Foster, Ellen (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Critics responded favorably to Ellen Foster when it first appeared in 1987, praising Gibbons' skill crafting Ellen's narrative voice and the sensitivity she portrayed in Ellen's struggle with racism. Some critics deliberated the believability of Ellen's position as narrator, questioning whether she is too wise for her years. A critic for Kirkus Reviews suggested that Ellen's instinctual wisdom belies her eleven years yet in her "innocence" and "tough stoicism" the voice of this young narrator "rings true" A Publishers Weekly reviewer spoke in the same vein, calling Ellen's narrative voice a correct portrayal of the world from a child's view but one that was sometimes "too knowing."

Other critics focused on Gibbons's treatment of her subject matter, commenting that the terrible events of Ellen's young life could be read as melo-dramatic if not for Ellen's narrative voice. The Publishers Weekly reviewer, unsure about Ellen's capacity for saving the narrative from insipidness, claimed the book's plot is similar to a "Victorian tearjerker." But Brad Hooper, reviewing the work for Booklist, wrote that it was "never weepy or grim, despite the subject matter." Deanna D'Errico, in Belles Lettres, referred to "the artful, humorous style with which Ellen tells her tale," commenting specifically on Gibbons's use of "interweaving past and present in alternate chapters."

In agreement with both Hooper and D'Errico, Alice Hoffman wrote in The New York Times Book Review that "What might have been grim, melo-dramatic material in the hands of a less talented author is instead filled with lively humor compassion and intimacy." Hoffman went on to point out that the novel "focuses on Ellen's strengths rather than her victimization, presenting a memorable heroine who rescues herself."

Other critics, such as Pearl K. Bell, credited Gibbons for not falling into familiar traps by giving narrative authority to a child. Bell wrote in The New Republic, "Gibbons never allows us to feel the slightest doubt that [Ellen] is only 11. Nor does she ever lapse into the condescending cuteness that afflicts so many stories about precocious children." Linda Taylor asserted in The Sunday Times of London that Ellen is believable "because although she has a dark tale to tell, she will not engineer sympathy for her effects."

Some early critics found the theme of racism in Ellen Foster particularly compelling and skillfully handled by Gibbons. Publishers Weekly noted that the author artfully brings a reflective Ellen, given her own set of troubles, to know the injustice of discrimination by color. Again, in The New Republic, reviewer Pearl K. Bell claimed that "Gibbons, unlike so many writers of the New South, doesn't evade the racism of Southern life, which she subtly reveals through the tenacious child's mind." In addition to racism, Linda Taylor, critic for The Sunday Times saw Gibbons presenting a number of difficult social issues "through revelation rather than moral axe-grinding."

Ellen Foster suggests itself as part of the American literary tradition to some critics. The reviewer in Kirkus Reviews saw in Ellen's humor, intelligence, and resourcefulness, a likeness to Huck Finn and in the abusive, neglectful, alcoholic behavior of Ellen's father, a strong resemblance to "Huck's Pap." Veronica Makowsky, in Southern Quarterly, took the comparison further, contending that "although [Ellen's] gutsy, vernacular voice recalls Huck Finn, she does not light out for the territories in an attempt to maintain autonomy." Rather, Makowsky suggested, Ellen's self-reliance is demonstrated in her new mama's home by her "act of faith in others that allows [her] to contribute to, as well as receive from, the female tradition of community and nurturance." The novel, according to Makowsky, is "Gibbons's attempt to rewrite the saga of the American hero by changing 'him' to 'her' and to rewrite the southern female bildungsroman by changing its privileged, sheltered, upper-class heroine to a poor, abused outcast."