themselves to sleep on the living-room floor. (As a sensible child, Ellen spots her narrative with survival tips, advice on buying food in bulk to save money and on saving time when shopping for school clothes.)

Like Huck also, Ellen faces a conflict over the racial prejudice she has been taught as a child in the South. Early in the novel when Ellen visits the home of her black friend Starletta, she is unwilling to drink from the same cup as Starletta or to eat the food the family offers. Though uneducated and poor, the black family is compassionate and willing to offer Ellen shelter from her abusive father. It is Ellen’s own stubbornness that keeps her silent about her father’s abuse and sexual advances, and part of her growth and maturing comes from the loosening of the blinders of prejudice she has placed on herself. Through her own hardship and suffering, the goodness and generosity of Starletta and her family, and, when Ellen is living with her grandmother and forced to work in the cotton fields, the kindness of Mavis, a black farmhand, Ellen changes. She comes to recognize the guilt she bears for her prejudice toward Starletta as well as the deep love she feels for her friend. She sees finally that a person need not worry about whether someone is black or white. “I am old now,” she comments near the end of the novel, andknow it is not the germs you cannot see that slide off her lips and on to a glass then to your white lips that will hurt you or turn you colored. What you had better worry about though is the people you know and trusted they would be like you because you were all made in the same batch. You need to look over your shoulder at the one who is in charge of holding you up and see if that is a knife he has in his hand. And it might not be a colored hand. But it is a knife.

It is a measure of Ellen’s growth that by the end of the novel, when she invites her friend Starletta for the weekend and sees her sleeping in her white friend’s bed, she recognizes that it is Starletta who has come “even farther” than Ellen herself.

This racial conflict and the emphasis on familial and racial relationships remind the reader that Ellen Foster is a deeply Southern novel, though it is by no means a regional work, limited in its appeal. Rather, the novel exhibits a number of those traits and concerns that have come to be identified with the body of Southern literature published in the twentieth century. Besides the focus on familial and racial relationships, and the guilt and sense of sin that racism has instilled in many Southern whites, the novel evinces a rootedness in the details of everyday life and a strong sense of place common to Southern literature. Ellen frequently comments on clothing and money and thinks compulsively about food—perhaps mirroring in her physical hunger her deep emotional needs. She is a keen observer also of the smells, objects, and living conditions in the different homes she visits. Many of her descriptions focus on luxury or its absence, calling attention to the class and racial divisions that still prevail in many parts of the South. For example, while Ellen’s grandmother, her “mama’s mama,” has a home filled with expensive furniture and antiques, what Ellen calls “Egyptian type candy jars,” Starletta and her family live in a one-room house with no inside toilet, a dirty place with “little sticks all between the floorboards.” Their house with its “fried meat” smell offers a realistic look at the poverty of rural blacks in the South at the same time that it calls attention to the social and racial injustices that linger in the region.

Perhaps the two most strongly Southern characteristics of Ellen Foster are its vivid, fresh language with heavy reliance on colloquial Southern speech patterns and its use of the grotesque. From the beginning of the novel, Ellen’s language is honest and direct. Her voice is clearly that of an adolescent white girl who always refers to her father as “daddy” and blacks as “colored.” Moreover, there is no direct dialogue in the novel; everything is related in Ellen’s own words, giving the novel authenticity and, at times, humor. In describing her parents, Ellen speaks of her father as a “big wind-up toy of a man.” Her mother, who dies of an overdose of heart medication, “has not had a good heart” since suffering from “romantic fever” in her youth, an apt linguistic play on “rheumatic fever” in the light of her marriage to an abusive husband. When Ellen must go to court for the question of child custody to be settled, the art teacher, Julia, who acts as temporary guardian with her husband, dresses Ellen in “lace stockings and black patting leather shoes.” Later, when Ellen spots the woman she wants as her “new mama” at church and learns that she has a foster family, with characteristic honesty Ellen says she has heard that the woman takes in everything from “orphans to stray cats,” which “fit my description perfect.” Such descriptions add poignancy as well as humor to the novel and offer ample evidence of the author’s keen ear for fresh, witty language and the patterns of everyday Southern speech.

This same ear is also evident in the uses of the grotesque that occur in the novel. Since the deaths of close relatives repeatedly haunt Ellen’s life, quite expectedly her attention focuses frequently on the details of dying. After her mother dies in her arms, Ellen builds a strong resentment toward her father and a determination not to be found with another dead person. When her father does not come home the Christmas following his wife’s death, Ellen comments that maybe he “drove off in the ditch somewhere and froze to death. Nobody would be out on Christmas to find him before he got blue and solid.” Then, when her father does die of a ruptured blood vessel, Ellen says “he had a vein or a head fuse explode so he died.” Perhaps the most grotesque details describe her grandmother’s death in bed while Ellen is living with her. “Too smart to let somebody find” her “with a dead lady the second time around,” Ellen decorates her grandmother’s body and bed, putting a Sunday hat on the dead woman’s head and arranging artificial flowers around the body so “she looked set off like a picture.” “I stood over her,” Ellen comments, “hoping she was the last dead person I knew for a while.”

The central struggle of Ellen’s life resurfaces with the death of her grandmother: the quest for a safe home with “somebody good” to love her. It is this theme which gives Ellen Foster its power and universality. Driven from her home first by an abusive father, Ellen seeks refuge with her Aunt Betsy, only to be sent home again after one weekend. When she is rescued from her father temporarily by one of her teachers, Ellen is comfortable but wary, and justifiably so since the courts quickly place her in the custody of her grandmother, a cruel woman who abuses her grandchild in order to avenge her daughter’s death. When Ellen’s father dies, her grandmother forbids her to weep or grieve, punctuating her command with repeated slaps. With her grandmother’s death, Ellen is thus once more at the mercy of her mother’s family and the courts. This time she lives briefly with her Aunt Nadine and her spoiled daughter, Dora. When an argument with her aunt leads to her being thrown out of the house, Ellen seeks shelter with the foster family she has seen at church. In a heartrending scene, she arrives on foot at her “new mama’s” house on Christmas Day and offers to pay for her stay with the money she has saved. She has even dressed herself in her fanciest outfit so that she would look like she is “worth something.” Though at first Ellen cannot believe that she will be able to stay, she has at last found a home she will not have to leave, a place where children are respected and loved, where there is laughter, play, and compassion.

The end of Ellen’s quest drives home two of the novel’s central concerns: the pain and hardship of a childhood without loving parents and the meaning and importance of good parenting. The good people in this novel who care for Ellen—Starletta’s parents; Julia, the art teacher, and her husband; Mavis, the black farmhand; Ellen’s “new mama”—all share traits of tolerance, compassion, and a willingness to support and encourage children regardless of financial limitations. Ironically, those with the most material wealth—Ellen’s grandmother, her aunts Betsy and Nadine—appear as selfish, petty women. They are unaware of or unconcerned with the fact that what each child needs, as Ellen says, is “somebody decent to love her good.” It is this theme, so vividly and skillfully conveyed through the heroine’s own story, that makes Ellen Foster a valuable contribution not only to the tradition of Southern letters but also to American literature at large.

The events in Ellen Foster take place over about a year and a half, narrated by Ellen herself in a matter-of-fact, colloquial style that is generally believable as that of an eleven-year-old in the American South, with its occasional malapropisms and simple punctuation (only periods are deemed necessary by Ellen). The narrative alternates between Ellen’s grim past and her glowing present. Ellen’s troubles are over now, but the exact sequence of events in her past unfolds gradually.

Soon after Ellen’s semi-invalid mother returns from the hospital after a heart operation, the heartlessness and drunken abuse of Ellen’s father drive the weak, despairing woman to suicide, despite Ellen’s efforts to protect and save her. After the funeral, Ellen’s maternal relatives, a grandmother and two aunts who had disapproved of the marriage, leave Ellen to her father, preferring to ignore his alternating neglect and abuse of his daughter. Ellen’s father, Bill, falls into an alcoholic depression, neglecting himself and his farm. Ellen is determined to take care of herself, and him, if necessary. She manages to buy food, pay the bills, and save some money for herself. She cooks for herself, dresses in her mother’s clothes, goes to school, and joins the Girl Scouts, presenting a relatively normal façade to the world.

Ellen’s only refuge outside of school is the home of her friend Starletta, whom she describes as “not as smart as I am but . . . more fun.” Starletta’s parents, illiterate black sharecroppers, nevertheless have a warm, happy home, and they are always available to drive Ellen into town, buy her a winter coat, or give her a place to stay. Ellen accepts their care without question, assuming unselfconsciously that her race makes her superior. Although fiercely loyal to Starletta, Ellen is reluctant to eat or sleep in her house, because “No matter how good it looks to you it is still a colored biscuit.”

Soon Ellen’s drunken father begins sexually molesting her. Ellen runs, first to Starletta’s, then to her frivolous Aunt Betsy. Ellen cannot tell her aunt about Bill’s abuse, however, and is soon sent home, where she tries to stay out of his way. Eventually, Ellen’s art teacher, Julia, notices her bruises and arranges for Ellen to stay with her, but soon Ellen’s maternal grandmother intervenes and the court appoints her as Ellen’s guardian. Ellen’s wealthy grandmother hates her, somehow blaming Ellen for her daughter’s death. She puts Ellen to work in the cotton fields, where a kind field hand, Mavis, befriends her and helps her survive. Ellen’s father finally drinks himself to death, and Ellen can only feel relieved.

When the grandmother becomes ill, Ellen again takes on the role of caretaker, but her grandmother dies. Then Ellen’s Aunt Nadine grudgingly takes Ellen in as a duty. Wrapped up in herself and her spoiled daughter, Dora, Nadine soon rejects Ellen, who has already picked out her new foster family at church and planned to leave anyway. Ellen’s chosen “new mama” accepts her unconditionally, and Ellen is home at last. Her new family’s love helps her realize the value of Starletta’s unwavering friendship and finally overturns Ellen’s racism: “I came a long way to get here but when you think about it real hard you will see that old Starletta came even farther.”

Gibbons was twenty-seven when this, her first novel, was published by a small North Carolina press to immediate applause from national reviewers. Several well-established Southern fiction writers, including Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and Elizabeth Spencer, praised Ellen Foster as original and authentic. Though a few reviewers thought that it bordered on sentimentality, most agreed that Gibbons’ characterization of Ellen and her narrative voice transcended any misgivings about the plot.

Gibbons is one of several Southern women novelists whose work came to national attention in the 1980’s, among them Doris Betts, Lee Smith, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Jill McCorkle, some of whom studied together at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Several of their novels also deal with young girls or women overcoming prejudice, poverty, and oppression. It would be unwarranted to suggest that these writers influenced one another, but all are certainly influenced by their experiences as Southern women. As in Ellen Foster, the focus in some works by these writers is on re-visioning, as unique individuals, characters who have been overlooked or stereotyped in the past.

Ellen Foster appears again briefly in Gibbons’ A Virtuous Woman (1989) as a friend of one of the novel’s major characters. This novel and A Cure for Dreams (1991) and Charms for the Easy Life (1992) center on strong women who must overcome various circumstances, and critics have commented on the literary and narrative techniques by which Gibbons empowers these female characters. As critic Ralph C. Wood noted, however, Gibbons’ women are never merely victims, her men never merely victimizers (though they rarely display the compassion and resourcefulness exercised by the women around them). Ellen Foster’s story seems to end happily, but in Gibbons’ later works, the power of some women characters lies in their ability to endure the hard realities of life and death with strength and humor and to learn from them, rather than in simplistic happy endings. Gibbons has the ability to deal subtly with difficult, even tragic characters and events without falling into despair or anger.

Conservatism in the 1980s The existence of Julia—the former 1960s flower child turned respectable art teacher—helps to locate the action in Ellen Foster within the late 1970s or early 1980s. Gibbons began working on her ideas for the novel around 1980 while in college and published the novel in 1987.

A conservative political agenda centered on dismantling liberal programs and beliefs that held sway during the 1930s and the 1960s serve as the backdrop while Gibbons wrote her novel in the 1980s.

The civil rights and feminist movements, having accomplished much in the 1960s, now faced uphill battles against a conservative government of the 1980s. Efforts to help the homeless, fund AIDS research, and prevent drug abuse and urban violence met with resistance. The poor grew poorer while the rich grew richer. Helping those in need was viewed as encouraging the needy not to help themselves.

The contrast between Julia's flower child past and her present "low key so she can hold a job" demeanor speaks to the conservative political and social climate of the 1980s. Julia's free spirit and social-mindedness are portrayed as ultimately doing her no good in the present world of the novel. Recalling the 1960s, Julia describes herself as wanting to "change the world," but here in the 1980s her efforts to change Ellen's world fail, crushed by a court system which senselessly sends Ellen to live with a cruel, manipulative grandmother.

Conservatives in the 1980s leaned heavily on "traditional family values," values culled from a nostalgic view of family life as it supposedly was in the past. The judge who places Ellen with her grandmother "talks about family [as] society's cornerstone," but Ellen protests in her mind that hers "was never a Roman pillar but is and always has been crumbly old brick."

Ellen and Julia both know that real families are not based on the myth of a particular set of values. The outcome of Ellen's quest for a "normal" family is ironically a group of people who are not blood-related but can still call themselves a family, thus contesting the conservative image of the "traditional" family.

Child Abuse Reported incidents of child abuse in the United States rose dramatically during the 1980s. The number of cases reported in 1988 was four times the number reported in 1980, and in 1989 the number of reported cases stood at 2.4 million. Although these figures clearly show the prevalence of child abuse, this apparent increase may not be quite what it seems. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, passed in 1974, requires more diligent reporting of child abuse than had previously been required. The increase in numbers may be indicative of the number of cases that professionals would not have reported previous to the passage of the 1974 act.

In the 1980s, Social Service agencies, already overburdened with the increase of child abuse cases, found they were up against a conservative social climate inhospitable to efforts to address child abuse as a social problem. Ellen Foster's abuse by her father occurs against the background of this social conservatism that includes a repulsion for families who didn't adhere to so-called "traditional family values."

Consequently, Ellen falls through the cracks of the system. Her father's neglect and abuse do not come to light until Ellen's teacher notices a bruise on her arm and for awhile she goes to live with Julia, her art teacher. When the judge sends her to live with her grandmother, Ellen is verbally abused.

Ellen finally achieves security not because anyone has helped her, but because she has helped herself. The irony of an abused child having to help herself find a home speaks of the harsh social climate of the 1980s, in which society's unfortunates received little help from those in power.

Racial Tensions The gains made in race relations in the United States during the 1960s experienced a backlash in the 1980s. African Americans lost ground as the gap in income between blacks and whites grew. Racial tension accompanied the widening economic breach between the races, creating fear and anger on both sides.

When Ellen talks about "the law" that dictates separation between her and her black friend, Starletta, she could be referring to the Jim Crow laws of the South abolished during the 1960s civil rights movement. The reference could also be about the separation of the races that accompanied pre-Civil War slavery. "I figure that if they could fight a war over how I'm supposed to think about her then I'm obligated to do it."

In spite of her affection for Starletta, Ellen is open about her feelings of superiority over Starletta and her fear of catching "colored germs." Her matter-of-fact attitude towards her own racism—repented as the novel nears its end—reflects a larger social trend in the 1980s toward open hostility of whites toward blacks.

Point of View The first-person narration in Ellen Foster makes the book distinctive. Ellen's unique perspective—that of a child lost amidst the swirling anger and cruelty in her family—is like the eye of a storm. Though only eleven, wise Ellen quietly perceives that her dysfunctional family "never was the kind that would fit into a handy category." Through her eyes we see that the adults around her are less capable of nurturing her than she is herself. She is sensible enough to know she needs a family and a "new mama" to take care of her.

Ellen's wisdom about the world contrasts with her often-incorrect vocabulary and grammar, emphasizing the concept that insight and authority can come from unlikely places. While a third-person rendering of Ellen's wretched circumstances might become maudlin, Ellen's good humor and resourcefulness are revealed in her dogged yet spirited first-person narration.

SettingEllen Foster takes place in the post-Civil Rights South, yet the racist values that Ellen struggles with throughout the novel reflect her upbringing in a South still divided by color. The racism of Ellen's world permeates the novel. Ellen's mother's funeral procession has "to drive through colored town to get to church," and Ellen's maternal grandmother calls her white father "a nigger and trash"—the worst insults she can think of—because she believes he is responsible for Ellen's mother's death.

Ellen is self-conscious about her friendship with Starletta, knowing that "every rule in the book says" she should not be friends with a "colored" girl, yet Ellen herself feels superior to Starletta because she is white and Starletta is black.

The setting is crucial to Ellen's story because the racist values of her larger world reflect the way her family treats her like a second-class citizen. As Ellen moves away from her harsh, chaotic family and toward the secure life she wants so badly, her own racism begins to fall away. She no longer needs to look down on someone in order to feel better about herself. Her change of circumstances allows her to see Starletta as a real person.

Structure Throughout the novel, Ellen's narrative moves back and forth in time, from her present life to the events of the past year that lead up to it.

The present consists of Ellen's new life with her "new mama" in "the Foster family." This time period is marked by passages describing how orderly, nurturing, and secure life is in this new family. Ellen's descriptions of her recent past begin with her mother's final illness and suicide, then moves through the downward spiral her life follows after this devastating event.

Gibbons's use of flashbacks to reveal the most painful times in Ellen's life allows Ellen as narrator to shape her past experiences around her happy ending. From her secure vantage point in the foster family, Ellen looks back at the turmoil and pain she lived through in her own family and feels "glad to rest" in her new home, as if she "would not ever move from there."

Images/Imagery "Mamas" and food images permeate Ellen Foster, both reflecting Ellen's deep need for nurturing and love. Ellen's "real mama" commits suicide in chapter two, and the loss reverberates throughout the novel. Following her mother's death, Ellen notices "mamas" everywhere, referring to many of the women she knows not by name but in terms of their status as mothers. Her grandmother is "mama's mama," Aunt Nadine is "Dora's mama," Starletta's mother is known only as "Starletta's mama," young Stella is baby Roger's "official mama," and Ellen's foster mother is her "new mama."

"Mama," often a baby's first word, illustrates Ellen's very basic, almost infantile, need for a mother. After her mother swallows most of and too much of her heart medicine, Ellen snuggles close to her mother's side in bed and says, "I will crawl in and make room for myself. My heart can be the one that beats." This moment suggests Ellen's desire both to return to the safety of the womb and to reverse roles with her mother so that she provides life for her.

A similar hunger for nurturing and sustenance is reflected by Ellen's preoccupation with food throughout the novel. Following her mother's funeral, she goes home alone and eats "right out of the bowls" the food the ladies from church have sent. When her father neglects her and forgets to buy food for her, Ellen buys herself frozen dinners, "the plate froze with the food already on it. A meat, two vegetables, and a dab of dessert." Yet, in spite of her constant hunger, Ellen will not eat the food Starletta's mama makes because it is "colored" food. When she stays with her mama's mama, there is plenty to eat but no sense of togetherness at mealtime. "We both picked at our little individual chickens or turkeys and did not talk." Even when she is living at her new mama's house, where making and eating food are central activities, Ellen says "I stay starved though" and predicts "I know that in ten years from now I will be a member of the food industry." Her hunger and preoccupation with food, as well as her fixation on mother figures, reflect her twin needs: to be taken care of and to belong.

BildungsromanEllen Foster is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, tracing Ellen's movement from isolation into community, from abandonment into nurturance and her own role in making this transformation occur.

Ellen learns from her experiences. Her family teaches her what she does not want in a family, and she goes on to find one in which she can succeed. Her larger world, permeated by racism, tells her she should feel superior to black people simply because she is white, but eventually she sees the error and injustice of that view. Ellen grows into a self-empowered, empathetic girl by virtue of her ability to think for herself and her will to effect change in her world.

The first-person narration in Ellen Foster makes the book distinctive. Ellen's unique perspective—that of a child lost amidst the swirling anger and cruelty in her family—is like the eye of a storm. Though only eleven, wise Ellen quietly perceives that her dysfunctional family "never was the kind that would fit into a handy category." Through her eyes we see that the adults around her are less capable of nurturing her than she is herself. She is sensible enough to know she needs a family and a "new mama" to take care of her.

Ellen's wisdom about the world contrasts with her often-incorrect vocabulary and grammar, emphasizing the concept that insight and authority can come from unlikely places. While a third-person rendering of Ellen's wretched circumstances might become maudlin, Ellen's good humor and resourcefulness are revealed in her dogged yet spirited first-person narration.

The setting of Ellen Foster is the post- Civil Rights South, yet the racist values that Ellen struggles with throughout the novel reflect her upbringing in a South still divided by color. The racism of Ellen's world permeates the novel. Ellen's mother's funeral procession has "to drive through colored town to get to church," and Ellen's maternal grandmother calls her white father "a nigger and trash"—the worst insults she can think of—because she believes he is responsible for her daughter's death.

Ellen is self-conscious about her friendship with Starletta, knowing that "every rule in the book says" she should not be friends with a "colored" girl, yet Ellen herself feels superior to Starletta because she is white and Starletta is black.

The setting is crucial to Ellen's story because the racist values of her larger world reflect the way her family treats her like a second-class citizen. As Ellen moves away from her harsh, chaotic family and toward the secure life she wants so badly, her own racism begin to fall away. She no longer needs to look down on someone in order to feel better about herself. Her change of circumstances allows her to see Starletta as a real person.

Structurally, Ellen's narrative moves back and forth in time throughout the novel, from her present life to the events of the past year that lead up to it. The present consists of Ellen's new life with her "new mama" in "the Foster family." This time period is marked by passages describing how orderly, nurturing, and secure life is in this new family. Ellen's descriptions of her recent past begin with her mother's final illness and suicide, then move through the downward spiral her life follows after this devastating event.

Gibbons's use of flashbacks to reveal the most painful times in Ellen's life, allows Ellen as narrator to shape her past experiences around her happy ending. From her secure vantage point in the foster family, Ellen looks back at the turmoil and pain she lived through in her own family and feels "glad to rest" in her new home, as if she "would not ever move from there."

Maternal images, "Mamas," and food images dominate Ellen Foster, reflecting Ellen's deep need for nurturing and love. Ellen's "real mama" commits suicide in chapter two, and the loss reverberates throughout the novel. Following her mother's death, Ellen notices "mamas" everywhere, referring to many of the women she knows not by name but in terms of their status as mothers. Her grandmother is "mama's mama"; Aunt Nadine is "Dora's mama"; Starletta's mother is known only as "Starletta's mama"; young Stella at the foster home is baby Roger's "official mama"; and Ellen's foster mother is her "new mama."

"Mama," often a baby's first word, illustrates Ellen's very basic, almost infantile, need for a mother. After her mother swallows most of and too much of her heart medicine, Ellen snuggles close to her mother's side in bed and says, "I will crawl in and make room for myself. My heart can be the one that beats." This moment suggests Ellen's desire both to return to the safety of the womb and to reverse roles with her mother so that she provides life for her.

A similar hunger for nurturing and sustenance is reflected in Ellen's preoccupation with food throughout the novel. Following her mother's funeral, she goes home alone and eats "right out of the bowls" the food the ladies from church have sent. When her father neglects her and forgets to buy food for her, Ellen buys herself frozen dinners, "the plate froze with the food already on it. A meat, two vegetables, and a dab of dessert." Yet, in spite of her constant hunger, Ellen will not eat the food Starletta's mama makes because it is "colored" food. When she stays with her mama's mama, there is plenty to eat but no sense of togetherness at mealtime. "We both picked at our little individual chickens or turkeys and did not talk." Even when she is living at her new mama's house, where making and eating food are central activities, Ellen says "I stay starved though" and predicts "I know that in ten years from now I will be a member of the food industry." Her hunger and preoccupation with food, as well as her fixation on mother figures, reflect her twin needs, to be taken care of, and to belong.

Ellen Foster is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, tracing Ellen's movement from isolation into community, from abandonment into nurturance and her own role in making this transformation occur. Ellen learns from her experiences. Her family teaches her what she does not want in a family, and she goes on to find one in which she can succeed. Her larger world, permeated by racism, tells her she should feel superior to black people simply because she is white, but eventually she sees the error and injustice of that view. Ellen grows into a self-empowered, empathetic girl by virtue of her ability to think for herself and her will to effect change in her world.

Ellen Foster belongs not only to the Southern tradition in American literature, but also to that of first-person coming-of-age narratives.

1. Discuss how living in a succession of homes might impact—positively or negatively—Ellen's ability to build relationships with others?

2. Ellen is a victim of child abuse. What social conditions might make child abuse a more likely occurrence? Discuss the cycle of abuse and how that cycle is broken. What is the likely outcome for Ellen?

3. Consider the prevailing definition of "family." How did this definition change during the twentieth century? Critique Ellen's development of a personal definition of family.

4. Ellen relates to many characters through their status as "mamas." Examine the actions of the various mothers in the novel. What facets of motherhood does each represent?

5. Discuss the male images in the novel. Discuss Gibbons's characterization of males and the function of individual male characters in the story.

6. Examine Gibbons's use of the first person narrator to tell the story in Ellen Foster. What would have been gained or lost in a third-person narrative? How might the use of multiple narrators have enhanced or detracted from the story?

When Kaye Gibbons published Ellen Foster in 1987, the novel—her first met with an enthusiastic audience. Critics admired Gibbons's skillful creation of Ellen's narrative voice, acknowledging its accuracy in representing a child's point of view. Gibbons won two literary awards for Ellen Foster, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and a citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. While some readers criticized the events of the novel as being melodramatic, others asserted that Ellen's wisdom, resilience, and tenacity save her narrative from becoming a sentimental tearjerker. Gibbons has said that some of the events of the novel—Ellen's mother's suicide and Ellen's subsequent movement from one relative's home to another—reflect her own childhood experiences. Ellen is indeed a lonely child, quietly observing the happiness of other families, yearning to belong, and making mental notes about what her perfect family should be like. Ellen Foster is ultimately a coming-of-age story, as Ellen engineers for herself a place in the secure, nurturing family she has craved and simultaneously comes to understand herself better through her friendship with Starletta, her black friend. Against the Southern backdrop of racism, Ellen moves from feeling she is superior to Starletta into a new understanding that color has nothing to do with a person's character. Ellen Foster belongs not only to the Southern tradition in American literature, with its distinctive voice and its treatment of racism, but also to that of first-person coming-of-age narratives, in which the narrator's innocence is also his or her wisdom.

Born in 1960 in Nash County, North Carolina, Gibbons was reluctant at first to discuss her childhood with the press, not wanting to draw attention to her own life as a means of publicizing the book. Eventually though, she revealed that her mother, like Ellen's, had committed suicide when Gibbons was ten, an event which led to her family's breakup and to Gibbons's having to live in a succession of relatives' homes. Gibbons went on to graduate from Rocky Mount High School in North Carolina, and while a college student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she began writing a poem in the voice of Starletta. Gibbons told Bob Summer in a Publishers Weekly interview that she wrote from Starletta's perspective because "I wanted to see if I could have a child use her voice to talk about life, death, art, eternity—big things from a little person." The poem about Starletta eventually evolved into Ellen Foster.

In Hungry Mind Review, Gibbons admits that an editor's one-time prediction that she "would always write about women's burdens," has mostly come true. She writes, she says, "in part, to discover what those burdens are and how a character's load can be lessened, her pain mitigated." In Ellen Foster, Gibbons discovers that Ellen, just on the verge of young womanhood, finds comfort and relief from her burdens within herself.

Conservative social trends of the 1980s may be seen to have influenced Gibbons's writing in Ellen Foster. The existence of Julia—the former 1960s flower child turned respectable art teacher—helps to locate the action in Ellen Foster within the late 1970s or early 1980s. Gibbons began working on her ideas for the novel around 1980 while in college and published the novel in 1987.

The civil rights and feminist movements, having accomplished much in the 1960s, now faced uphill battles against a conservative government of the 1980s. Efforts to create federal programs to help the homeless, fund AIDS research, and prevent drug abuse met with resistance. Helping those in need was viewed by some as merely encouraging the needy not to help themselves.

The contrast between Julia's flower-child past and her present "low key so she can hold a job" demeanor speaks to the conservative political and social climate of the 1980s. Julia's free spirit and sodal-mindedness are portrayed as ultimately doing her no good in the present world of the novel. Recalling the 1960s, Julia describes herself as wanting to "change the world," but here in the 1980s her efforts to change Ellen's world fail, crushed by a court system which senselessly sends Ellen to live with a cruel, manipulative grandmother.

Conservatives in the 1980s leaned heavily on "traditional family values," values culled from a nostalgic view of family life as comprising a married couple and their natural-born offspring. The judge who places Ellen with her grandmother "talks about family [as] society's cornerstone," but Ellen protests in her mind that hers "was never a Roman pillar but is and always has been crumbly old brick."

Ellen and Julia both know that real families are not based on the myth of a particular set of values. The outcome of Ellen's quest for a "normal" family is ironically a group of people who are not blood-related but can still call themselves a family, thus contesting the conservative image of the "traditional" family.

Awareness of child abuse as a central social issue rose in the 1980s. Reported incidents of child abuse in the United States increased dramatically during that decade. The number of cases reported in 1988 was four times the number reported in 1980, and in 1989 the number of reported cases stood at 2.4 million. Although these figures clearly show the prevalence of child abuse, this apparent increase may not be quite what it seems. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, passed in 1974, requires more diligent reporting of child abuse than had previously been required. The increase in numbers may be indicative of the number of cases that professionals would not have reported previous to the passage of the 1974 act.

In the 1980s, social service agencies, already overburdened with the increase of child abuse cases, found they were up against a conservative social climate reluctant to admit and address child abuse as a widespread social problem. Ellen Foster's abuse by her father occurs against this background of limited assistance or opportunities for escape. Consequently, Ellen falls through the cracks of the system. Her father's neglect and abuse do not come to light until Ellen's teacher notices a bruise on her arm and for a while she goes to live with Julia, her art teacher. When the judge sends her to live with her grandmother, Ellen is verbally and psychologically abused by other members of her extended family. The only sign of intervention comes from an ineffectual psychologist whom she despises. He meets with her at school to discuss her "high degree of trauma."

Ellen finally achieves security not because anyone has helped her but because she has helped herself. The irony of an abused child having to help herself find a home speaks harshly of the social climate of the 1980s, in which society's unfortunates received little help from those in power.

Race relations in the United States provide an additional social backdrop to the novel. When Ellen talks about "the law" that dictates separation between her and her black friend, Starletta, she may be referring to the Jim Crow laws of the South that were abolished during the 1960s civil rights movement. The reference could also be about the separation of the races that accompanied pre-Civil War slavery. "I figure that if they could fight a war over how I'm supposed to think about her then I'm obligated to do it." In spite of her affection for Starletta, Ellen is open about her feelings of superiority over Starletta and her fear of catching "colored germs." Her matter-of-fact attitude towards her own racism—repented as the novel nears its end—reflects larger social trends of the hostility of whites toward blacks.

In Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1883), the sensible and resourceful Huck narrates the story, in which he, a poor near-orphan, becomes the moral center when everyone around him seems to be hypocritical or corrupt. Against what he knows is the law, Huck befriends Jim, an escaped black slave, and Huck struggles with his conscience as he helps Jim make his way to freedom.

William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930) follows Anse Bundren and his children as they travel through Mississippi, bringing their dead wife and mother, Addie, to her birthplace for burial. The disjointed narrative is told through the interior monologues of fifteen different characters, among them the Bundren children.

Sights Unseen by Kaye Gibbons (1995) is narrated by Hattie, who looks back from adulthood at how her mother's mental illness affected their family when Hattie was a girl. Like Ellen Foster, Hattie at twelve wants to be normal and to belong, and is wise beyond her years.

Dorothy E. Allison's novel Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) is the first-person story of Bone, a young girl who is born out of wedlock into a poor South Carolina family and is sexually abused by her stepfather. Bone's voice captures the sensitive perceptions of a girl who is coming of age.

Lost in the System (1996) by Charlotte Lopez with Susan Dworkin is the true story of Lopez's experiences as a foster child moved from one foster home to another, hoping to find love and security. Lopez emerged successfully from her difficult beginnings and went on to win the 1993 Miss Teen USA title.

Ellen Foster was adapted as a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie starring Glynnis O'Connor, Jena Malone, Julie Harris, and Debra Monk that aired in 1997. Kaye Gibbons reads Ellen Foster on an audiocassette (abridged edition; three hours), published by Simon & Schuster (Audio), 1996.

Ellen Foster was adapted as a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie starring Glynnis O'Connor, Jena Malone, Julie Harris, and Debra Monk, 1997.

Kaye Gibbons reads Ellen Foster on an audio cassette (three hours), published by Simon & Schuster (Audio), 1996.

Sources Pearl K. Bell, "Southern Discomfort," The New Republic, Vol. 198, No. 9, February 29, 1988, pp. 38-41.

Deanna D'Errico, Review in Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, Vol. 3, No. 1, September-October, 1987, p. 9.

Review of Ellen Foster, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol LV, No. 6, March 15, 1987, p. 404.

Review of Ellen Foster, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 231, No. 11, March 20, 1987, p. 70.

Stanley Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts - The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature, University of California Press, 1972.

Alice Hoffman, "Shopping for a New Family," in The New York Times Book Review, May 31, 1987, p. 13.

Brad Hooper, Review in Booklist, Vol. 84, No. 1, September 1, 1987, p. 27.

Veronica Makowsky, "The Only Hard Part Was the Food: Recipes for Self-Nurture in Kaye Gibbons's Novels," in Southern Quarterly, Vol. 30, Nos. 2-3, Winter-Spring 1992, pp. 103-112.

"On Tour - Kaye Gibbons," in Hungry Mind Review: An Independent Book Review, November 22, 1997, http://www.bookwire.com/hmr/REVIEW/tgibbonshtml.

Linda Taylor, "A Kind of Primitive Charm," in The Sunday Times, London, May 8, 1988, p. G6.

For Further Study Leonore Fleischer, "Is It Art Yet," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 231, May 8, 1987, p. 34. An account of how Ellen Foster was written and published.

Kaye Gibbons, "My Mother, Literature, and a Life Split Neatly into Two Halves," in The Writer on Her Work, Vol. II, edited by Janet Sternburg, Norton, 1991, pp. 52-60. An autobiographical account of how Gibbons became a writer and the influence her mother has had on her.

Veronica Makowsky, "Walker Percy and Southern Literature," in The Walker Percy Project, December 3, 1997, http://sunsite.unc.edu/wpercy/makowsky.html. Focusing mainly on the works of Walker Percy, this article answers the question "What is Southern Literature," giving rich historical and cultural background to this literary tradition. Gibbons is mentioned as an example of a writer in the Southern women's tradition.

Julian Mason, "Kaye Gibbons (I960-)," in Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South. A Bio-bibliographical Source-book, edited by Joseph M. Flora and Robert Bain, Greenwood Press, 1993, pp. 156-68. Mason provides a brief biographical account of Gibbons, along with an analysis of some of the major themes in her writing.

Don O'Briant, "Seeing Beyond Illness," in y'all the arts: arts, entertainment, fun and silly things people do, December 2, 1997,http://www.yall.com/thearts/quiU/gibbons.html. An interview with Gibbons that touches on her beginnings as a writer, her family life, her novels, and her manic depression.

Bob Summer, "PW interviews," in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 240, February 8, 1993, pp 60-61. An interview with Kaye Gibbons in which she discusses the autobiographical aspects of Ellen Foster and the difficulties she encountered when writing her fourth novel, Charms for the Easy Life.