I live on Vashon, and Betty McDonald is regarded as a “local author”, despite only living on Vashon for a few years.
It was her portrayal of the Native Americans in the area, not the white neighbors, that I found distressing about the book. The whites, for all their “faults,” were described in a generally positive way–my recollection is that she rather *liked *them, despite the fact that they sometimes drove her crazy.
The Native Americans, on the other hand, she did not seem to see any value in whatsoever. Of course, it’s been a while since I read the book.
I’ll always think of Macdonald first as the one who wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books.
Well, take your vitamin D! We’re in the Seattle burbs and every doctor we had contact with the first few years said to take vitamin upon learning we were transplants. Hopefully you’re in the banana belt otherwise get ready for the opposite of arid until July 5th. :eek:
I really like the Olympic Peninsula although we haven’t made it to Port Townsend area yet.
I’ve read both of these, as well as The Egg and I. Been looking for “Plague” for a long time.
Reading the book as a kid, I felt unhappy about the portrayal of the Native Americans. I’d hitherto bought into the whole business of the noble, dignified, tragic Red Man – and always, in whatever American context, supported the Indians against the cowboys; it was a shock to see Native Americans depicted as modern low-lifes. My memories are vague and fragmentary some sixty years after reading the book – per what I recall, MacDonald seemed to me to make out all the locals – regardless of race – to be mostly-comical barbarians; as I say, though, it was a long time ago. About all I recall specifically about her N.A. neighbours, are the three Swensen brothers (I found their name, a miserable come-down from the likes of Red Cloud and Sitting Bull): seem to remember them shown as decidedly skanky types – creepy; but in fact however, more or less harmless.
I’ve read, I think, that pro-Native American lobby groups have objected in fairly recent decades, to the image on N.A.s conveyed in the book. Different times, different attitudes, I suppose – when the book was published in 1945, a widespread view was (if I’m right) that N.A.s were, at best, an inferior type of human. And it’s a sad fact that many members of a deprived, disadvantaged group in a society, are likely often to behave in a sub-optimal way.
I’ve never before heard of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle; perhaps she basically failed to make it to the UK?
Googling Betty MacDonald caused me a little surprise at her relatively short life-span (1908 - 1958). Perhaps the tuberculosis was a factor in this?
According to HistoryLink.org, she died of cancer on February 7, 1958. Doesn’t say what kind though.
Also, according to that site, it says that the barn she and husband No.2 built on Vashon Island is still there and has been remodeled into a B&B. It’s on Dolphin Point, near where the ferry from Seattle drops you off. If I’d have known when we were going to Vashon often, it would have been neat to stop and have a look.
I’d read the books so long ago that I’d forgotten that there were even Native Americans in any of them. I do remember that her comments on her neighbors and particularly a certain patient at the sanitarium (her roommate, I believe) seemed so overly negative that I wondered why she even socialized with them. At the same time, she seemed to have some genuine affection toward most of them. To tell the truth, I did find her attitude somewhat off-putting at times, though I enjoyed the books in general.
Should really read them again to see what impressions still hold true.
I wonder whether she perhaps saw herself as a latter-day and lesser Jane Austen – not hating her fellow-men and women, but ready to poke pretty merciless fun at them?
I went onto the King County Library’s website last night only to find that they only had the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. None of her adult books. Strange, since two of the books take place right in this county. Tacoma Libraries show the same thing. Guess I’ll have to make a trip to one of the physical libraries to see if they have any dead-tree versions but the weather’s nasty so it isn’t going to be today.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was quite great; I read the books as a child, and read them again to my classes sometimes when I was a fulltime elementary teacher.
She is the widow of a pirate who lives in small-town America of the fifties (when everyone was white and middle class and had a father who went to the office and a mother who stayed home).
She is extremely popular with children and has an excellent understanding of how they tick, and uses psychology (in the first book, mainly) and magic (in later books) to cure children of bad habits, such as not wanting to go to bed or lying or talking back or being selfish.
The books are amusing and some of the cures might actually work, sort of. Allowing a selfish child, for instance, to lock up all of his possessions (so no one can use them), knowing he will almost certainly lose the keys. Or having the parents bicker about inconsequential matters all the time to model for the bickering children what it looks and sounds like, especially when the adult bickering results in dessert being spilled all over the dining room floor.
No idea whether the books crossed the Atlantic. Can’t think of any good reason why they wouldn’t have, but you never know…
Me too. As I recall, both The Egg and I, and The Plague and I, were very successful in the UK; and there’s a niche market for memoirs about people trying to make a go of it in rural life, still. But it was pointed out on a recent TV programme in Britain about a completely different book, that there was a market after WW2 and into the 1950s for stories about rural peace and continuity, and I wonder if that’s got something to do with it. I can think of several examples fitting that bill, and one that comes close to The Egg and I, in a British context, would Lillian Beckwith’s books about trying to take on a Hebridean croft. I don’t think she was particularly popular with some of her neighbours, either.
hush, you
Thanks for bringing up Lillian Beckwith. I’ve just ordered a copy of The Hills Is Lonely. I dooooo like these rural reminiscences type things.
I bought a copy of The Egg and I, but my husband has stolen it.
The books sound great fun, from your description !
I enjoyed Lillian Beckwith’s books – but can see her described neighbours having, anyway, mixed feelings about them. She portrays the Hebridean locals as delightful; but often, in various ways, naive and goofy. I can understand those folk feeling insulted by such portrayal, and not appreciating the humour-at-their-expense – no matter how affectionately it was all meant.
I admit to being greatly tickled in Beckwith’s books, by her rendering of the way the locals – whose first language was Scottish Gaelic – did odd things to the English tongue. I recall the lady who had as “paying guests” a group of geologists from the mainland, on a field trip. She referred to them as “jolly gees”; and had no time for their foolish ideas. The Bible told exactly how and when the world originated, and what did these heathens from the big city think they knew about it?
I remember well “The Loud Halo”, since they were around a lot in the days when I went rowing!
My very favourite Beckwith bit, has got to be one (set out below) in which the reader feels that she largely sympathises and agrees with the locals. The picture is definitely got from the books, that the Hebridean islanders didn’t have a particularly high opinion of those who governed them from afar – not a Scots-versus-English thing, so much as “sensible, real folk” (themselves) versus pitiable city-dwellers, wrong-headed and clueless about the stuff that truly matters.
The action of the books takes place broadly in the World War II era. In that period, the UK had in place at the appropriate time of the year, “double summer time” – differing from ordinary Greenwich Mean Time not with the usual peacetime “summer time” 's one-hour difference; but two hours different from GMT. The islanders called these – GMT, ordinary summer time, and double summer time – respectively, “God’s time”, “Government time”, and “Daft time”.