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Favorite Female Characters Meme
Christy Huddleston
from Christy by Catherine Marshall
pictured: Kellie Martin as Christy from the CBS show, Christy
from Christy by Catherine Marshall
pictured: Kellie Martin as Christy from the CBS show, Christy
If you know me at least a little, and know what Christy is, you might find it weird that Christy is one of my favorite characters. Christy, by Catherine Marshall, is usually not found in the general fiction section of book stores, but in the inspirational Christian section. It's about a girl in the early 1900s who goes to do missionary work in the Appalachian Mountains, questions her faith, and learns about God and herself. Most people who know me know that I am not a Christian, and that while I am not against any religion, I do not have one. I feel strongly about this. Christy Huddleston helped me feel this way.
One of the most remarkable things about Christy Huddleston, the character, is that this is the only book I can think of that begins because a character makes a decision to change the status quo. In most of the books I can think of, something else--coincidence, fate, Hogwarts letters--causes the action that prompts the plot. Christy Huddleston is a normal girl, living a normal life. She hears a fairly ordinary request for charity such as we see on TV every day, or in those days heard in church or read in journals every other week. Suddenly, she decides, "I am going to change my life completely, because I want it to mean something."
Christy is based on a real story. I have no idea what Catherine Marshall's mother, upon whom the story is based, was like in real life. But I feel relatively certain that I'm not getting a Hogwarts letter. If I want my life to mean something, I'm going to have to do it myself. I realized this in fourth grade, when I was first read this book. I don't really think I've made my life as meaningful as I want it to be. I do think that this is still one of the most important things we can hear, ever.
Christy is a 19 year old single girl living in the 1900s. She has even less power and independence than I ever possibly could, which makes her decision that much more powerful to me. However, she is not so lacking in power that she cannot make this decision. Sometimes when I read stories about rising above oppression, about bravery in wars and in the face of adversity, I admire the strength and courage of the characters involved, but feel . . . disassociated. I am relatively unoppressed; I am not faced with adversity; I could be involved in the wars of my country but am not forced to (and frankly I don't want to). Sometimes I feel that in the face of crisis, I could be great, but since there isn't one inflicted upon me to force my hand, I'll just be lazy instead.
Although Christy lacks the independence of a modern day woman, she is relatively well-to-do. And she recognizes that she is privileged, as an upper middle class white person with parents who can provide for her. She realizes that being in that situation means that she is lucky enough to choose to do something with her life.
I feel that I am doing a good thing now in the job I have. It is not the best, most charitable, most self-sacrificing job that I could be doing, but my job allows me to inspire people to love science, promote awareness of social importance related to science, and educate in ways better suited to some people than the classroom. That, however, is just doing my job. Once Christy gets to Cutter Gap (the area in the Appalachians where she goes to teach) she does more than the job requires.
It's one thing to put yourself in a situation where you are expected to do "good" work. It's another thing to constantly go beyond that, looking for ways to make people's lives better. Christy thinks outside of the box. She takes initiative and risks. She puts herself on the line.
One of the lovely things about Christy is that both other characters and Christy herself analyze the implications of doing all this "good" work, and they are not always positive. People point out to her that yes, she wants to help people, but that she also wants to feel important, instrumental; she wants to feel good herself. She has to deal with the realization that there is selfishness in her actions as well as selflessness.
Furthermore, by doing "good" for other people, she is imposing her beliefs about what is "good" onto them. People don't always accept her charity. She has to learn that having good intentions is not good enough; she has to work with what people want and need and can accept. She learns that she can't always decide what is best for other people, and that this can be one of the hardest things about helping people.
The other half of Christy's story, which occurs concurrently with her efforts to help others and make her life meaningful, is her struggle with her faith. Christy goes to Cutter Gap with a simple belief in all that her family, friends, and society have taught her. Once she gets there, she questions everything she once believed.
Christy never questions the existence of a Christian God. This story isn't about that; it's about the difficulty of believing in God's love in the face of the ugliness of poverty, ignorance, inequity, and violence. I think that Marshall set out to write a book for Christians, nominal Christians, people who were raised Christian, or people on the fence about Christianity. My guess is she probably wouldn't have a problem with a Buddhist or atheist reading the book, but that the book was never meant to reinforce Buddhism or atheism. Particularly not atheism.
However, the book (for me) is not a message that God exists and here's why; it's about Christy, and what she does when she realizes her faith is not her own, but rather what other people have taught her. What Christy does is seek answers. She does wallow in a misery of doubt for a while, but instead of remaining that way or expecting the answer to come to her, she does research, in a variety of forms.
She goes back to the Bible and rereads passages. She goes to the preacher with questions about scripture she does not understand. She questions the preacher to learn his perpsectives on faith. She questions her Quaker mentor, Alice, and compares Alice's answers to the preacher's. She questions the people of the Cove she has befriended and takes into account those perspectives as well. She also watches and observes. She witnesses violence, and struggles to incorporate it into her system of beliefs. She witnesses love and beauty; she witnesses death and dying, filth and ignorance and cruelty. She seeks out the beauty in nature and in people; she does not turn from the ugliness. She takes all these things into account, comparing it to her own perspectives, synthesizing it in order to come into beliefs that are hers, and hers alone.
Christy is not the perfect model of research. Instead of questioning everyone available to her, she questions those who nominally believe what she believes: the preacher, Alice, the people of the Cove. She does not question the atheist doctor, presumably because he's an atheist; she thinks he has nothing instructive to teach her.
Instead, the doctor questions her. Her response to his questioning is not ideal, either. She starts touting the party line; she becomes sententious and sermonizing; she isn't listening and she's not saying what she believes any more, but what people have told her to believe. When he calls her on it, she get defensive and angry.
This behavior is unreasonable, but I love it because I think the author meant these to be flaws. Alice, who is much more perfect, doesn't get defensive or angry; she, too, calls Christy on just repeating what other people say. Christy is not an idealized character, but a human being trying her very best to discover herself, and sometimes failing. What makes her failure in this regard really work for me is that she is, um, obviously turned on by the doctor.
Christy has a relationship with the preacher. The preacher, David, is also someone who has never questioned his own beliefs, and still isn't questioning his own even when Christy is. He is visibly perturbed by Christy questioning him, in a way that parallels Christy's disturbance when the doctor questions her. David is in love with Christy, probably because she does disturb him, although he can't admit it. Meanwhile, Christy is happy with him because he represents that comfortable non-questioning aspect of her past, when she always knew the right answers and they were the same as everyone else's answers.
The narrator claims that she also is physically attracted to David, but the narrator also claims the attraction is similar to the sort of highschool romance in which kisses are very nice and pleasant and comforting. The author makes a point of showing that this probably isn't going to be a deep and lasting relationship, in which Christy can find the answers she's really seeking. I feel that David and Christy could work on their flaws, learn from each other, and live a wonderful lifetime together--but the author nudges us in another direction.
Meanwhile, around Doctor MacNeill, Christy gets quite hot and bothered. This frustrates and flusters her, because she can't quite tell what is going on, and then there's the fact that he's throwing into confusion everything she ever believed. That the doctor makes her feel this way is what makes Christy as a character work for me. She is confused and frustrated by it, but ultimately is attracted to facing her doubts, which is what the doctor prompts her to do.
The end of the book is a bit difficult for me. The doctor basically converts--not that he becomes a full-blown Christian, church every week and Bible thumping, but in the end he renounces atheism. This ending would work really well for me if we got a little more of the doctor's point of view. There's a suggestion that Christy's own quest for self-knowledge has led Doctor MacNeill to his own quest for self-knowledge, and that he has questioned and changed his beliefs just as she has questioned and changed hers. Which I love, but through the whole book, he is so self-assured that his conversion feels like a big surprise. Because it happens so quickly, and because we can't see it happen, it frankly it feels like something that had to happen because the author wanted them both to be Christian in order to hook up. This is understandably upsetting, considering what the novel means to me as a non-Christian.
I am not of any religion, nor am I atheist, nor would I consider myself agnostic. Most agnostics I have met do not know about the existence of God and claim one cannot know. I feel that to believe one cannot know is to have one more belief than I am comfortable with having--that is to say: none. I don't believe in the theory of evolution either. Or in gravity. Science tells us that all observable facts point toward evolution and gravity. I believe in this. It does not tell us gravity R fact. Scientists operate on the premise that gravity and evolution are true because to do so is useful, since all the facts point in that direction. But it is possible that one day new evidence will come to light that could refute these theories.
I believe in the possibility that we don't know if God exists, that we can't know, that He doesn't exist, that He does, that the gods of Hinduism exist or that Muhammed really was a Prophet; I believe in the possibility that some people have actually seen God and know of his existence; I believe in the possibility that those people are crazy; I believe in the possibility of Rapture. Because I believe it is possible that we may have the ability to know God, or Gods, or know that God does not exist, or that we cannot know, I believe that the most important thing in life is to continually seek. Seek the meaning of life, seek what you were meant to do, seek what will make your life mean the most, seek out what you are, because there is the possibility that you might just find out.
You might not. There's a high probability that you won't. But if it comes down to what I believe, the only thing that I probably do believe, on an extreme leap of faith, is that that is not a wasted life.
No matter what Catherine Marshall was going for, to me that is what Christy is about. That is what Christy Huddleston does, and that she does so despite obstacles and her own flaws has always inspired me.
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(Anonymous) 2014-11-08 06:04 am (UTC)(link)