Pipi Longstocking Characters

Many of the greatest novels have had dynamic main characters that have slowly evolved into their final product right before our eyes. We have seen this in the Harry Potter Series, The Hunger Games, and many more. But when we look at the novel Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindren, it appears that the main character named Pippi doesn’t change at all. The story tells stories of Pippi and her friends Tommy and Annika. In these stories Pippi continuously does things completely differently than everyone else. Initially, when you look back at all these episodes throughout the book, it seems that she is a static character and there isn’t much change. I will argue that throughout the novel, Pippi Longstocking is a dynamic character due to her development in both her emotional and mental state.
First off, I will talk about Pippi’s unique characteristics and how they differ from the society she lived in. In the
novel, we get introduced to Pippi when she moves into a house called “Villa Villekula”. Here she lives all by herself with no parental supervision. In addition to being an autonomous child, she has the physical capabilities to do things that most humans. Furthermore, Pippi was raised in the South Seas so she is not accustomed to the Swedish style of living and that comes apparent throughout the novel. Early on in the novel, she meets her neighbors Tommy and Annika, they quickly become friends and start doing everything together. Here as readers we start to see the real difference between Pippi and the modern child (Tommy and Annika). Tommy and Annika were raised in a very traditional style and were raised to respect the authority. Pippi, is quite the opposite, she was raised as a free child from the outside world and was not taught to listen to any higher authority. Whenever she was faced with a higher authority from the novel, she liked to play games with them and distract them. When this happened, the authority figure ended up leaving her alone and Pippi kept doing the same thing over and over. An example of this is when the two policeman came over to try and put Pippi in a children’s home. Pippi then responded “I already have a place in a children’s home [Villa Villekula] “. She then proceeded to play tag with the policeman and ended the whole event by saying “Oh no, I’m sorry. I haven’t time to play any longer … but it was fun”. This shows how Pippi dealt with the authority figures and most people throughout the novel. This is very different to how a modern child in the Swedish town would deal with the authority. The contemporary child would respect the authority and obey their commands instead of playing games and ignoring them. Another difference between Pippi and the other children is that she doesn’t go to school. In Stearns book Childhood in World History he stated that the modern model was to have the child focus on school instead of working. This provided a more educated society and education eventually became the norm. Once again, Pippi is not like the modern model as she doesn’t go to school and enjoys playing outside all day. By focusing in on these main differences we can see how Pippi changes throughout the novel.
By looking at Pippi’s emotions throughout the novel I was able to notice changes with how she felt in certain situations. In the beginning of the novel, Pippi seemed lack sympathy when she was apart of certain situations. Whenever she was to do something wrong, she usually laughed about it and did nothing to change it. This is not a bad thing, in fact it was one of the reasons that Pippi seemed so powerful and unique. I feel this was due in part that she was raised in the outside world. The society that she grew up in was very different than the modern society that she as then living in. But as Pippi spent more time in this modern model, her emotions began to shape to the model of the society she was apart of. This had a lot to do with the influence that Timmy and Annika unintentionally had on her. Pippi was able to see how Tommy and Annika acted, who were raised in a normal family in this modern model, and what they did and felt in certain situations. The best example of this was at the Coffee part Pippi was invited to. Near the end of the party, Pippi ended up breaking Mrs. Settergen’s China which resulted in Pippi being thrown out of the party. At this point, Pippi became overcome with emotions, as she wanted to behave properly and please Tommy and Annika, and we got to see our first taste of Pippi’s emotion and sympathy towards other.
This change is very similar to the change that Anu Partanen wrote about in her book The Nordic Theory of Everything. Anu was born and raised in Finland and she eventually moved to New York City in the United States. The social cultures of the two places are very different so she was forced to adapt to the way people lived. The Laws of Jante, telling people you are no better than anyone else unless someone recognizes you, are something that people of Nordic cultures live by and in the United States most people have no idea what these Laws of Jante even are. She was caught off guard by this and started to feel more comfortable about being able to say what you are good at and what you are capable of. She also said that she admired the way that the American families did things together and how important family time was to them. In Finland, families were not as close and “family time” was almost completely irrelevant. By looking at Anu’s story, it was easier for me to see how Pippi’s emotions were forced to adapt to the environment that she was living in. These emotional changes throughout the novel made Pippi a dynamic character.
Looking deeper into the novel and how self-sufficient Pippi is, we can start to see her mental state change.
In the article “Pippi Longstocking: The Autonomous Child and The Moral Logic of the Swedish State” talks about how the individualistic style of Sweden and how it relates to Pippi. The article stated “What makes Pippi such a remarkable character is not that she’s an unruly enfant terrible … but that she doesn’t need anybody else, not even parental love and care. She is totally self-sufficient with her chest of gold and superhuman strength.”. In our class discussion we also talked about how Pippi did not change throughout the novel. Although this statement is true and there was validity behind our discussion about Pippi, I argue that she starts to become less self sufficient as the story continues. We experienced this in the novel when Pippi was invited to the Coffee Party with all the women. Initially Pippi was afraid to go to the party because she feared she couldn’t behave, but with motivation from her friends Tommy and Annika she built up the courage to
go.
To me, as a reader, this showed that Pippi was starting to rely on her friends for help when she was in tough situations. Tommy and Annika were big influences in the change that Pippi went through in the book. I believe that Pippi having friends her own age that she could relate to allowed her to feel the need to not be as self sufficient and feel comfortable relying on others to help her out. This change is not a bad change however; I believe it was a positive change because she was now being challenged to build relationships with other people in order to be apart of situations where they can help one another. These are not situations where there will be “strings attached”, but they will be situations where you help others out from the goodness of your heart and because you appreciate your friendship.
As I said before, most great novels have a dynamic protagonist that slowly gets sculpted throughout the story. Pippi Longstocking is no exception to this. Although at first it may be hard to see how Pippi changes, but as you look deeper into these changes it allows us to see how she changes emotionally and mentally. These changes happened due to the relationships Pippi made with others. When she met people who were raised in a more traditional style, she started to adapt from her very free living style. This story helps us learn that when we create relationships with people, we are subconsciously being influenced by them due to the differences that the two parties share.