For example, Mary, at about age four, heard about an incident in which her older brother fell out of a wagon and came home covered with mud. But, when she related this happening, she was scolded by her mother for making up a story, i.e., telling it as though she had seen it when she had not. Mary couldn't understand the distinction because, in her very active little mind she could clearly see, and react emotionally to, the entire scene. What was the difference between seeing an event with your eyes or living it in your head after you heard about it?
By the time she started first grade at age five, Mary had already learned basic reading from listening to her brother and from possessing a native talent for absorbing sounds from the printed words. The teacher, however, insisted that Mary could not possibly read because it had not been taught her yet, that she was making up a story. (There was that "story" problem again!). Mary, subject to the snickers of her classmates, couldn't understand what the teacher meant by telling her that she could not read when that's exactly what she was doing.
In her autobiography (Earth Horizon,1932),
Mary remembered her father (who died when she was nine) as someone who
appreciated his lively and intelligent daughter. Not so her mother,
who Mary recalled as a parent trying her best to do her religious duty toward a daughter whom she regarded with distaste because Mary didn't conform to her expectations of reticence and respectability. The only one of her siblings that she truly loved and who loved her in return was her younger sister Jennie, who died in childhood of diphtheria just after Mary recovered from it. Although later in her life she had forgotten the faces of other family members, she wrote of Jennie, "She was the only one who ever unselflessly loved me. She is the only one who stays."From childhood Mary had known two things about herself: (1) she would be a writer and (2) nothing made her happier than her interest in nature. However, when she enrolled at Carlinville's Blackburn College, she chose science rather than English, explaining, "English I can study by myself; for science I have to have laboratories and a teacher." By the time of Mary's graduation at age twenty, her mother had decided that the Hunter family would follow the older brother, who had moved to California with a dream of farming in the dry eastern San Fernando Valley. Susanna never gave any support to Mary's dream of becoming a writer.
The farming venture was a dismal failure, but Mary found work as a teacher while immersing herself in the study of the desert land and the people and animals living there. Perhaps as a way to become independent of her family she married Wallace Austin, who turned out to be no more successful financially than was her brother. The Austins moved to the Owens Valley, a remote area of California north of Death Valley, where Mary gave birth to a severely handicapped daughter, who was rejected by both Mary's husband and mother. Leaving her unhelpful husband, she supported herself by teaching in small towns. During that time she taught herself about the plants and geology of the area and listened to stories told by the local Indians and the Mexican sheepherders. Putting all this together in her own captivating style, she wrote the stories which have earned her the distinction of being one of the most important writers of California history.[In the next installment, I will delve into Mary Austin's writing and the people she met later in her life].
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