Unitarian minister’s daughter from Massachusetts. Her early life was marked by loss and sorrow – the premature deaths of both her parents, her husband, and two sons – and she came to take a strong interest in the travails of Indigenous Americans in the United States.
She wrote a non-fiction book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), and sent a copy to every member of the U.S. Congress; but the book did not have significant impact on the government’s Indian policy. After relocating to California, she came to hope that, as her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851) had changed Anglo-Americans’ minds and hearts when it came to African Americans and slavery, a novel with a comparable mixture of sentimentality and reformism might do the same sort of good on behalf of American Indians. That hope eventually resulted in the novel Ramona.
Jackson’s novel works within the tradition of the “local color” literature that was popular among readers of the late 19th century. Before the Civil War, differences among American regions had seemed to threaten the Union itself; after the war, by contrast, the regional diversity of the U.S.A. became something to celebrate, and readers enjoyed the chance to travel vicariously, and to experience the cultural factors that made different regions of the United States. And what various other writers did for New England (Sarah Orne Jewett) or the American South (Mark Twain, George Washington Cable), Helen Hunt Jackson did for her part of Southern California.
Ramona begins on a Mexican hacienda, shortly after U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War has caused the former Mexican province of Alta California to pass from Mexican to U.S. sovereignty. The hacienda is administered by one Señora Moreno, a strong and proud woman who represents los Californios, the old Castilian aristocrats of Mexican California whose place at the top of the social order has been supplanted by the Americans.
Señora Moreno has plenty of reasons to dislike the Americans. Her husband died fighting them in the Mexican-American War – perhaps on a battlefield like San Pasqual, the 1846 battle site in San Diego County that is now a historic state park. A devout Catholic, Señora Moreno despises the Americans’ Protestantism as well as their dedication to money-making: “The spirit of unbelief is spreading in the country since the Americans are running up and down everywhere seeking money, like dogs with their noses to the ground!” (p. 8) The novel’s narrator thus sums up the reasons behind the contempt that Señora Moreno - and, by implication, others among los Californios - feels for the Americans:
No wonder she believed the Americans thieves, and spoke of them always as hounds. The people of the United States have never in the least realized that the taking possession of California was not only a conquering of Mexico, but a conquering of California as well; that the real bitterness of the surrender was not so much to the empire which gave up the country, as to the country itself which was given up… (pp. 9-10).
Theoretically, Señora Moreno’s son, Señor Felipe, runs the estate; and in her delineation of the well-meaning but initially weak-willed Señor Felipe, Jackson sets forth her sense of the virtues and limitations of the old Mexican order: “When it came to the pay-roll, Señor Felipe knew to whom he paid wages; but who were fed and lodged under his roof, that was quite another thing. It could not enter into the head of a Mexican gentleman to make either count or account of that. It would be a disgraceful, niggardly thought” (pp. 5-6).
In fact, however, Señora Moreno is always very much in charge of the hacienda, in large part because of her ability to manipulate people like her son Felipe, without their being aware that they are being manipulated: “To attain one’s ends in this way is the consummate triumph of art. Never to appear as a factor in the situation; to be able to wield other men, as instruments, with the same direct and implicit response to will that one gets from a hand or a foot – this is to triumph, indeed: to be as nearly controller and conqueror of Fates as fate permits” (p. 8).
It is necessary to get to know Señora Moreno before meeting the book’s title character, Ramona, because Señora Moreno’s beliefs and prejudices have an important impact on Ramona’s life and fate. Through a complex set of tragic circumstances, Ramona, who is half-Anglo and half-Indigenous, comes to live at the estate at the request of Señora Moreno’s dying sister. Señora Moreno’s sense of honor compels her to comply with her sister’s last request, but she feels no love for Ramona, who has no Mexican ancestry at all: “She did not wish any dealings with such alien and mongrel blood. ‘If the child were pure Indian, I would like it better,’ she said. ‘I like not these crosses. It is the worst, and not the best of each, that remains’” (p. 21).
Yet Señora Moreno’s disdain notwithstanding, the young Ramona, with her unfailing goodness of heart, quickly wins the reader’s sympathy, and is set forth by Jackson as a living emblem of a changing order in a new California: “Ramona was, to the world at large, a far more important person than the Señora herself. The Señora was of the past; Ramona was of the present” (p. 16).
Ramona repeatedly demonstrates her kind and compassionate nature, even though other characters in the novel so often fail to reciprocate. For instance, she tries to help Margarita, a servant on the estate, who prays frantically for divine intervention after tearing an altar lace shortly before a visit by the local traveling padre, Father Salvierderra: “As the grand old Russian says, what men usually ask for, when they pray to God, is that two and two may not make four” (p. 32). Ramona helps Margarita to repair the altar lace, but is then betrayed by Margarita out of jealousy over the attentions of a handsome young Indigenous man named Alessandro, who has come to the estate to do seasonal work there.
When Ramona first begins falling in love with Alessandro, she shows her ability to look past the sense of race-consciousness with which she has been raised: “Ramona gazed after him. For the first time, she looked at him with no thought of his being an Indian – a thought there had surely been no need of her having, since his skin was not a shade darker than Felipe’s; but so strong was the race feeling, that never till that moment had she forgotten it" (p. 54).
Señora Moreno eventually finds Ramona and Alessandro in an affectionate though safely non-sexual moment, and demands that Ramona break off her relationship with Alessandro. But Ramona, normally diffident and submissive in the tradition of late-19th-century literary heroines, stands up to Señora Moreno:
“I will give you one more chance,” said the Señora, pausing in the act of folding up one of the damask gowns. “Will you obey me? Will you promise to have nothing more to do with this Indian?”
“Never, Señora,” replied Ramona; “never!”
“Then the consequences be on your own head,” cried the Señora. (p. 100)
Ramona leaves the hacienda with Alessandro, so that the two lovers can begin their new life together, and her departure changes the whole dynamic of the Moreno household: “[T]he Señora’s power was shaken now. More changed than all else in the changed Moreno household was the relation between the Señora Moreno and her son Felipe. On the morning after Ramona’s disappearance, words had been spoken by each which neither would ever forget. In fact, the Señora believed that it was of them she was dying” (p. 200).
Realizing that he has allowed himself to be manipulated by his domineering mother, Felipe begins a long search for Ramona, traveling from one small Southern California community to another: “When he rode into the sleepy little village street of San Bernardino, and saw, in the near horizon, against the southern sky, a superb mountain peak, changing in the sunset lights from turquoise to ruby, and from ruby to turquoise again, he said to himself, ‘She is there! I have found her!’” (p. 250) Yet for a long time, each hopeful phase of his search is followed by disappointment.
While Felipe continues with his search, Ramona and Alessandro witness the process by which Indigenous lands, once guaranteed to the Indians by Mexican law, are steadily being expropriated by the Americans. Talking to Father Salvierderra about what happens when the Americans come in, Alessandro reveals the depth of his disillusionment: “They say the Americans, when they buy the Mexicans’ lands, drive the Indians away as if they were dogs; they say we have no right to our lands. Do you think that can be so, Father, when we have always lived on them, and the owners promised them to us forever?” (p. 46)
And when Father Salvierderra tries to reassure Alessandro that whatever happens must somehow correspond with God’s will, Alessandro is unconvinced: “[H]ow can it be God’s will that wrong be done? It cannot be God’s will that one man should steal from another all he has. That would make God no better than a thief, it looks to me. But how can it happen, if it is not God’s will?” (p. 48)
Alessandro had believed that his own pueblo was protected. “San Pasquale was a regularly established pueblo….It was established by a decree of the Governor of California, and the lands of the San Pasquale Valley given to it. A paper recording this establishment and gift, signed by the Governor’s own hand, was given to the Indian who was the first Alcalde of the pueblo” (p.150). But the Mexicans’ law means nothing to the Americans, now that California has passed under U.S. sovereignty; and Alessandro’s steadily increasing despair gives the reader a sense that the novel may be moving toward a tragic resolution, even as Felipe continues with his persistent search for Ramona and Alessandro.
One of the strengths of Ramona, I thought, was Jackson’s analysis of the differing forms of racism and discrimination faced by Indigenous Americans in the period covered by the novel. For Mexican aristocrats like Señora Moreno, the Indians are fine – in their place. If an Indian is proficient at sheep-shearing or horse-training, well and good – but they had best not try to rise above their station. For the Americans, by contrast, the Indians are purely and simply in the way of money-making. Nothing personal, mind you, but as far as the Americans are concerned, the Indians have got to be moved off productive land, so that land can start generating some serious cash.
I read Ramona while staying in Old Town San Diego, the old original part of California’s second largest city, now a state park. While there, I visited La Casa de Estudillo, the house where Jackson stayed while writing Ramona. The house, now a museum, contains many artifacts associated with the novel; and in the process of a visit there, one learns much regarding what a phenomenon Ramona was in its time. Young Anglo couples used to have Ramona weddings, dressing up in Native American garb to re-create the romantic wedding scene of Ramona and Alessandro. Indeed, Ramona tourism was all the rage in San Diego County for quite some time, and the story was adapted for film five times between 1910 and 1946 (and for a TV miniseries as recently as 2000).
In spite of the story’s popularity, Ramona did not awaken concern among Anglo-Americans regarding the plight of Indigenous Americans; Anglo readers instead simply enjoyed the book’s romance while ignoring the book’s politics. Yet even if Jackson did not achieve her goal of writing the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Indigenous Rights movement, she did succeed in crafting a compelling and conscience-driven story with a sense of regional detail so vivid that you are likely to find a copy of the Signet Classics edition of Ramona for sale at almost any bookstore in greater San Diego.
July 20, 2010
Helen Hunt Jackson wrote Ramona to draw people's attention to the injustice being done to the Indians living in California. She was friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe and hoped that her story would have the same impact on the nation that Uncle Tom's Cabin had in the 1850's.
Boy was she wrong. Dead wrong. Instead of awakening the rest of America to the plight of the Indians of Southern California people received it as a romance novel. The nation was gripped with Ramona fever and California took note. Soon every small Los Angeles area town was naming streets Ramona and having Ramona pageants to draw tourists to the area. Draw tourists they did, and any hope Mrs. Jackson had of justice was trumped by the love of a quick buck.
Reading this book was so interesting. There are long passages that are deeply anti-American. Most settlers are pictured as short-tempered, violent, and wholly unsympathetic people. The heros are the Indians and Mexicans. There are long conversations between the "half-breed" Ramona and her Indian lover Alessandro about the cruelty and soulless-ness of the Americans and the law-makers who support their claims to the Indians land. I am completely baffled at how it became a best-seller on the east-coast, yet it did and in a way I feel I am here in Pomona because of its long reaching impact.
Boy was she wrong. Dead wrong. Instead of awakening the rest of America to the plight of the Indians of Southern California people received it as a romance novel. The nation was gripped with Ramona fever and California took note. Soon every small Los Angeles area town was naming streets Ramona and having Ramona pageants to draw tourists to the area. Draw tourists they did, and any hope Mrs. Jackson had of justice was trumped by the love of a quick buck.
Reading this book was so interesting. There are long passages that are deeply anti-American. Most settlers are pictured as short-tempered, violent, and wholly unsympathetic people. The heros are the Indians and Mexicans. There are long conversations between the "half-breed" Ramona and her Indian lover Alessandro about the cruelty and soulless-ness of the Americans and the law-makers who support their claims to the Indians land. I am completely baffled at how it became a best-seller on the east-coast, yet it did and in a way I feel I am here in Pomona because of its long reaching impact.
May 5, 2024
We are all subject to the constraints of tradition and the exploitation of ‘progress.’ Tradition holds society together. ‘Progress’ drives it ‘forward.’ Jackson gives us two saintly lovers who are caught between these forces, and shows how severely tradition and progress can test even the most honorable and well-meaning human beings. Jackson seems to say that our suffering before these forces can be ameliorated somewhat by having something concrete to live for, by being true to oneself, and by holding tight to love. Also she emphasizes that it is sometimes useful and right to hide from or evade the cruelties of these forces. Ultimately, though, she makes it clear that no matter who you are, or what you do, or how holy you might be, none of us are exempt from the savagery tradition and progress might visit upon us.
Set in 1850s Southern California, this novel is high romance, full of nobility and struggle and melodramatic love and lofty speechifying.The transparency of some of the book’s narrative machinations feel naive. But this, adjoined to its other over-the-top aspects, makes the story quite immersive if you can give yourself to it. Simultaneously, the book demonstrates very deliberate polemical points that address its time – about the mistreatment of Indians. These points still feel relevant 150 years later. It takes Jackson about 100 pages to set up the drama, but once it was in motion I stayed thoroughly engaged until the last word. She is particularly adept at, and partial to, portraying unspoken understandings.
Set in 1850s Southern California, this novel is high romance, full of nobility and struggle and melodramatic love and lofty speechifying.The transparency of some of the book’s narrative machinations feel naive. But this, adjoined to its other over-the-top aspects, makes the story quite immersive if you can give yourself to it. Simultaneously, the book demonstrates very deliberate polemical points that address its time – about the mistreatment of Indians. These points still feel relevant 150 years later. It takes Jackson about 100 pages to set up the drama, but once it was in motion I stayed thoroughly engaged until the last word. She is particularly adept at, and partial to, portraying unspoken understandings.
January 14, 2011
This wasn't at all what I expected! I'd always had a vague sense that Ramona was ridiculously rosy picture of "romantic Olde California" full of caballeros and things, but as it turns out it was intended as a propaganda novel about the rotten treatment of Californian Indians and Mexican landholders after the U.S. acquired California. Of course, everyone back East read it as the former, hence the Ramona pageant and an influx of Ramona tourism that accomplished the opposite of what Jackson hoped for ...
Ironically, the vaunted love story is probably the weakest part of the book! It's full of sharply realized observations of the California landscape -- I loved the descriptions of wild mustard and artichoke seedheads. All the minor characters are vividly drawn and psychologically believable: the various priests, the people who live on the rancho, Ramona's stepmother who spitefully ruins her life but is not actually evil. Even the Tennessee family who befriend our heroine are interesting and multi-dimensional, in spite of the ridiculously heavy dialect Jackson makes them speak in.
The only flat characters in the thing are Ramona herself and to a lesser extent her true love Allessandro. Ramona is a paper saint, all wide-eyed and pious and loyal and true, and Allessandro starts, at least, as far much the Very Perfect Lover. Since we spend a lot of time with them, this is a fairly major flaw in the novel -- but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book.
Ironically, the vaunted love story is probably the weakest part of the book! It's full of sharply realized observations of the California landscape -- I loved the descriptions of wild mustard and artichoke seedheads. All the minor characters are vividly drawn and psychologically believable: the various priests, the people who live on the rancho, Ramona's stepmother who spitefully ruins her life but is not actually evil. Even the Tennessee family who befriend our heroine are interesting and multi-dimensional, in spite of the ridiculously heavy dialect Jackson makes them speak in.
The only flat characters in the thing are Ramona herself and to a lesser extent her true love Allessandro. Ramona is a paper saint, all wide-eyed and pious and loyal and true, and Allessandro starts, at least, as far much the Very Perfect Lover. Since we spend a lot of time with them, this is a fairly major flaw in the novel -- but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book.
January 12, 2020
Ramona is an American novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson in 1884. Who is Helen Hunt Jackson? Well, it's good you waited until now to ask, a few days ago I would have had no idea. Now I do. Helen Hunt Jackson was a writer who became an activist on behalf of Native Americans and how they were treated by the United States government. If they were treated anything like what she wrote in the novel, our government was horrible to these people.
Way back when Jackson was a little girl she attended the Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school in New York City run by Reverend John Stevens Cabot Abbott. I have no idea whether the Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute are the same place or two different places and I didn't look them up yet. I also didn't look up the man who ran the place or places to see why his name is so long, what I did find out is that she was a classmate of Emily Dickinson, and the two wrote to each other for the rest of their lives. When she was 22 she married an Army Captain, Edward Bissell Hunt, they had two sons, one of them died though, and so did her husband, he was killed in an accident that occurred while he was experimenting with one of his own marine inventions. I wish I had more information than that on what he was doing. The second son also died of diphtheria two years later. She isn't having very much luck with her family members, her mother died when she was fourteen, and her father when she was seventeen. Now that she was all alone with nothing else to do I suppose she began to write poetry and she traveled in Europe writing. But, of course something else had to go wrong and she moved to Colorado Springs seeking a cure for tuberculosis, an awful lot of people seemed to have tuberculosis in the 1800s. Finally, something went right and she met and married William Sharpless Jackson, a wealthy banker and railroad executive. I find it interesting that she kept her first husband's last name, and added her second husband's last name behind that. I wonder what her husband thought.
Then in 1879 she went to a lecture in Boston, I have no idea what she is doing in Boston, the lecture is by Chief Standing Bear, of the Ponca Tribe. He described the forcible removal of the Ponca from their Nebraska reservation and transfer to a reservation in Oklahoma where they suffered from disease, harsh climate, and poor supplies. I didn't know Oklahoma had harsh climate. She was so upset by what she heard she decided to take up their cause and started investigating and making known the government misconduct. She did all kinds of things, raising money for them, having heated exchanges with federal officials over the injustices committed, she exposed the government's violation of treaties, she documented corruption of agents, military officers, settlers, anyone who encroached on and stole the Indians land. And it seems like there were a lot of people who stole the Indians land, and that is what the book is about, that plus the story of Ramona and the man she falls in love with, Alessandro, and all those around the couple.
In the story we are in Southern California right after the Mexican-American War, which apparently the Mexicans lost because there are an awful lot of "Americans" showing up. What are called Americans in this story I really hope isn't what all Americans were like back then. There were few of them who weren't horrible. Our heroine in the story is Ramona, her mother was Native American, I can't remember who her father was. She is raised by Señora Gonzaga Moreno, the sister of Ramona's deceased foster mother. Señora Moreno has raised Ramona as part of the family, giving her every luxury, but only because Ramona's foster mother had requested it as her dying wish. Our dear Señora can't stand Ramona, supposedly because of Ramona's mixed Native American heritage, I think she is just mean. That love is reserved for her only child, Felipe Moreno, whom she adores. She adores him so much it is creepy. Señora Moreno is Mexican of Spanish ancestry, although where they live in California has recently been taken over by the United States. She hates the Americans, everyone hates the Americans, after awhile I hate the Americans, who have cut up her huge ranch because that's what they do. I feel sorry for her and her son, Felipe, but I still don't like her.
One day a group of Native American sheep shearers arrive at the ranch, she hires them every year, and the head of the shearers is Alessandro, the son of the chief of the tribe, I forget his name. I found it interesting that he was Catholic, I didn't think Native American Indians were Catholic, but some are. Of course just about everyone in the novel is, it is interesting how many things only get done, or don't get done until the priest is asked, or until a certain Saint is prayed to. There are Rosaries, and statues, and crosses all over the place, I learned a lot about the different Saints. Then Alessandro sees Ramona and falls in love with her, he tries not to let it show, being an Indian and poor, but it wouldn't be much of a love story if she never knew he loved her. She eventually falls in love with him, Felipe is also in love with Ramona, and Margarita also loves Alessandro, it doesn't matter who she is.
So once Señora Moreno and Felipe find out that Ramona and Alessandro love each other, do you really think they will allow a girl raised by them like a daughter and sister (so they say), are going to let her marry an Indian? And if she does marry him, where will they live, the main thing going on in the book during all this is the Indians getting thrown off their land, entire villages, including the one that Alessandro is from are just thrown out and made to leave, to go who knows where, and no one cares. No American cares anyway, and if they don't go they just shoot them. So they move on and find another little village and build houses and plant crops and the Americans come and, well the same thing happens, over and over until the book is over and I don't know where the Indians ended up, but wherever it is, what happened to them wasn't right. And for me what happened to Ramona and Alessandro didn't matter at all. Remember all those black and white Westerns where the Indians rode around on horses killing everyone with their bows and arrows and tomahawks? I'll be thinking of Ramona and Alessandro and their village the next time I see one of them. Oh, here are some of the things I remember the most:
It was the way in the Hyer family to make the best of things; they had always possessed this virtue to such an extent, that they suffered from it as from a vice. There was hardly to be found in all Southern Tennessee a more contented, shiftless, ill-bested family than theirs. But there was no grumbling. Whatever went wrong, whatever was lacking, it was "jest like aour luck", they said, and did nothing, or next to nothing, about it.
Alessandro, I am almost afraid to tell you what I have done. I took the little Jesus out of the Madonna's arms and hit it! Did you never hear, that if you do that, the Madonna will grant you anything, to get him back again in her arms. Did you ever hear of it?"
"Never!" exclaimed Alessandro, with horror in his tone. "Never, Mejella! How dared you?"
"Oh, I have heard, many times, women tell the Senora they had done this, and always they got what they wanted. Never will she let the Jesus be out of her arms more than three weeks before she will grant any prayer one can make.'
Felipe went to the Madonna's picture and falling on his knees, began to pray as simply as if he were alone. The Indians, standing on the doorway, also fell on their knees, and a low-whispered murmur was heard.
For a moment Aunt Ri looked at the kneeling figures with contempt. "Oh, Lawd!" she thought, "the pore heathen, prayin' ter a picter!" Then a sudden revulsion seized her. "I allow I ain't gwine ter be the unly one out er the hull number thet don't seem to hev nothin' ter pray ter; I allow I'll jine in prayer, tew, but I shan't say mine ter no picter!" And Aunt Ri fell on her knees; and when a young Indian woman by her side slipped a rosary into her han, Aunt Ri did not repulse it, but hid it in the folds of her gown till the prayers were done. It was a moment and a lesson Aunt Ri never forgot."
The novel was so popular it had more than 300 printings, and attracted many tourists to Southern California who wanted to see places from the book. I don't want to see the places in the book, it is too depressing. I'm not sure how many stars to give it, I didn't care what happened to Ramona and Alessandro, in fact they got on my nerves at times. I certainly didn't care about Señora Moreno and her son giving in to her for everything. I wouldn't read it again for any of them, and the Indian parts were so sad I wouldn't read it again for that, but even though when I was stuck in the Ramona/Alessandro/Felipe stuff at the ranch I almost quit reading, when it got to the Indian villages I couldn't put it down. I'll give it 3 stars, maybe 3.5. On to the next book, happy reading.
Way back when Jackson was a little girl she attended the Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school in New York City run by Reverend John Stevens Cabot Abbott. I have no idea whether the Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute are the same place or two different places and I didn't look them up yet. I also didn't look up the man who ran the place or places to see why his name is so long, what I did find out is that she was a classmate of Emily Dickinson, and the two wrote to each other for the rest of their lives. When she was 22 she married an Army Captain, Edward Bissell Hunt, they had two sons, one of them died though, and so did her husband, he was killed in an accident that occurred while he was experimenting with one of his own marine inventions. I wish I had more information than that on what he was doing. The second son also died of diphtheria two years later. She isn't having very much luck with her family members, her mother died when she was fourteen, and her father when she was seventeen. Now that she was all alone with nothing else to do I suppose she began to write poetry and she traveled in Europe writing. But, of course something else had to go wrong and she moved to Colorado Springs seeking a cure for tuberculosis, an awful lot of people seemed to have tuberculosis in the 1800s. Finally, something went right and she met and married William Sharpless Jackson, a wealthy banker and railroad executive. I find it interesting that she kept her first husband's last name, and added her second husband's last name behind that. I wonder what her husband thought.
Then in 1879 she went to a lecture in Boston, I have no idea what she is doing in Boston, the lecture is by Chief Standing Bear, of the Ponca Tribe. He described the forcible removal of the Ponca from their Nebraska reservation and transfer to a reservation in Oklahoma where they suffered from disease, harsh climate, and poor supplies. I didn't know Oklahoma had harsh climate. She was so upset by what she heard she decided to take up their cause and started investigating and making known the government misconduct. She did all kinds of things, raising money for them, having heated exchanges with federal officials over the injustices committed, she exposed the government's violation of treaties, she documented corruption of agents, military officers, settlers, anyone who encroached on and stole the Indians land. And it seems like there were a lot of people who stole the Indians land, and that is what the book is about, that plus the story of Ramona and the man she falls in love with, Alessandro, and all those around the couple.
In the story we are in Southern California right after the Mexican-American War, which apparently the Mexicans lost because there are an awful lot of "Americans" showing up. What are called Americans in this story I really hope isn't what all Americans were like back then. There were few of them who weren't horrible. Our heroine in the story is Ramona, her mother was Native American, I can't remember who her father was. She is raised by Señora Gonzaga Moreno, the sister of Ramona's deceased foster mother. Señora Moreno has raised Ramona as part of the family, giving her every luxury, but only because Ramona's foster mother had requested it as her dying wish. Our dear Señora can't stand Ramona, supposedly because of Ramona's mixed Native American heritage, I think she is just mean. That love is reserved for her only child, Felipe Moreno, whom she adores. She adores him so much it is creepy. Señora Moreno is Mexican of Spanish ancestry, although where they live in California has recently been taken over by the United States. She hates the Americans, everyone hates the Americans, after awhile I hate the Americans, who have cut up her huge ranch because that's what they do. I feel sorry for her and her son, Felipe, but I still don't like her.
One day a group of Native American sheep shearers arrive at the ranch, she hires them every year, and the head of the shearers is Alessandro, the son of the chief of the tribe, I forget his name. I found it interesting that he was Catholic, I didn't think Native American Indians were Catholic, but some are. Of course just about everyone in the novel is, it is interesting how many things only get done, or don't get done until the priest is asked, or until a certain Saint is prayed to. There are Rosaries, and statues, and crosses all over the place, I learned a lot about the different Saints. Then Alessandro sees Ramona and falls in love with her, he tries not to let it show, being an Indian and poor, but it wouldn't be much of a love story if she never knew he loved her. She eventually falls in love with him, Felipe is also in love with Ramona, and Margarita also loves Alessandro, it doesn't matter who she is.
So once Señora Moreno and Felipe find out that Ramona and Alessandro love each other, do you really think they will allow a girl raised by them like a daughter and sister (so they say), are going to let her marry an Indian? And if she does marry him, where will they live, the main thing going on in the book during all this is the Indians getting thrown off their land, entire villages, including the one that Alessandro is from are just thrown out and made to leave, to go who knows where, and no one cares. No American cares anyway, and if they don't go they just shoot them. So they move on and find another little village and build houses and plant crops and the Americans come and, well the same thing happens, over and over until the book is over and I don't know where the Indians ended up, but wherever it is, what happened to them wasn't right. And for me what happened to Ramona and Alessandro didn't matter at all. Remember all those black and white Westerns where the Indians rode around on horses killing everyone with their bows and arrows and tomahawks? I'll be thinking of Ramona and Alessandro and their village the next time I see one of them. Oh, here are some of the things I remember the most:
It was the way in the Hyer family to make the best of things; they had always possessed this virtue to such an extent, that they suffered from it as from a vice. There was hardly to be found in all Southern Tennessee a more contented, shiftless, ill-bested family than theirs. But there was no grumbling. Whatever went wrong, whatever was lacking, it was "jest like aour luck", they said, and did nothing, or next to nothing, about it.
Alessandro, I am almost afraid to tell you what I have done. I took the little Jesus out of the Madonna's arms and hit it! Did you never hear, that if you do that, the Madonna will grant you anything, to get him back again in her arms. Did you ever hear of it?"
"Never!" exclaimed Alessandro, with horror in his tone. "Never, Mejella! How dared you?"
"Oh, I have heard, many times, women tell the Senora they had done this, and always they got what they wanted. Never will she let the Jesus be out of her arms more than three weeks before she will grant any prayer one can make.'
Felipe went to the Madonna's picture and falling on his knees, began to pray as simply as if he were alone. The Indians, standing on the doorway, also fell on their knees, and a low-whispered murmur was heard.
For a moment Aunt Ri looked at the kneeling figures with contempt. "Oh, Lawd!" she thought, "the pore heathen, prayin' ter a picter!" Then a sudden revulsion seized her. "I allow I ain't gwine ter be the unly one out er the hull number thet don't seem to hev nothin' ter pray ter; I allow I'll jine in prayer, tew, but I shan't say mine ter no picter!" And Aunt Ri fell on her knees; and when a young Indian woman by her side slipped a rosary into her han, Aunt Ri did not repulse it, but hid it in the folds of her gown till the prayers were done. It was a moment and a lesson Aunt Ri never forgot."
The novel was so popular it had more than 300 printings, and attracted many tourists to Southern California who wanted to see places from the book. I don't want to see the places in the book, it is too depressing. I'm not sure how many stars to give it, I didn't care what happened to Ramona and Alessandro, in fact they got on my nerves at times. I certainly didn't care about Señora Moreno and her son giving in to her for everything. I wouldn't read it again for any of them, and the Indian parts were so sad I wouldn't read it again for that, but even though when I was stuck in the Ramona/Alessandro/Felipe stuff at the ranch I almost quit reading, when it got to the Indian villages I couldn't put it down. I'll give it 3 stars, maybe 3.5. On to the next book, happy reading.
February 1, 2016
1.5 stars.
Yikes.
( WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO 1000th REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Yikes.
( WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO 1000th REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!!!)
July 15, 2022
3.5
I first heard about Ramona from an old friend (94) who loved the story and wanted me to read it. I should have done so, but I was swamped with work projects. When she passed away, I inherited her books, and this title moved to my shelves. One day I read the first few pages, but it reminded me of a Zane Grey book that I had just plowed through. I promptly gave up and donated the book (an ex-library book).
Well, I recently came across this old book and decided to give it another try. It's not "just a romance," which is how Rosemary had described it to me. Yes, there is a story of 'true love,' but it's much more than that.
• It's a character study that focuses on 4 people, with others included when needed. The 'near saint' is Ramona, and the totally 'evil' is a minor character.
• It's a history of California, including the Catholic missions.
• It's a look at prejudices, a Mexican rancher, the displaced (and noble) native Indians, and the greedy, uncaring American whites.
The focus however, is on the unjust treatment of the native peoples. Now I'd like to read her nonfiction book that was published in 1881: A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes
Ramona begins:
It was sheep-shearing time in Southern California, but sheep-shearing was late at the Señora Moreno's.
This quote, from page 54, captures the spirit of the story:
When the first glow of dawn came in the sky, the eastern window was lit up as by fire. Father Salvierderra was always on watch for it, having usually been at prayer for hours. As the first ray reached the window, he would throw the casement wide open, and standing there with bared head, strike up the melody of the sunrise hymn sung in all devout Mexican families. It was a beautiful custom, not yet wholly abandoned. ...
I first heard about Ramona from an old friend (94) who loved the story and wanted me to read it. I should have done so, but I was swamped with work projects. When she passed away, I inherited her books, and this title moved to my shelves. One day I read the first few pages, but it reminded me of a Zane Grey book that I had just plowed through. I promptly gave up and donated the book (an ex-library book).
Well, I recently came across this old book and decided to give it another try. It's not "just a romance," which is how Rosemary had described it to me. Yes, there is a story of 'true love,' but it's much more than that.
• It's a character study that focuses on 4 people, with others included when needed. The 'near saint' is Ramona, and the totally 'evil' is a minor character.
• It's a history of California, including the Catholic missions.
• It's a look at prejudices, a Mexican rancher, the displaced (and noble) native Indians, and the greedy, uncaring American whites.
The focus however, is on the unjust treatment of the native peoples. Now I'd like to read her nonfiction book that was published in 1881: A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes
Ramona begins:
It was sheep-shearing time in Southern California, but sheep-shearing was late at the Señora Moreno's.
This quote, from page 54, captures the spirit of the story:
When the first glow of dawn came in the sky, the eastern window was lit up as by fire. Father Salvierderra was always on watch for it, having usually been at prayer for hours. As the first ray reached the window, he would throw the casement wide open, and standing there with bared head, strike up the melody of the sunrise hymn sung in all devout Mexican families. It was a beautiful custom, not yet wholly abandoned. ...
June 6, 2010
As three stars indicates, I liked this book. Actually, I wish I could give it 3.5. I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I could do it again as it was so sad. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before, especially since I was a born and raised until I was 12 in San Diego. I guess in grade school, they don't begin yet to touch on the injustices done to the Native Americans and even to the Mexicans. We were still just learning what a mission was and some Spanish words. But I was in SD this spring and took time to go by myself to the San Diego History Museum in Balboa Park, and there, on a placard, I read a bit about the dreadful history of the Native Americans in Southern California along with mention of this "famous" book that fictionalized it. I didn't actually expect the Seattle library to have it, but they did. It's a very long book and I admit to skimming the last 100 pages or so because it was just so damned depressing and I could see what was coming. But the first 300 was a pleasure. Now I've read a number of reviews that call the book propaganda or boringly stilted and I take exception to the grumbling. Of *course* it's propaganda. Helen Hunt Jackson gave the best years of her life trying to convince the American gov't to ease up on the Indians (esp. with her book, A Century of Dishonor)and finally, in desperation, she wrote Ramona as a way to "move people's hearts." She had hoped that Romona would be the Uncle Tom's Cabin of California natives. Sadly, her wildly popular novel, although printed in 300 editions, adapted for 4 films, and turned into a play that has run every year in CA since 1923, was taken as more of a lady's romance than a political statement. Addressing the other common complaint, of *course* it's stilted. It was written in 1884! Did people honestly expect a breezy, modern style? Given the intent, the period, and the writer, I think the book is wonderful and I would give it more stars if it hadn't been so depressing for me personally. As an historical document, I think it's still important to read. It's out of copyright, so it's available for free online. I will say that Jackson's book helped change the way people viewed the Native Americans of S. CA and it created an emormous influx of tourist dollars into the area when the railroad finally went there. Everyone wanted to see where "Ramona" lived, married, & died. She was sort of the Harry Potter of the turn of the century. Now if only the letters between Jackson and her friend Emily Dickenson still survived, that would be real reading! They were born 2 months apart in Amherst, went to school togther, and wrote letters to one another all their lives.
April 5, 2010
There's a backstory here! While reading Passing Strange, I found a reference to Ramona (the novel shares the theme of interracial love). I couldn't help but be curious when I saw the author's name. Helen Hunt Jackson was my grandmother's maiden name. As she was born in 1889, not too long after Ramona became a popular sensation, I thought it impossible that her newspaper-publishing father (Andrew Jackson, my great-grandfather) could not have known about Jackson when he named his eldest daughter. I asked my mother about it, and was amazed to be confirmed in my guess that her mother was indeed named after the famous author and staunch advocate of Native American rights. What I was even more fascinated to learn was that HHJ the author was actually a friend of Andrew's. (Apparently there's no family relation between Andrew and the Jackson who was HHJ's second husband). The family used to spend summers in Colorado, where HHJ made her home later in life. The missing piece of the puzzle, how a small town Iowa publisher and banker developed a friendship with a woman who must have been viewed as somewhat of a rabble-rouser, fell into place when I learned that my greatgrandfather's town was on a Native American reservation (Tama). I do find it remarkable that he felt strongly enough to make his child her namesake. I'm looking forward to more of HHJ's writings, nonfiction this time, that are filling up my already loaded To Read shelf.
July 2, 2011
I had a hard time with this book. The political issues overpowered character development and plot which made the whole book slow and a little boring.
November 15, 2017
What a great book! I'm so glad I chose it for my book discussion group. Written in 1884, this historical novel, set in southern California in the early part of the 19th century, is a doomed love story as well as propaganda about the terrible treatment of the Native Americans by the Americans who moved in after the Mexican War. Land granted to both Native Americans and Mexicans by the Mexican government were declared no longer valid, and the new American government sold off peoples' lands without telling them. One day they had a house, fields, and pastures, and the next day they were homeless, and usually without monetary compensation.
The novel begins with a vivid description of the ranch of Senora Moreno and her son, Felipe. The immediate impression the reader gets is of a way of life on its way out, just like the plantations before the Civil War. Ramona is half Scottish and half Indian, which was not a good thing then. She's given to Senora Moreno's sister to raise, but when the sister dies, Ramona is sent to live with nasty Senora Moreno, who raises her out of duty, not out of love. There Ramona lives until she falls in love with the Indian Alessandro Assis, who has come to assist in the sheep shearing on the ranch. From here on it the novel feels like a soap opera/Romeo-and-Juliet story. The reader is compelled to keep reading to find out what will happen to these two. Along the way, Jackson, in a not-so-subtle manner, shows the reader how the Native Americans are treated.
Jackson intended the novel to open readers' eyes to the plight of the Native Americans in California. The book was popular, but not so much for its propaganda as for its sentimental drama. It was subsequently made into 4 silent films and one talkie, as well as, recently, a Mexican TV serial. I think readers today would enjoy this novel for both of its aspects. Certainly one cannot help but feel as enraged and despondent as Alessandro at the treatment of his people.
The Signet Classics edition of the book includes an afterword that tells us that Jackson actually visited the places mentioned in the book, and based the story on a real-life couple. She nagged the Department of the Interior with letters until they appointed her to be the first female Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which gave her some power to help the Indians. The novel is, therefore, a true historical novel in that she based almost everything on real places, people, and events that she mostly witnessed with her own eyes.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. I enjoyed it immensely, and would like to see more readers young and old delve into its pages. Highly recommended!!
The novel begins with a vivid description of the ranch of Senora Moreno and her son, Felipe. The immediate impression the reader gets is of a way of life on its way out, just like the plantations before the Civil War. Ramona is half Scottish and half Indian, which was not a good thing then. She's given to Senora Moreno's sister to raise, but when the sister dies, Ramona is sent to live with nasty Senora Moreno, who raises her out of duty, not out of love. There Ramona lives until she falls in love with the Indian Alessandro Assis, who has come to assist in the sheep shearing on the ranch. From here on it the novel feels like a soap opera/Romeo-and-Juliet story. The reader is compelled to keep reading to find out what will happen to these two. Along the way, Jackson, in a not-so-subtle manner, shows the reader how the Native Americans are treated.
Jackson intended the novel to open readers' eyes to the plight of the Native Americans in California. The book was popular, but not so much for its propaganda as for its sentimental drama. It was subsequently made into 4 silent films and one talkie, as well as, recently, a Mexican TV serial. I think readers today would enjoy this novel for both of its aspects. Certainly one cannot help but feel as enraged and despondent as Alessandro at the treatment of his people.
The Signet Classics edition of the book includes an afterword that tells us that Jackson actually visited the places mentioned in the book, and based the story on a real-life couple. She nagged the Department of the Interior with letters until they appointed her to be the first female Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which gave her some power to help the Indians. The novel is, therefore, a true historical novel in that she based almost everything on real places, people, and events that she mostly witnessed with her own eyes.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. I enjoyed it immensely, and would like to see more readers young and old delve into its pages. Highly recommended!!
December 13, 2016
There are books we read because they are difficult to understand. This is what happened to this book. When we finish we feel relieved because we didn't give up. Case in point, Ramona. The books may be so boring, like this one here, yet we still fight on.
Ramona, is a novel about love. The couple are indians living in America. Ramona and Alessandro. They meet in Ramona's foster home where she lives with Senora Monero, Felipe, Margaritta, Marda, Juan Can, and other servants. She is happy with everyone else but her foster mother who she thinks hates her.
Alessandro first sees her when he leads a group of expert sheep shearing Indians who are given the work of shearing there sheep. He ends up taking care of Felipe who is down with sickness. His unconventional healing methods ends up saving and restoring Felipes health. However, his love for Ramona tears the family apart. Senora Moreno is not happy and is against the marriage. They end up eloping.
Tragedy also strikes Alessandro's home where the Americans invade and possess there properties. They end up loosing there house and properties. The whites also kill his fellow countrymen. Without acknowledging there ownership rights, they kick them out believing them to be worth nothing more than servants. Its a brutal injustice that touches to the core of there survival.
With nothing else but love, they follow there own path in search of a better life. They end up getting married in difficult conditions. The discrimination, injustice, loss, and dispossession all arising from the white mans greed for wealth are the themes of this book.
Ramona, is a novel about love. The couple are indians living in America. Ramona and Alessandro. They meet in Ramona's foster home where she lives with Senora Monero, Felipe, Margaritta, Marda, Juan Can, and other servants. She is happy with everyone else but her foster mother who she thinks hates her.
Alessandro first sees her when he leads a group of expert sheep shearing Indians who are given the work of shearing there sheep. He ends up taking care of Felipe who is down with sickness. His unconventional healing methods ends up saving and restoring Felipes health. However, his love for Ramona tears the family apart. Senora Moreno is not happy and is against the marriage. They end up eloping.
Tragedy also strikes Alessandro's home where the Americans invade and possess there properties. They end up loosing there house and properties. The whites also kill his fellow countrymen. Without acknowledging there ownership rights, they kick them out believing them to be worth nothing more than servants. Its a brutal injustice that touches to the core of there survival.
With nothing else but love, they follow there own path in search of a better life. They end up getting married in difficult conditions. The discrimination, injustice, loss, and dispossession all arising from the white mans greed for wealth are the themes of this book.
December 29, 2008
I was named for this romance novel that was made into a movie a long time ago. It is a great story of the hardships of the Indians and Mexicans during the time that California was transitioning from mission districts under Mexican rule and admittance into the United states. A great love story but a bit tragic.
August 10, 2022
2.5/5
The 1880s isn't a good period for literature by women. Wikipedia includes not a single work in its brief summary of the entire decade (attesting to the frequent lackluster quality of its more active contributors), necessitating dives into individual years whose listed works were often drawn from the erratic miscellanea of editorial white dudes who, more often that not, included a work by a woman in order to make a sniping example out of it, rather than fairly evaluate it alongside everything else. This means that, when I saw this work and made first note of the date, I was rather resigned to eventually getting to it if my Century of Women challenge reading proved extra ornery in the second to last decade of the 19th c. My acquisition of a copy was less mundane than I had expected to be (not every day one finds a $100 bill folded into some pages at a used book sale), and the work itself had its moments that were both enjoyable (having recently started up a new life in one of the areas described, I was pleased by the brief descriptions here and there) and admirably hard hitting when it comes to the special breed of bigotry that is colonizers justifying their infliction of genocide on indigenous populations. In the end, the writing is too ponderous and the tone is too sanctimonious for the work to sustain itself merely on its good intentions, but the balance is so even in my mind that I may find myself coming back to this and nudging the rating to the more positive side of the divider. It certainly is far more of a sort of proselytizing 'Valley of the Dolls' than it is high quality literature, but it does the sort of the work that far more writers should have been participating in back before the centuries of silence closed over and seemingly wiped the board clean for the likes of Silicon Valley, and for that, I have to give it its due.
This book starts off bildungsroman and draws back into broad span analysis of several years of the life of a character traversing hundreds of miles of extremely tumultuous landscape during an extremely changing-of-the-empires time, so to say it starts slow and then gets ponderous is an understatement. Each part comes with their strengths and weaknesses: the first humanizes but also over sentimentalizes, while the latter world builds but can't hold it completely together due to the weight of stereotypes it relies on so as to provoke its audience, but not too much. The fact that the whole piece casts itself as a Romeo & Juliet style romance is also double edged, for while that means that the narrative can get away with not fleshing out all its side characters/plots/settings to a satisfactory degree, it means that, whenever the couple flags in its qualities of endearment/credibility/engagement, the whole work flags with it. There's enough historical context to keep someone like me fairly interested throughout, especially when the narrative doesn't shy away from portraying the more brutal realities of its setting, but all in all, the work doesn't go deep enough to justify its length or push its boundaries hard enough to not come off as presumptuously didactic when it tried to be profound. At any rate, the prose isn't the most complicated or archaic thing under the sun, so if you find yourself scrambling to fulfil an assignment/reading challenge with something of this work's publication date, you can take this for what it is and get the reading credit without breaking your brain too much.
The year goes marching on, and eventually writing my reviews while being a full time librarian won't feel so unreal. Until then, I expect to have more highs and lows in all my reads, classics challenges or otherwise, and while this one certainly isn't the most impressive thing under the sun, it was singular enough in its subject and its goal for it to have been a worthwhile read. Jackson tied her humanization of indigenous populations to their willingness to subsume their way of life to the beast of Christianity, and so her efforts to plead for these populations in both fiction and non will always appear compassionate second, imperialist first. Still, reading this made me look forward even more to my shift to contemporary reading in the latter section of 2022, as I have Richard Wagamese, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, James Welch, and others in my sight who are sure to grant me much more complicated and engaging portraits of indigenous life across the mass of land that is known, in certain sectors, as Turtle Island. In addition, I have to wonder now if any of these or other indigenous authors read Jackson and took a kernel that helped them make the story of their people of their own. For she wasn't perfect, but she was early and on the right track, and I can't scorn a piece like this for having been so popular back in the day when it certainly played a part in the fruitfully authentic landscape of literature we have today.
The 1880s isn't a good period for literature by women. Wikipedia includes not a single work in its brief summary of the entire decade (attesting to the frequent lackluster quality of its more active contributors), necessitating dives into individual years whose listed works were often drawn from the erratic miscellanea of editorial white dudes who, more often that not, included a work by a woman in order to make a sniping example out of it, rather than fairly evaluate it alongside everything else. This means that, when I saw this work and made first note of the date, I was rather resigned to eventually getting to it if my Century of Women challenge reading proved extra ornery in the second to last decade of the 19th c. My acquisition of a copy was less mundane than I had expected to be (not every day one finds a $100 bill folded into some pages at a used book sale), and the work itself had its moments that were both enjoyable (having recently started up a new life in one of the areas described, I was pleased by the brief descriptions here and there) and admirably hard hitting when it comes to the special breed of bigotry that is colonizers justifying their infliction of genocide on indigenous populations. In the end, the writing is too ponderous and the tone is too sanctimonious for the work to sustain itself merely on its good intentions, but the balance is so even in my mind that I may find myself coming back to this and nudging the rating to the more positive side of the divider. It certainly is far more of a sort of proselytizing 'Valley of the Dolls' than it is high quality literature, but it does the sort of the work that far more writers should have been participating in back before the centuries of silence closed over and seemingly wiped the board clean for the likes of Silicon Valley, and for that, I have to give it its due.
This book starts off bildungsroman and draws back into broad span analysis of several years of the life of a character traversing hundreds of miles of extremely tumultuous landscape during an extremely changing-of-the-empires time, so to say it starts slow and then gets ponderous is an understatement. Each part comes with their strengths and weaknesses: the first humanizes but also over sentimentalizes, while the latter world builds but can't hold it completely together due to the weight of stereotypes it relies on so as to provoke its audience, but not too much. The fact that the whole piece casts itself as a Romeo & Juliet style romance is also double edged, for while that means that the narrative can get away with not fleshing out all its side characters/plots/settings to a satisfactory degree, it means that, whenever the couple flags in its qualities of endearment/credibility/engagement, the whole work flags with it. There's enough historical context to keep someone like me fairly interested throughout, especially when the narrative doesn't shy away from portraying the more brutal realities of its setting, but all in all, the work doesn't go deep enough to justify its length or push its boundaries hard enough to not come off as presumptuously didactic when it tried to be profound. At any rate, the prose isn't the most complicated or archaic thing under the sun, so if you find yourself scrambling to fulfil an assignment/reading challenge with something of this work's publication date, you can take this for what it is and get the reading credit without breaking your brain too much.
The year goes marching on, and eventually writing my reviews while being a full time librarian won't feel so unreal. Until then, I expect to have more highs and lows in all my reads, classics challenges or otherwise, and while this one certainly isn't the most impressive thing under the sun, it was singular enough in its subject and its goal for it to have been a worthwhile read. Jackson tied her humanization of indigenous populations to their willingness to subsume their way of life to the beast of Christianity, and so her efforts to plead for these populations in both fiction and non will always appear compassionate second, imperialist first. Still, reading this made me look forward even more to my shift to contemporary reading in the latter section of 2022, as I have Richard Wagamese, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, James Welch, and others in my sight who are sure to grant me much more complicated and engaging portraits of indigenous life across the mass of land that is known, in certain sectors, as Turtle Island. In addition, I have to wonder now if any of these or other indigenous authors read Jackson and took a kernel that helped them make the story of their people of their own. For she wasn't perfect, but she was early and on the right track, and I can't scorn a piece like this for having been so popular back in the day when it certainly played a part in the fruitfully authentic landscape of literature we have today.
June 22, 2020
Ramona was born to a Native American woman in Southern California. Her father was from Scotland. He took the infant girl from her mother and gave her to his ex-girlfriend, a Californio (Hispanic) woman of considerable wealth. Unfortunately that woman died and her husband didn't want the child, so she was passed on to Señora Moreno, a widowed woman with a large estate and a son.
The Moreno ranch needed sheep shearers and that is how a tribe of Native Americans came to live there temporarily, for work. And that is how Ramona met Alessandro, a talented violinist who had been raised at a Franciscan mission in Santa Barbara. The protagonist of this novel is intensely Catholic.
This book starts out slow with one chapter devoted only to describing the Moreno estate. I had a hard time getting emotionally involved with the characters enough to keep reading it consistently. This also becomes almost ridiculously melodramatic at times. The Señora Moreno devolves from a devoted Catholic woman into a prideful and malevolent control-freak.
Finally - at about chapter 20 out of 26, I became emotionally involved and cared enough about the characters to want to keep reading the book without putting it down. I'm glad I stuck with it. The ending of the book is both tragic and blessed. The author did what she set out to do - to profile in fiction the injustices done to Native Americans by the Americans when they took over the state of California from the Californios in the mid-19th century.
I read this book via Kindle. My local in-person book club chose it as a group read. We live in a town with a lot of Native Americans so reading about their issues is important to us.
The Moreno ranch needed sheep shearers and that is how a tribe of Native Americans came to live there temporarily, for work. And that is how Ramona met Alessandro, a talented violinist who had been raised at a Franciscan mission in Santa Barbara. The protagonist of this novel is intensely Catholic.
This book starts out slow with one chapter devoted only to describing the Moreno estate. I had a hard time getting emotionally involved with the characters enough to keep reading it consistently. This also becomes almost ridiculously melodramatic at times. The Señora Moreno devolves from a devoted Catholic woman into a prideful and malevolent control-freak.
Finally - at about chapter 20 out of 26, I became emotionally involved and cared enough about the characters to want to keep reading the book without putting it down. I'm glad I stuck with it. The ending of the book is both tragic and blessed. The author did what she set out to do - to profile in fiction the injustices done to Native Americans by the Americans when they took over the state of California from the Californios in the mid-19th century.
I read this book via Kindle. My local in-person book club chose it as a group read. We live in a town with a lot of Native Americans so reading about their issues is important to us.
February 2, 2025
This book surprised me. It was beautifully written, with wonderful imagery of old California and what life was like in the villages and wilderness at that time. I do not know how accurate it is, or what Native people of the area would think of the book, but I think for its intent, it really succeeded. You really care about the characters in this book, and you want them to be happy, and all the twists and turns are suspenseful and emotional. I wish it had had more of an impact on the nation at the time and caused people and the government to treat Native Americans better, but alas -- at least Helen Hunt Jackson tried. I am rating it so highly because I thought it was a beautiful romance, I was anxious to find out what happened, and, again, the depiction of Old California was lovely.
Edit: I decided to downrate it one star because of the over-romantization of priests, the Catholic Church, Native cultures, and of the main character, whose "Indianness" is tempered by her fair complexion and her blue eyes, as well as her religion, her Mexican customs and skills, and her perfect temperament.
Edit: I decided to downrate it one star because of the over-romantization of priests, the Catholic Church, Native cultures, and of the main character, whose "Indianness" is tempered by her fair complexion and her blue eyes, as well as her religion, her Mexican customs and skills, and her perfect temperament.
June 4, 2021
A classic romance originally published in 1884 by Helen Hunt Jackson (Oct 15, 1830 - Aug 12, 1885).
This is one I have never heard of before until my daughter, just a couple of weeks ago went hiking on the Seven Falls Trail to Inspiration Point in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and ran across a memorial for this author, Helen Hunt Jackson. She immediately sent me a screenshot, knowing two things about me: I love graves, and I love reading, which this book, “Ramona” was mentioned on her memorial. What we didn’t notice in the photo, at first, was that the author and I share the exact same birthday, October 15th, except she was born 130 years before me. So, of course, I HAD to read her book.
After the death of Helen’s first husband and two sons, she met and married her second husband in Colorado Springs. They moved to San Francisco where she became an activist for the rights of the Native Americans, which she wrote about in a previous book, A Century of Dishonor (1881). And three years later, she would write this romance novel, Ramona (1884), based on the prejudices and racism from the migrating Americans to the west, and also the prejudices from the Mexicans, just as the Mexican-American War for the California territory was ending in 1846.
I will now have to add her book, A Century of Dishonor, which depicts these governments exploits to find out her truths. I do believe the things shown in this novel could and probably did happen, knowing the nature of mankind, and also for the fact that my ancestors, the Acadians, experienced a very similar fate up in Nova Scotia in 1755, a whole century earlier, an event known by all Cajuns of today as the Great Deportation.
The story line was actually pretty good, better than some of the other classics I’ve read. But, when I got to the last 1/3 of the book, the author completely failed in trying to write a southern Tennessee accent. It could have been forgiven if it hadn’t been used so extensively and in such lengthy paragraphs. I struggled to decipher just exactly what was being said, and I’m from the south. All in all, I’d give another shot at another book written by this author.
This is one I have never heard of before until my daughter, just a couple of weeks ago went hiking on the Seven Falls Trail to Inspiration Point in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and ran across a memorial for this author, Helen Hunt Jackson. She immediately sent me a screenshot, knowing two things about me: I love graves, and I love reading, which this book, “Ramona” was mentioned on her memorial. What we didn’t notice in the photo, at first, was that the author and I share the exact same birthday, October 15th, except she was born 130 years before me. So, of course, I HAD to read her book.
After the death of Helen’s first husband and two sons, she met and married her second husband in Colorado Springs. They moved to San Francisco where she became an activist for the rights of the Native Americans, which she wrote about in a previous book, A Century of Dishonor (1881). And three years later, she would write this romance novel, Ramona (1884), based on the prejudices and racism from the migrating Americans to the west, and also the prejudices from the Mexicans, just as the Mexican-American War for the California territory was ending in 1846.
I will now have to add her book, A Century of Dishonor, which depicts these governments exploits to find out her truths. I do believe the things shown in this novel could and probably did happen, knowing the nature of mankind, and also for the fact that my ancestors, the Acadians, experienced a very similar fate up in Nova Scotia in 1755, a whole century earlier, an event known by all Cajuns of today as the Great Deportation.
The story line was actually pretty good, better than some of the other classics I’ve read. But, when I got to the last 1/3 of the book, the author completely failed in trying to write a southern Tennessee accent. It could have been forgiven if it hadn’t been used so extensively and in such lengthy paragraphs. I struggled to decipher just exactly what was being said, and I’m from the south. All in all, I’d give another shot at another book written by this author.
April 19, 2010
Ramona started out well and pulled me in; it looked like it was going to win at least four stars, if not five. I was impressed with the characters, the beautiful descriptions of California, and the sweet love story that was developing. I feel like the story started to go downhill from the middle. As Ramona goes through one hardship after another you wonder if it will ever stop and it doesn't.
Also in the interest of playing up the plight of the American Indians in the late 18th century, Helen Hunt seems to describe Americans with a heavy hand. The story starts to loose its realism as she seems to get more and more focused on the moral of the story. She describes almost all Americans as mean, greedy, callous, unintelligent, and cruel. Indians are portrayed as loyal, loving, hard-working, and almost as though they can do no wrong. She even puts some inconsistencies into her story - at one point the Indians insist that "Indians never steal." Almost a few pages over the main Indian character, Alessandro, is considering stealing a madonna statue from a nearby, broken down church (he does end up stealing it). The story really seems to fall apart because Helen Hunt Jackson became so zealous in her effort to sway hearts for her cause. I think she went a little overboard; if she had injected a little more realism and made the enemy a little more believable, she would have had an amazing piece.
I did feel that the ending did have some redeeming qualities. After seeing the Ramona play which ends in despair, it was comforting to read the softly beautiful way that Jackson ends the story.-
Also in the interest of playing up the plight of the American Indians in the late 18th century, Helen Hunt seems to describe Americans with a heavy hand. The story starts to loose its realism as she seems to get more and more focused on the moral of the story. She describes almost all Americans as mean, greedy, callous, unintelligent, and cruel. Indians are portrayed as loyal, loving, hard-working, and almost as though they can do no wrong. She even puts some inconsistencies into her story - at one point the Indians insist that "Indians never steal." Almost a few pages over the main Indian character, Alessandro, is considering stealing a madonna statue from a nearby, broken down church (he does end up stealing it). The story really seems to fall apart because Helen Hunt Jackson became so zealous in her effort to sway hearts for her cause. I think she went a little overboard; if she had injected a little more realism and made the enemy a little more believable, she would have had an amazing piece.
I did feel that the ending did have some redeeming qualities. After seeing the Ramona play which ends in despair, it was comforting to read the softly beautiful way that Jackson ends the story.-
April 3, 2022
This audiobook version is read by Boots Martin, who really throws herself into it. She's over the top but then, so is "Ramona," a romance where all emotions are heightened. This is abridged, which I didn't realize until later, yet it's probably all the "Ramona" most of us need. Campy and dated, but kind of fun regardless, especially if you live in Southern California and like history. Every time Martin as Ramona lovingly pronounces "Alessandro!," take a drink.
September 13, 2009
What can I say? I just re-read this book for my book club and I think I loved it even more this time around. I am totally in love with Alessandro!
March 28, 2022
Drama— 1880s-style.
December 23, 2017
This is a wonderful 19th century romance about a young woman who marries against the wishes of her step-mother, wanders through the mountains and valleys with her husband, and is, at long last, reunited with a life that might offer some semblance of comfort and joy.
Her husband was wonderful; however, he was an "Indian" in Southern California, where such people were both respected and held in contempt...often by the same people. The book takes place after the Americans have invaded California and, contrary to the treaties signed by the American and Mexican government, deeds on land are no longer valid and Americans buy the land and clear it of the "Indians" who have lived there for generations. It is a hard life.
Helen Hunt Jackson is one of the 19th Century writers who took on social issues, inspired in part by the effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Though she is from New England, her descriptions of the Mexican rancho system, of the ways that the "Indians" lived, the variations amongst the Americans, and the glorious beauty of the area inland from San Diego show that she based her plea for better treatment of the Native Americans on real knowledge of how life changed when Washington took over California.
The language of this book is utterly delightful -- 19th century vocabulary and syntax-- and, as you read the book, you will be able to see the scenes and hear the music of the movies that have been made, and you will want to go to Hemet, where a "PassionPlay" format of the story is presented each summer in the "Ramona Bowl."
A wonderful -- if somewhat arcane -- read about a situation never dealt with in our history. The American treatment of the Native Americans was -- and is -- despicable.
Her husband was wonderful; however, he was an "Indian" in Southern California, where such people were both respected and held in contempt...often by the same people. The book takes place after the Americans have invaded California and, contrary to the treaties signed by the American and Mexican government, deeds on land are no longer valid and Americans buy the land and clear it of the "Indians" who have lived there for generations. It is a hard life.
Helen Hunt Jackson is one of the 19th Century writers who took on social issues, inspired in part by the effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Though she is from New England, her descriptions of the Mexican rancho system, of the ways that the "Indians" lived, the variations amongst the Americans, and the glorious beauty of the area inland from San Diego show that she based her plea for better treatment of the Native Americans on real knowledge of how life changed when Washington took over California.
The language of this book is utterly delightful -- 19th century vocabulary and syntax-- and, as you read the book, you will be able to see the scenes and hear the music of the movies that have been made, and you will want to go to Hemet, where a "PassionPlay" format of the story is presented each summer in the "Ramona Bowl."
A wonderful -- if somewhat arcane -- read about a situation never dealt with in our history. The American treatment of the Native Americans was -- and is -- despicable.
January 5, 2019
I have wanted to read this book for a long time, simply because it had so much influence on how Americans saw California.
The descriptions of the climate, geography, and people of Southern California do make the place and people very distinctive. Jackson's take on how Americans treated California Indians, Mexicans, and Catholics was very progressive at the time. Now it feels painfully dated. Another character that feels dated (and forced) is the character of Aunt Ri, from Tennessee, with her dialect and open mind, is used to show how even an American from the South might have an open mind if given the chance. At the time, it was considered equivalent to Uncle Tom's Cabin (which I have not read). Some have claimed it influenced the creation of the Dawes Act (1887) which addressed Indian land rights in the US. Jackson was, per the source cited Wikipedia article (Women's History: Biographies 1997) upset that readers were more interested in the romantic Californio vision than the plight of California Indians.
Despite the issues readers today have with this book, it did very much influence American perceptions of California, and created additional interest in California right as the railroads were coming in to the state. It did influence American thoughts on Californios, and California and other North American Indians. It has never been out of print.
The descriptions of the climate, geography, and people of Southern California do make the place and people very distinctive. Jackson's take on how Americans treated California Indians, Mexicans, and Catholics was very progressive at the time. Now it feels painfully dated. Another character that feels dated (and forced) is the character of Aunt Ri, from Tennessee, with her dialect and open mind, is used to show how even an American from the South might have an open mind if given the chance. At the time, it was considered equivalent to Uncle Tom's Cabin (which I have not read). Some have claimed it influenced the creation of the Dawes Act (1887) which addressed Indian land rights in the US. Jackson was, per the source cited Wikipedia article (Women's History: Biographies 1997) upset that readers were more interested in the romantic Californio vision than the plight of California Indians.
Despite the issues readers today have with this book, it did very much influence American perceptions of California, and created additional interest in California right as the railroads were coming in to the state. It did influence American thoughts on Californios, and California and other North American Indians. It has never been out of print.
November 18, 2011
Ramona
By: Helen Hunt Jackson
With a bit of tragedy, history and love, it tried to make this book interesting; but it was not . The story of Ramona is set in Spanish California and the beginning of American California. Ramona is caught up in the tangle of races found in Southern California - Mexican, Spanish, Indian and American, and for me, this book failed to draw me a picture.
It's an old fashioned love story, a bit slow in parts, but with a noble and pure hero and heroine. Indian Alessandro and part-Indian Ramona flee prejudice and intolerance and try to survive the disagreements of many of her family members. This book also talks about segregation between the rich and the poor, and that the poor should not be with the rich, nor should the rich be associated with the poor. This made Ramona fight for her love even more.
I did not really like this book and would not recommend it to people that want to read something just for fun. This book also made me disinterested towards the end because it leaned more towards love than it did when the book started; which is with action.
By: Helen Hunt Jackson
With a bit of tragedy, history and love, it tried to make this book interesting; but it was not . The story of Ramona is set in Spanish California and the beginning of American California. Ramona is caught up in the tangle of races found in Southern California - Mexican, Spanish, Indian and American, and for me, this book failed to draw me a picture.
It's an old fashioned love story, a bit slow in parts, but with a noble and pure hero and heroine. Indian Alessandro and part-Indian Ramona flee prejudice and intolerance and try to survive the disagreements of many of her family members. This book also talks about segregation between the rich and the poor, and that the poor should not be with the rich, nor should the rich be associated with the poor. This made Ramona fight for her love even more.
I did not really like this book and would not recommend it to people that want to read something just for fun. This book also made me disinterested towards the end because it leaned more towards love than it did when the book started; which is with action.
April 9, 2010
I read this as a teenager, and now for the second time as an adult. I vaguely remember seeing the Ramona Pageant in Hemet, it was a favorite story of my Grandmother's who is part Lakota Sioux, and in thinking back, would have been familiar with the mixed relationships and tensions they can bring. What I noticed most as a teen reader was the love story between Ramona and Alessandro. Forbidden love, like Romeo and Juliet. And the evil stepmother, Senora Moreno's treatment of Ramona, similar to Cindrella. The story seemed to be connected to fair tales and classic stories. As an adult, the book took on more meaning, the ending for example. It's a mixed ending, Alessandro dies, but Ramona survives and is rescued by Felipe. Living a whole other life happily as his wife with many children. They move to Mexico to where the Morena family originates. I'm not sure what the author is saying, because they had to leave California in order to live happily ever after. The treatment of the California Indians seemed far worse in reading this from an adult perspective.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 11, 2012
I was assigned to read this for my American Lit class. The class is structured around the topic of the Wild West, and Westerns apparently developed as a response to something called domestic fiction. What is domestic fiction, you might ask. Well, imagine a bunch of self-righteous middle class women seeking to reform society through tales of disadvantaged young heroines who triumph over adversity through virtue, piety, and kindness. Are you nauseous yet? Now add some saccharine-sweet sentimentality, intended to manipulate your interpretation of the book through an abundance of emotion, and you have domestic fiction. Ready to heave now? Because you're sure to be heaving after trudging your way through Ramona, hopefully my last foray into domestic fiction. I understand now, more than ever, why Virginia Woolf felt it necessary to kill off the Angel in the House. What's the story about? Do you really care? Run away, far away. Go read something violent.
May 11, 2014
This is a heartbreaking and yet uplifting tale of a young woman named Ramona. Through life's ups and downs Ramona experiences despair, love, passion, freedom, frustration and loss. It is truly a masterpiece. Although my heart was crushed into tiny slobbery bits, this book still left me happy. Maybe it was the epic tale, the brilliant writing, the beautiful descriptions. Or perhaps it was Ramona herself. She is one of those unforgettable characters who will stay with you always. Like Jane Eyre or Scarlett O'Hara it is Ramona's strength which endears her to so many. Yet, she has a vulnerability to her that makes her so believable. I read this book many years ago and yet Ramona's fascinating journey stays within my heart, always.
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