Have I Told You How Much I Love Charlotte's Web?

Tanya Ward Goodman on her abiding love for E.B. White's classic tale

Welcome to The Artist’s Survival Guide, where artists share the art that got them through. A movie, a garden, a song, a meal, a favorite dance class, the novel that’s been read several times over. For many of us, these things give us faith, they are where we find comfort, succor and direction. Maybe a shift in perspective. I hope this weekly column will do some of that for you, too. - Chris

Have I Told You How Much I Love Charlotte’s Web? by Tanya Ward Goodman

“Charlotte’s Web,” first kept me company during a lonely childhood week spent with my grandparents in Rapid City, South Dakota. At nine, I was not much older than Fern, the child responsible for saving the pig she names Wilbur. Fern’s mother worries about her daughter spending too much time in the barn with the animals and complains to the family doctor that “she just sits and listens.” I could imagine my grandmother saying the same thing about me.

I curled up with my book in the corner of Grandma’s gold, wingback sofa until the smell of Pledge and the sound of her vacuum drove me into the yard. There, under the big pines, I looked for snail shells. I gently squeezed the mouths of potted snapdragons to make them sing, and populated a miniature grassy ballroom with dancers made from snipped hollyhock blossoms. Hours later, I barely heard my grandmother call me in for the big midday meal she called “dinner.” My ears were alert for the sound of talking animals.

In third, fourth and fifth grade, I read “Charlotte’s Web” over and over until the paperback binding cracked and the pages loosened, but, eventually, as Fern does, I began to imagine kissing that cute boy on my school bus. I threw myself into the business of passing algebra, winning speech tournaments, and getting into college.

Between parties, study sessions, heartbreak, job searches, more heartbreak, more parties, there was little time for sitting and listening. My world was in motion.

Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White, pictures by Garth Williams, published 1952

It was not until my own children were six and eight that I returned to “Charlotte’s Web.” It was a given that no matter how many tantrums, lost socks, spilled cups, and skinned knees filled our days, we could always find respite in a bedtime story. I sat in the big yellow rocker with their wonderful weight on my lap and began.

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?”

The first sentence hurled us into the action of the story and my kids kept quiet so as not to miss a single thing. Twenty pages passed before my normally chatty daughter uttered a single word.

“More.”

At that time, I was writing my own book, and part of me wanted to linger over E.B. White’s perfectly crafted sentences, to instruct my kids on the use of sensory detail and description, but, taking a cue from the author, I played it cool. He didn’t need to make a big deal about the fact that a good story could educate, illuminate, and entertain. Plus, like my son and daughter, I really wanted to see what happened next.

For about a week, the book kept me company. Like Charlotte, E.B. White played the role of both writer and friend. He showed me how to write exposition into dialogue and knit facts into story – a spider’s leg has seven parts! White also reminded me to parent with less fear and to place value on contemplation. Very early in the book, Wilbur plans his day and actually schedules time to “stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.”

“…stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.”

This feeling of being alive is so evident in White’s breathless, page-long description of Mr. Zuckerman’s rope swing. Using the second person to full advantage, he begins by explaining that after climbing a ladder to the hayloft and straddling the knot of the rope, “you got up all your nerve, took a deep breath, and jumped. For a second, you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far below, but then suddenly the rope would begin to catch you, and you would sail through the barn door going a mile a minute with the wind whistling in your eyes and ears and hair.”

When I reached the end of the page, and the rope had slowly come to rest, my son looked up at me with huge eyes.

“Read it again.”

And I did. I delighted in the sensation of almost falling and the rush of wind, but I found a different kind of thrill in White’s reassurance that, “children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.”

I need reassurance. Recently (yesterday,) I found myself filled with dread and despair -- overwhelmed with sadness about the state of the world. Though I do my best to tend to my corner of it, I often feel puny and powerless against war and climate change and a rising anger that seems sometimes to settle over us like smog in the Valley. In re-reading “Charlotte’s Web,” I was moved by the way the animals in the barn revel in the beauty of the world, but also acknowledge the presence of darkness.

“Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into fall – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”

“Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into fall – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” Charlotte eats flies. She is unapologetic about her taste for blood. Templeton, the rat, would just as soon eat the goslings as the scraps from Wilbur’s supper. The sheep is a know-it-all, the goose is a flibbertigibbet – each has their own faults and foibles, but, nudged by Charlotte, the smallest among them, they push each other to be better. Charlotte believes that Wilbur is radiant and so Wilbur believes in himself.

Like an old friend, “Charlotte’s Web” reminded me that we can do that for each other and for this world. The book asks us to tune in. Find the radiance. Rest in it. Let it carry us through another day.

Tanya Ward Goodman is the author of the memoir, “Leaving Tinkertown.” Her essays and articles about travel, art, and the challenges and rewards of caregiving have appeared in numerous publications including The Washington Post, Orange County Register, Luxe, Atlas Obscura, Variable West and Statement Magazine. tanyawardgoodman.com Instagram @twgoodman Substack @tanyawardgoodman