{"id":11958,"date":"2012-08-21T08:40:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T07:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=11958"},"modified":"2012-08-21T08:42:17","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T07:42:17","slug":"natty-gann-and-the-female-hobo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/08\/21\/natty-gann-and-the-female-hobo\/","title":{"rendered":"Natty Gann and the Female Hobo"},"content":{"rendered":"
Whilst looking for something to put on in the background during a washing up
marathon the other day, I stumbled across a 1985 Disney film called The Journey of Natty Gann<\/strong><\/a>. Set during the Depression of the
1930s, it’s an – inevitably – heartwarming story of a
teenage tomboy who gets separated from – also inevitably – her
dad, but is befriended by \u2013 sigh \u2013 a wolf.<\/p>\n
I’d never heard of the film before – do any of you remember
it? Anyway, here’s the trailer: watch out for a super young John
Cusack! (I admit that played a part in my decision to watch it. That and
the trains.)<\/p>\n
Also, someone should tell Natty that her dad is actually Leland
Palmer.<\/p>\n
The film stars a young Meredith Salenger as Natty, whose understated
performance undercuts many of the more saccharine moments of the film.
She comes across as tough rather than ‘feisty’, which is a
rare treat.<\/p>\n Image
copyright Disney<\/p><\/div>\n
Although all Natty’s major relationships are with male
characters (she has the Disney missing mother syndrome) so it
definitely doesn’t pass Bechdel, I think the film gets feminist
points in other places. Mostly because the lead protagonist, Natty, is
so kickass. She’s smart, brave and resourceful. It’s a
proper adventure \u2013 there’s an epic journey, friends and
foes, and very real danger. She escapes various shades of
train-related death as she rides the rails to find her father, and she
also escapes an orphanage-prison and a sexual assault. She does
loads<\/em> of running.<\/p>\n
Natty’s also a tomboy and crucially doesn’t get made
over into a “Proper Girl” at any point. My favourite
thing is that no one seems to care that she’s dressed like a
boy – no one ever mentions it or makes a derogatory comment
about it. And she pulls John Cusack while wearing shirt, trews,
boots and a flat cap. Love it!<\/p>\n
Another part of this film’s feminist cred is its rare
depiction of a female hobo. From Woody
Guthrie<\/a> to Kerouac<\/a>
to Big Rock Candy Mountain<\/strong><\/a>, the figure of the hobo<\/a> is as
much a part of US cultural identity as the cowboy. Both ways
of living were at best hard and at worst brutal and
dehumanising but have been romanticized and over the years
have passed into folklore. And like cowboys, maybe even more
so, hobos are almost exclusively imagined and represented as
being male.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the greatest lesson that has come from the active
study of the history of marginalised social groups is that
even where it’s not recorded that they were there,
they were. Ethnic minorities, women, refugees, people with
disabilities, people with a dazzling range of sexual
orientations, gender identities and expressions… no
group just popped into being in the 1980s. So hopefully it
will come as no surprise that there were women hobos, and
plenty of them.<\/p>\n
In January 1934’s US census, nearly 14,500 women were
recorded as homeless or transient, nearly 2,783 of them
under 21. A 1906 estimate put the total hobo population of
the US at 500,000, but numbers increased dramatically during
the Great Depression as homelessness spiralled to an
estimated two million.<\/p>\n
There are a few firsthand accounts from women hobos, such as
this one from Norma
Darrah<\/a>. The most famous record comes from
‘Boxcar’ Bertha Thompson, although it was later
revealed that her autobiography, Sister of the Road<\/strong><\/a>, was a fictionalized
account stitched together from the experiences of several
different women. Rather unbelievably, the story inspired
Martin Scorsese and producer Roger Corman to make a
ridiculous hobo-themed sexploitation flick:<\/p>\n
Amazing. (I look forward to the sequel – a
rootin’ tootin’ sexy romp about Bob
Dylan’s boxcar days.)<\/p>\n
Like Natty, many women and girls who were wandering
would dress as men, for comfort and camaraderie but
also for protection since – like homeless women
today – they were especially vulnerable to
sexual violence. Many hobo women had transactional sex
to help secure food, money and passage.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it’s this detail in particular which has
helped to shut the female hobo out of the golden halls
of myth and folklore. The reality of many
women’s experiences was harder to romanticize
than that of their male counterparts, and the fact
that many were sexually exploited undermined the
charming hobo ‘ethical code<\/a>‘ drawn up in
1889. I suspect it’s also to do with our old
chums gender stereotypes and double standards –
take a bow, fellas!<\/p>\n
The urge to roam, the ‘wanderlust’ which
is so highly prized in narratives of American
identity, is usually held to be incompatible with
femininity or femaleness. Where a man who roams and
values his independence is admired, the same traits in
a woman are often characterised as fickleness or
infidelity.<\/p>\n
In a culture and at a time when women were
inextricably linked to the private sphere of
domesticity, and were called upon –
imaginatively or actually – to represent and
defend ‘home sweet home’, the homeless
female wanderer is an unsettling figure. She has
rejected her assigned role and slipped into the great
blue yonder, claiming her right to agency and mobility
despite the cost.<\/p>\n
POSTSCRIPT: <\/strong>As part of my research for
this post, I tried to do a quick twitter poll to see
how many people remembered seeing
The Journey of Natty Gann<\/strong> as a child,
and whether it had contributed to them becoming a
feminist. I didn’t really get any response
apart from this one<\/a>, but it made me
very happy indeed.<\/p>\n
Who is Natty Gann?<\/h3>\n
A few more feminist points for Disney<\/h3>\n
<\/a>
No women wanderers?<\/h3>\n
Riding the rails of patriarchy<\/h3>\n
Things to read!<\/h3>\n