Reading Charlotte Again

The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle was pub­lished thir­ty years ago.

That’s hard for me to absorb. Or accept. And because it is once again being con­sid­ered for film (will it hap­pen or not is anybody’s guess, includ­ing mine) after many years, I read it again.

What struck me first was the nau­ti­cal knowl­edge it con­tained, very lit­tle of which I have retained. It was hard­ly giv­en knowl­edge but the result of a lot of research. At the time I was liv­ing in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island and was able to vis­it any num­ber of New Eng­land mar­itime muse­ums, includ­ing the one at Mys­tic Con­necti­cut, anoth­er in Bath, Maine. At the Mys­tic Muse­um I recall sit­ting in the bow­els of the whal­ing ship, Charles W. Mor­gan and tried to pull in a sense of being on a sail­ing ship. I also board­ed a two-mast­ed brig and sailed about Nar­ra­ganset Bay.

I had to learn about the aston­ish­ing com­plex­i­ty of sail­ing ships. All those sails; each one hav­ing a pur­pose. I found a book which gave, in detail, the orders that rang out so sailors could adjust those sails for any giv­en ship motion and/or func­tion. I recall one such series of orders (nev­er used) as to how to sail one of those big ships backward!

And the ropes! A spi­der web is sim­ple in comparison.

But I think the essence of the book is Char­lotte her­self, her trans­for­ma­tion from a naïve, inex­pe­ri­enced per­son, to one full of knowl­edge (includ­ing self-knowl­edge) strength and res­o­lu­tion. Key to that is her bond­ing with Zachari­ah, the old black cook. Curi­ous­ly, in the ear­ly reviews that is not much men­tioned. But, with him being the sole black, she being the sole girl on the ship, that allows them to form not just a friend­ship, but an alliance. It is an alliance that allows him to be the teacher, she the will­ing (need­ful!) student.

Count­less read­ers (most­ly girls) have told me how mean­ing­ful the book has been for them. One of my favorites: “Dear Avi, I have read your book six­teen times. It’s the only book I will read. My moth­er says I can’t read it any­more. Please write a sequel so I can read anoth­er book.”

And at con­fer­ences and the like, mid­dle-aged women approach me and show me the tat­tered copy of the book and shy­ly say, “I’ve saved it all these years.”

One of my favorite com­ments about the book came from a crit­ic who said of it: “High­ly improb­a­bly but deeply satisfying.”

But wait! A cou­ple of years after I wrote the book I came across an account of a young woman—(about the time the book takes place)—who, want­i­ng to fol­low her lover (hus­band?) to Amer­i­ca, donned men’s cloth­ing, joined a ship as a mem­ber of the crew and sailed to Providence.

It hap­pened!

And I’m always curi­ous: Why was it impor­tant to so many read­ers? Do tell.