Being cheerful is a philosophical stance and a social duty, says Tom Hodgkinson

I’d heard the expression “Pollyanna-ish” and knew it meant something like, “amazingly cheerful” but that was about the extent of my knowledge of the classic American story from 1913.

Luckily we had an old Corgi edition of the book lying round. The cover proudly boasted that the book had been made into a film by Walt Disney, starring Hayley Mills.

I picked it up and devoured it in two sittings. First off, it’s very funny and the author, Eleanor H. Porter, has got a fantastic ear for dialogue. It makes you cry, too. The book, to remind you, centres around an 11-year-old girl, the daughter of a clergyman, who has been orphaned, and sent to live with her fearsome aunt, her mother’s sister, in a small town.

Gradually Pollyanna introduces the grumpy inhabitants to her very Stoic “Glad Game”. Her Dad invented this game when she was, disappointingly, given a pair of crutches as a gift, instead of the doll she was expecting. Players of the “Glad Game” use their ingenuity to see the positive side of a situation. In this case, says Pollyanna, she and her Dad reckoned that there was a very good side to having crutches lying around: looking at them made both feel glad that they didn’t need them.

As the book progresses, we see Pollyanna healing various old wounds which the townsfolk had allowed to fester, and even reigniting former love affairs.

Her aunt, seeing all of this going on, complains to her servant Nancy: “Nancy, WILL you tell me what this absurd ‘game’ is that the whole town seems to be babbling about? And what, please, has my niece to do with it? WHY does everybody, from Milly Snow to Mrs. Tom Payson, send word to her that they’re ‘playing it’? As near as I can judge, half the town are putting on blue ribbons, or stopping family quarrels, or learning to like something they never liked before, and all because of Pollyanna.”

To me, having recently finished writing a book about the Stoics (pre-order here!), this was pure Stoicism in action. Pollyanna uses the force of intellect and reason to see the bright side. The author interjects at one point: “When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good – you will get that.”

Which is not a million miles from the pearls of wisdom uttered by the Stoic writers. Take Seneca, for example, the Roman statesman: “I have seen men miserably dejected in a pleasant village, and some again well occupied and at good ease in a solitary desert; ’tis the mind, not the place, which causes tranquility.”

Marcus Aurelius likewise praises a friend of his for his “cheerfulness in sickness as well as in all other circumstances.”

Pollyanna is clever and Stoic. She is not silly and mindlessly positive. She is, in a word, philosophical, in the Socratic sense: she has a powerful spirit, which she has trained, and refuses to be tossed hither and thither by the vagaries of fortune.

Have you read it? If so do send me your reflections. Are you Pollyannaish? I confess that I am. Cheerfulness, I think, is a social duty.

And if you haven’t read it, go and get yourself a copy – it’s a great piece of work.

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Sir: [Your] delightful reflection, “Is Pollyanna the Ultimate Stoic?”… made my day … There is great wisdom in reclaiming Pollyanna as a philosopher of infectious optimism and a model of emotional intelligence. As I explored in my own piece, In Praise of Pollyanna, Pollyanna does not deny adversity. She transforms it. Her “Glad Game” is not delusion, but discernment. It is the courage to choose meaning, joy, and contribution where others may surrender to bitterness or despair. [Your] insight that Pollyanna reflects Stoicism in action harmonises beautifully with our core belief at The Centre for Optimism: “The answer to life’s most pressing questions is optimism.” That is the Optimism Principle, and it is alive in Pollyanna’s every word and deed. Her influence is felt wherever leaders choose courage over complaint, creativity over caution, and clarity of vision over the murk of fear.
Pollyanna is one of the earliest models of what we now call magnetic optimism. It is the kind of optimism so tangible that it changes people, uplifts communities, and reignites hope. She may have been eleven years old, but she taught a town how to heal. I am so pleased [you have] helped resurrect her philosophical status, and I am equally delighted to count myself among the Pollyanna Optimists. Not despite the times, but because of them. Warmly,
Victor Perton, Chief Optimism Officer, The Centre for Optimism, PO Box 5081, Garden City, Victoria 3207 Australia

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