The rebellion...

Pippi Longstocking at school.

Pippi Longstocking on a German stamp!! The rebel. Against what? And what expression does her rebellion take?

A reply to the leader about homo ludens triggered more thoughts and reflections (a lot more)...

The background to Pippi: spring 1941 Astrid Lindgren's seven-year-old daughter Karin was sick in pneumonia and she told her mother (ordered her!!??) that she wanted to hear a story about Pippi Longstocking (so it was the daughter's whole idea about Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren started to romance about Pippi with enormous fantasy. And with the stories about Pippi Lindgren amused not only her daughter but also her friends!

And the model for the red-haired Pippi exists in real life: a red-haired friend to the daughter Karin, a girl daring to do things that wasn't allowed then!?

When Lindgren one day had sprained the foot, she started to write those stories down. When Karin turned 10 she got these stories in birthday present. And Lindgren sent the manuscript to the Albert Bonniers förlag, but the story got refused!!

Lindgren revised her book and made Pippi a little more house trained than the original Pippi, and sent it to another publishing house Rabén & Sjögren, where it got accepted. It awoke a hot debate: Should all children start to behave like Pippi now?? Horrible thought!

Yes, what was this book the expression of then back in 1941?? The book about that rebellion girl... What child refused to go to school then? And dared to put her feet on the desk like on the picture? Or question things? Least of all the authority. No, children should be obedient and keep quiet...

The first book about Pippi was the first book I read on my own, had borrowed it from the school-library - a brand new world opened for me!!!

Miller writes about how increasing violence among young people can - and is- attributed lack of rules and limit setting... A sort of weakness among those raising children...

But what is the truth? Actually... Came to think about Arthur Silbers essays on Miller, where "obedience" is mentioned once and again... He shows (is pointing out) results of the obedience-culture!!??

See former blogpost on homo ludens, and the one about the scapegoats.

And Lindgren was 38 years when her writing-career started! She hadn't grown up as the only child, on the contrary, they were four siblings in a nuclear family with two parents, non-divorced, living at the countryside in the south of Sweden (Vimmerby, Småland, in the county Kronoberg I think).

It stood in a reader's review on Pippi, that today she would have been diagnosed with DAMP!!! See earlier postings about hyperactive children.