A Girl Called Ellie

by podblack on December 20, 2007

Thanks to Joel’s Humanistic Blog and the Second Carl Sagan Blog-a-Thon for the initial inspiration.

Funnily enough, it was through the Australian writer John Marsden’s series Tomorrow, When the War Began that I was introduced to the notion of an “Ellie”. Ellie the warrior. Ellie the resistance-fighter. Ellie the sensitive, a leader, resilient in the face of enormous odds.

Ellie in that series is a bold character, determined from the start. She is the leader of a group of disparate country-town teenagers, who take upon themselves the horrific task of becoming freedom fighters and the series details the eventual fallout of occupation and integration by the original invaders and coming to terms with loss. By the conclusion of the series (and the sequence that follows, the Ellie Chronicles) Ellie shows that she faced not only the outcome of a war that changes her life and her whole country but also the realisation that independence and dedication is what it boils down to in the end, no matter if you are a winner or a loser of battles. The war goes on.

Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway in Contact can be seen to be many ways the source of this modern, Australian Ellie. But for her, the war isn’t another country taking over her own. It’s the war to find affinity in others. Dismay upon realising that a girl would have not sensitive men like her father and the sympathetic Billy Horstman around her forever but a majority of ‘real jerks’ and ‘mean and babyish boys’ who fail to share her enthusiasm for the world, both as a child and as an adult. Not a single similar-aged female foil or echo for Ellie in those formative years. Teachers who say ‘Miss Arroway, this is a stupid question. You’re wasting the class’s time.’ Her mother remarries, a man who disdains her ambitions and views her politics as a joke. She leaves to find her ‘Camelot’, in academia.

It’s the war to find acceptance of your work, despite gender stereotypes. ‘Sorry, Miss Arroway, but I think of you as one of the boys.’ It’s the war against science. The challenge to funding, to trust her professionalism and even her dedication by Drumlin, a fellow representative in the search for truth. It’s the continual war to encourage seeking for certainty in a world full of fear, such at that touted by religious fundamentalism:

Look, we all have a thirst for wonder. It’s a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to make stories up, you don’t have to exaggerate. There’s wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature’s a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.

I know that many people who enjoy Contact boldly proclaim Ellie as a role model for any woman considering the sciences. But I also know that I don’t find this novel easy to locate on the shelves anymore. Sagan isn’t on teen’s recommended reading lists, or at least if you do find a relevant study site, it’s for the film. The copy I have, here with me now, is second-hand. If a girl I meet knows of ‘Ellie’, it’s the modern Australian one by Marsden. Maybe they’ve heard of someone called ‘Jodie Foster’ – wasn’t she hunting serial killers or something?

For me, the need to feature the anniversary of the death of Sagan in a blog entry reminds me that Ellie is in danger of having her message lost; a figure whose story isn’t really echoed in modern literature. No, it’s not that woman in science aren’t still fighting real-life battles – thankfully, despite the reams of research into women and science careers that paint a dismal picture at times, I know that the war to have everyone contribute equally will continue.

But I worry about the potential death of ‘Ellie’s’ as a sympathetic and iconic figure in fiction. The dearth of science heroines in the same mold. As an English teacher, I sought and continue to seek for texts that will keep her and similar characters alive for young women. I find Lyra. I find Hermione. I find Nell. I find Buffy, Trinity, Polgara, Aviendha, hundreds of thousands of peppy side-kicks, sharp-tongued vampire slayers (and lovers) and science fiction and fantasy heroines… but you know they’re not the same. They’re not listening to the stars in quite the same way.

I still seek Ellie. I wonder how many teens still do. For me, the anniversary of Sagan’s death is the anniversary of Ellie’s continuing war. For all of the reasons I give above – because they were clearly Sagan’s war too.

Keep fighting, girls.

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