the Civil War. It is ‘Marmee’ upon whom the whole household depends. (It was to be the
same in Eight Cousins (1875) where no fathers are ever seen; they are either too busy,
or, in the case of Uncle Mac, dare not open their lips.) Little Women, dashed off in six
weeks, brought Alcott instant fame, and also money to prop up the needy family. But
she came to resent having to provide what she termed ‘moral pap’ for the young. Little
Women and Good Wives were written from the heart; in her other books we can often
detect a note of weariness.
What Katy Did (1872) and What Katy Did at School (1873) by Susan Coolidge (Sarah
Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905)) have been kept continuously in print in Britain since
their first publication. (The third book in the cycle is an unmemorable travelogue.) But
they are almost unknown to American children. The first may have been inspired by
Charlotte Yonge’s The Daisy Chain, in that a widowed father, also a doctor, is left to
bring up a large brood of children. But the Carr children are far more absorbed in play
than is usually the case in American books, and the heroine’s metamorphosis, via a
spinal injury and ‘the School of Pain’, from a self-willed tomboy into a serious-minded
adolescent, is again in the English style. The second book is about boarding school life,
one of the earliest examples of a genre to become very popular in Britain, but always a
rarity in America.
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1881) and its sequels by Margaret Sidney
(Harriet M.Lothrop (1844–1924)) were far better received by American readers. Though
the Peppers are poor they are a ‘noisy happy brood’ and make their little house ‘fairly
ring with jollity and fun’. The widowed Mrs Pepper ‘with a stout heart and a cheery face’
holds the home together. Good things come winging to them, and a rich family,
enraptured by their spirit, carries them all off to live in a mansion. Mrs Wiggs of the
Cabbage Patch (1901) by Alice Hegan Rice (1870–1942) is a more serious account of
poverty. Mrs Wiggs is another widow who holds the family together (Mr Wiggs having
‘traveled to eternity by the alcohol route’); like Mrs Pepper her philosophy lies ‘in keeping
the dust off her rose-colored spectacles’.
Booth Tarkington’s Penrod (1914), followed by two sequels, shows the Bad Boy (a
favourite character with American authors) in a prosperous middle class setting with
unlimited leisure for play and make believe. The mise-en-scene and characterisation in
Richmal Crompton’s Just William (1922) and subsequent volumes follow Penrod too
closely to be merely coincidence. Penrod Schofield is well-meaning but is a powder keg
who wrecks every occasion—dancing-classes, parties, pageants, his grown-up sister’s
flirtations. And as William was to do, he crumbles when faced with the femininity of
little girls.
Middle-class families leading stable, secure lives, their doings described in episodic
fashion as in Penrod, featured in many authors’ works before the 1960s. Beverly Cleary’s
chronicles of life in Portland, Oregon, began with Henry Huggins in 1950 and continued
through the 1980s. Cleary’s most famous character, Ramona the Pest, who first appears
in Henry and Beezus (1952) is the archetypal awful little sister. (Dorothy Edwards’s My
Naughty Little Sister (1952) was the English counterpart.) Elizabeth Enright’s books
about the Melendy family began in 1941 with The Saturdays. Here there is no mother,
but a devoted old retainer in the Streatfeild style. Eleanor Estes, beginning with The
Moffats (1941), described New England village life of a quarter of a century before. The
342 THE FAMILY STORY