| Rima | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Real Name |
Riolama |
|
First Appearance |
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904) |
|
Original Publisher |
Duckworth & Co.(novel) |
|
Created by |
William Henry Hudson |
Origin[]
Rima, or her true name Riolama, was a small (4' 6"), demure, and dark-haired 17 year old girl who wore a smock made of spiderwebs and could communicate with birds, earning her the nickname "Bird Girl." She lived in a hut located in an enchanted rain forest near Guyana, Venezuela with her "grandfather," Nuflo. The natives in a nearby village feared Rima because of her strange ways and believed she was "the Daughter of the Didi," an evil spirit who guarded the forest. The natives avoided her forest and warned newcomer Abel, a wealthy young Spanish gentlemen, to avoid the place as well but, he refused to listen. Abel met Rima and eventually fell in love with her though she was too young and unfamiliar with white men to understand. Rima belonged to a gentle, vegetarian people without weapons, who were wiped out by Indians, plague and other causes. After discovering she was the last of her tribe, Rima decided to prepare to live a life with Abel but, she was captured by the natives who tie her to a tree her and then burn the tree. Abel arrives too late, collects her ashes and returns home feeling that if not for his entry into the forest, the natives would have left Rima alone.
Notes[]
- Many authors of the time also recounted "lost worlds" and "lost tribes", the most successful being H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard and Arthur Conan Doyle. Hudson's book has endured as literature because of its evocative and lyrical prose, and his naturalist's keen vision of the jungle.
- Rima also exemplifies the "natural man", a philosophical notion put forth by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, that someone raised away from corrupting civilisation would be naturally pure of heart and attuned to their environment. Tarzan, raised by apes, and Mowgli, raised by wolves, are Rima's literary cousins.
- In the early 1970s, one of the more unusual adaptations of Green Mansions occurred when DC Comics launched the comic book Rima the Jungle Girl, featuring the title character recast as a Sheena-like action hero. This version of the character later appeared on the animated TV series Super Friends.
- Although the DC character is a fully grown and powerful woman with ash-blonde hair, the novel's Rima was 17, small (4′ 6″), demure, and dark-haired. Natives avoided her forest, calling her "the Daughter of the Didi" (an evil spirit). Rima's only defense was a reputation for magic earned through the display of strange talents such as talking to birds, befriending animals, and plucking poison darts from the air. Although in the original book Rima was burned alive by Indian savages, in the comics she escaped the fire to have further adventures.
- In 1959, Green Mansions was adapted into a film starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima, reinforcing her place in popular culture as an ethereal and innocent figure.
- Rima was also featured in DC's First Wave (2009-2011), which brought together pulp-style heroes such as Black Canary, The Spirit, The Avenger, Doc Savage, The Blackhawks, and Rima herself—now with a tribal aesthetic and a survivalist role.