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Daddy-Long-Legs

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, 1912.

Seventeen-year-old Jerusha Abbott has spent her entire life at the John Greer Home for orphans. She has no memory of her parents and no experience of life outside the orphanage. Usually, when an orphan has not been adopted and has finished his or her education at the basic level provided by the orphanage, which does not always include high school, the orphanage and its trustees arrange for the child to be placed in a job so he or she can begin earning a living. Jerusha Abbott has stayed longer than most. She is bright and finished her studies early, so she was allowed to attend the local high school, helping out with some of the younger children at the orphanage to help earn her keep. However, now that she is about to graduate from high school, the orphanage and trustees have been trying to decide what to do with her. After the most recent meeting of the trustees, the matron of the orphanage calls Jerusha into her office to tell her what they have decided.

Jerusha has done well in high school, and her teachers have given her excellent reports. In particular, Jerusha has excelled in English class. One of her essays for English class, entitled “Blue Wednesday,” is a humorous piece about the difficulties Jerusha has preparing the young orphans in her charge for the monthly visits of the trustees: getting them nicely dressed, combing their hair, wiping runny noses, and trying to make sure that they all behave nicely and politely to the trustees. Jerusha hadn’t expected the matron or the trustees to ever read it. The matron thought that the essay was too flippant and showed ingratitude toward the orphanage that raised her, but one of the trustees in particular appreciated the quality of writing and the humor of the piece. This particular trustee is one of the wealthiest, although he usually prefers to remain anonymous about his donations and uses the alias “John Smith.” “John Smith” has helped some of the boys leaving the orphanage by funding their college educations, but so far, he has not done the same for any of the girls, not apparently thinking much of girls or their continued education. Jerusha Abbott and her essay cause him to change his mind. He thinks that Jerusha Abbott could make a great writer, and he is willing to fund her college education. Although the matron thinks that he’s being overly generous with Jerusha, this benefactor has arranged to pay for her college tuition and boarding at an all-girls college and will even provide her with a regular allowance like the other students at college will have from their parents. In return, he still wants to remain anonymous and doesn’t want to be embarrassed with too much thanks, but he does insist that Jerusha write monthly letters to him, updating him about her progress in school and what is happening in her daily life. Not only is he interested in her progress, but he also thinks that the letters will provide her with good writing experience.

Most of the book, aside from the early part that explains about Jerusha’s past and how she is able to attend college, is in the form of Jerusha’s letters to her mysterious benefactor. (This is called epistolary style.) They cover her entire college education, from her arrival at the campus to her graduation and what happens after. The letters in the book are only Jerusha’s, with no replies from her benefactor shown because her benefactor does not write to her until almost the end, only sending money and an occasional present (like flowers, when she was sick).

In spite of the matron’s instructions to keep her letters basic and to show proper respect and gratitude, Jerusha’s lively personality comes through and is often a bit irreverent, just the style that her benefactor prefers. In her first letter, she describes her very first train ride to the college and how big and bewildering the college campus is to her. She also confides the matron’s final instructions to her about how she should behave for the whole rest of her life, including the part about being “Very Respectful.” She says that she finds it difficult to be Very Respectful to someone who goes by the alias of “John Smith.” It bothers her that it’s so impersonal. She’s been thinking a lot about who “John Smith” really is and what he’s really like. She has never had a family, and no one has ever taken any particular interest in her before, and now she feels like her benefactor is her family. She tells him that all she knows about him is that he is rich, that he is tall (from a brief glimpse she had of him as he was leaving the orphanage), and that he doesn’t like girls (from what the matron told her). Based on these qualities, she chooses the one that yields the best nickname, that he is tall and has long legs, and gives him the more personal nickname of “Daddy-Long-Legs.” All of her letters to him from this point forward are addressed with this nickname. At one point, she says that she hopes that the comments she makes about her previous life at the orphanage don’t offend him, but she knows that he has the advantage of being able to stop paying her tuition and allowance if he decides that she’s too impertinent. That knowledge doesn’t stop her from making occasional jokes or flippant comments about life at the orphanage.

Jerusha loves college and begins making new friends, particularly a girl who lives in the same dorm, Sallie McBride. Sallie is very friendly, and but her roommate, Julia Rutledge Pendleton, is more stuffy and standoffish. Julia comes from a very wealthy family, one of the oldest in New York. Julia doesn’t notice Jerusha right away. She is too wrapped up in her family’s prestige, and she seems to be bored by everything going on around her. By contrast, Jerusha is excited by everything because everything is a new experience to her. Sallie gets homesick, but Jerusha doesn’t because she doesn’t have a regular home to miss. For the first time, she gets new clothes, not hand-me-downs or not the standard gingham that the orphans wear. Jerusha also gets a room to herself, for the first time in her life. Jerusha realizes that she can be completely alone whenever she wants to and spend time getting to know herself without other people.

One of Jerusha’s first moves to get to know herself and establish her personal identity is to change her name to Judy. Jerusha was a foundling who came to the orphanage without a name and was named by the matron. Jerusha knows that the matron chooses children’s last names from the phone book, and she picked Abbott for her right off the first page. The first names that the matron gives are random, and she happened to notice the name “Jerusha” on a tombstone once. Jerusha has never liked her name, and she thinks that “Judy” sounds like a girl “without any cares,” which is the kind of girl she would like to be and wishes she was. She is also pleased and amazed when her teachers praise her creativity and originality because, at the orphanage, the 97 children who lived there were dressed and trained to behave as if they were 97 identical twins instead of 97 individuals. Creativity and nonconformity were not generally encouraged.

One of the most difficult and embarrassing parts of college for Jerusha/Judy is that the other girls there know many things that she does not because the orphanage never thought it was important to teach her those things. Most of them are cultural references, like who Michelangelo was or that Henry VIII was married multiple times. (That part actually surprises me. Jerusha did attend a public high school, and my high school covered these subjects. We also read some of the books that Jerusha says that she never read, and we are told that she did well in English class. It makes me wonder if, by “English,” they mean that the class focused only on writing the English language and did not study literature at all.) At the orphanage, Jerusha was never introduced to the childhood classics that the other girls know, like Mother Goose rhymes, fairy tales like Cinderella, or stories like Alice in Wonderland or Little Women. She has not read any of the popular novels or classics like those by Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Rudyard Kipling. Before she came to college, she didn’t even know who Sherlock Holmes was. Sometimes, when the girls make jokes about certain things in popular culture, Judy doesn’t understand, and she can tell that people notice when she misses the point of the discussion or doesn’t get the joke. Sometimes, she feels like she’s visiting a foreign country where people speak a language she doesn’t understand. Some people may say that studying things like art, history, and literature are not important, but there are benefits to understanding history and a shared culture, and Jerusha feels the lack of that in her life.

Jerusha/Judy is afraid to tell the others that she grew up in an orphanage because she doesn’t want to seem too strange to them. Instead, she just says that her parents are dead and that a kind gentleman is helping her with her education. Later, when Julia begins to take an interest in her and to press her for details about her family, Judy makes up a name for her mother’s maiden name because she doesn’t want to have to explain her past to Julia while Julia brags about her own pedigree. One of the reasons why Judy doesn’t show much gratitude toward the people who raised her at the orphanage and its trustees is because she has been raised differently from other children. The orphanage fed, clothed, and educated her in a basic way, but their care for her was minimal. She wasn’t really loved there, and in some ways, they have not adequately prepared her for the outside world. Outside of the orphanage, she feels like something of an oddity and just wants to be like the other girls.

At one point, a local bishop visits the college and gives a speech, saying that the poor will always be with us and the reason that there will always be poor people is to encourage people to be charitable. Although Judy can’t say anything, she gets angry at the speech because it implies that poor girls like her are basically like “useful domestic animals,” that they exist for no other reason than to be of use to other people to improve their character by enabling them to be charitable to someone lesser than themselves. Judy wants to be thought of as her own person, someone who is deserving of the good things in life because she is a person, not just someone who serves a purpose for someone else to show off their largesse. The fact that she feels comfortable enough to let even her benefactor, who is giving her largesse, know how she feels about these things shows how deeply Judy feels these issues and how much she needs someone to understand her feelings. Since no one else knows about Judy’s background, she feels compelled to tell her benefactor what she can’t tell others. Judy is grateful for her benefactor’s help and generosity, enabling her to attend college, but her gratitude has limits. At no point does the money she receives change her personality, her personal feelings about poverty, or her feelings about her benefactor himself. Judy knows that the benefactor’s generosity will end with her graduation, and she is mindful that, from that point on, she will be expected to be her own person, make her own way, and manage her own life.

At various points in the book, Judy becomes philosophical and discusses serious issues and the way that she sees life, offering her views and remarks on topics like socialism, the vanity and burden of fashion (yet the need women have to consider it and how it can make a difference in a woman’s life and attitude), the concept of wealth and the narrower topic of personal finances and debts, family lineage and what it can mean for individuals, self-determination and personal freedom, education and culture, and toward the end of the story, romance and marriage. When Judy meets her benefactor (without knowing at first that he is her benefactor) and gets to know him, she finds that they have similar attitudes about many of these topics, although there are times when he tries to tell her what to do and she rejects his orders, acting on her own initiative. As I said before, Judy is aware, increasingly so throughout the book, that she is her own person, and while she is grateful for her benefactor’s help, she has limits on that gratitude, feeling that there are some things that her benefactor has no right to insist on. Her independence grows particularly toward the end of the book, when Judy must seriously consider her life after graduation, when she expects that her benefactor’s generosity will end. One of the purposes of a college education is to expose students to new ideas and experiences, opening new channels of thought and giving them the chance to establish their identities and views on particular subjects. For Judy, everything is a new experience, but she learns quickly and establishes definite views and her own strong personality.

Judy’s letters are full of humor and are often accompanied by little sketches of her activities. She discusses her classes and her joy at being accepted on the girls’ basketball team. (There were women’s and girls’ basketball teams back in the early 1900s and 1910s, when this book was written. These pictures show what their uniforms looked like.) She catches up on all the books that she has missed reading before, and she loves reading them. The more she reads, the more she understands what the other girls are talking about when they mention their childhood favorites or make jokes about the things they’ve read. When Judy reports what she’s studying in her classes, she often does so in a creative way, like when she describes Hannibal’s battle against the army of Ancient Rome as though she were a war correspondent. She does very well in English and gym classes, but fails her Latin and mathematics courses and needs tutoring.

Over Christmas, Judy stays at the school with a fellow student named Leonora. They treat themselves to a lobster dinner at a restaurant, Judy buys herself a few presents with the Christmas money sent by her benefactor, and they have a molasses candy pull (people used to make that kind of taffy candy at parties with other people) with some other students.

Gradually, Judy begins being more friendly with Julia, even though she still thinks that Julia is a snob, and she becomes friendly with Julia’s uncle, Jervis Pendleton, who comes to visit the college. Jervis is Julia’s father’s youngest brother, a handsome, wealthy, and good-natured man. He is very kind to Judy when they meet, and he later sends Julia, Sallie, and Judy some candy. His age is never given, but Judy comments in one of her letters that she imagines that he is much like her benefactor would have been 20 years earlier, believing her benefactor to be a much older man, although she has not been told his age.

When it’s time for her first summer holidays, Judy actually tells her benefactor that she cannot face going back to the John Grier Home and would rather die than go back for the summer, even though the matron has written to say that she will take her if she has nowhere else to go. Judy loves being free from the orphanage and can’t stand the idea of going back and being pressed into service to take care of the younger children again. Instead, her benefactor arranges for her to spend the summer at a farm owned by Mr. and Mrs. Semple in Connecticut. The Semples tell her that the farm used to belong to Jervis Pendleton and that Mrs. Semple was his nurse when he was a child. He gave the farm to her out of fondness for her. If you haven’t guessed already, this is an important clue to the identity of Judy’s mysterious benefactor.

Recounting all of Judy’s adventures during the rest of her college education would take too long, but she does become roommates with both Julia and Sallie during her sophomore year. This gives Judy more opportunities to see Julia’s Uncle Jervis. She visits Sallie’s family at Christmas, getting a taste of happy family life, and she meets her brother, Jimmie. Jimmie seems fond of Judy, but Judy’s mysterious benefactor doesn’t allow her to spend the summer with the McBride family, where she would be going to dances with him and his college friend. Instead, he insists that she go to the farm in Connecticut again, so she is there when Jervis Pendleton drops in for a visit. (Another important clue.) Judy does disobey her benefactor’s orders and gets a job and goes to see Jimmie the following summer instead of going on a trip to Europe that he had originally arranged for her.

Judy also furthers her writing ambitions, winning a writing contest and sending stories and poems that she writes to magazines, eventually selling some and writing a novel that will be published in volumes. She is a published author by the time she graduates from college.

At the end of the book, Judy’s benefactor reveals his true identity, which Judy had not guessed, only after Judy reveals her feelings regarding him in her letters. Initially, before she knows the identity of her benefactor, she turns down the offer of marriage he makes to her in person, but as she reveals in her letters to Daddy-Long-Legs, the reason is that she thinks that he knows nothing about her past, and she doubts that a wealthy man like him would marry a poor orphan if he knew. The book ends with Judy’s letter to her benefactor/fiance after she goes to meet him at his home and he tells her the truth. When she realizes that he does know all about her past and has loved her all along for the person she really is through her letters and his periodic visits, she agrees to marry him.

This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The book has been adapted for stage and screen many times over and in different countries around the world. There is also a sequel called Dear Enemy, which focuses on Sallie McBride and what she does after graduating from college.

My Reaction and Spoilers:

I realized that I couldn’t give my full opinion about the book without revealing the identity of Judy’s benefactor, although probably most people would have guessed it already. Judy’s benefactor throughout the book is Jervis Pendleton, Julia’s uncle. I’ve read other reviews of the book where people find the romance between Judy and Jervis to be somewhat creepy, both because of the difference in their ages and because of the benefactor relationship between them. It is a relationships of two people who are not equals, and that can create some awkwardness, but I don’t think that it’s quite as bad as some reviewers suggest for several reasons.

As I said, Jervis’s age is never given in the book. Judy is in her late teens in the beginning of the story, and by the end of her college education, she is in her early 20s. Judy is old enough to get engaged and married by the end of the book, so it’s not a case of an adult taking advantage of a minor. From the descriptions of Jervis, the fact that he is older and more mature than Jimmie, and Judy’s estimate on meeting him for the first time that he is like how she imagines her benefactor might have been 20 years before (because she imagines her benefactor as a middle-aged or older man), my guess is that he is probably somewhere in his 30s. He could be as young as late 20s, a few years out of college, but I’m inclined to think that he’s older because he is very well-established in life and has apparently been making donations to the orphanage for at least several years. He could be as old as his 40s, but I’m thinking that he’s probably younger than that because he is supposed to be much younger than Julia’s father, and I think that Julia’s father is probably in his 40s, based on her age. It makes sense to me if Jervis is in his 30s, perhaps 10 to 15 years older than Judy. It’s a significant age gap, but not as creepy as a 50-year-old man being interested in a 20-year-old girl. From the descriptions given, Jervis is definitely older than Judy but not old enough to be her father.

Some people in other reviews wondered if Jervis was specifically grooming her to be his wife from the very beginning by funding her education, which would be creepy, but I don’t think that’s the case. Jervis is supposed to be something of an eccentric, which is why he doesn’t seem particularly close to the rest of his family, like Julia. He is given to acting on whims, and since the matron at the orphanage said that he’s never shown any particular interest in the female orphans before, I don’t think he’s the kind of man who is attracted to young girls in a creepy way. I think all that the story was trying to portray was that Jervis, as an eccentric, just really enjoyed Jerusha’s essay in the beginning, that it appealed to his odd sense of humor, and since he was there to bestow a donation on the orphanage anyway, decided to make Jerusha the beneficiary of his donation because the oddity of the situation appealed to him. People don’t usually fall in love on first acquaintance, so I doubt that he started thinking about that just by reading a funny school essay. More likely, that idea evolved later. My guess is that he thought that the whole thing was funny at first, paying her way through college while occasionally showing up as Julia’s uncle, maintaining his secret identity as “Daddy-Long-Legs.” It probably started out as a kind of game for a rich eccentric, but it turned into something more serious along the way, as he really got to know Judy. Judy’s letters are humorous, but they also have their serious side, and they discuss some very serious subjects. As I said, Judy and Jervis discover that they actually have some similar attitudes about a number of serious things in life, and that is one of the factors in a good, long-term relationship.

Because their relationship is one of unequals, particularly early in the story, there could be the concern that Judy might feel obligated to agree with Jervis and even love him out of gratitude, but Judy’s irreverent attitude and belief that gratitude has limits make that less of a concern. Jervis is older than Judy and definitely richer, but he doesn’t always call the shots in her life, even though he sometimes tries. Judy resents when he tries to keep her from associating with Jimmie (presumably, Jervis had started developing some romantic feelings toward her at that point and was trying to separate her from a rival), and she actively defies his orders when she refuses to go on a trip to Europe her benefactor had arranged and gets a job instead. Remember that Judy was not expecting her benefactor to support her after college. Getting a job and establishing friendships and romantic relationships in her life were perfectly natural steps for a person preparing herself for an independent life. Judy sees these things as being more practical to her future than a trip to Europe, which is actually reasonable. Jervis was disappointed, but I think that he probably had to acknowledge, partly through Judy’s explanations in her letters and some internal reflection that we don’t get to see because we never hear his thoughts in the story, that Judy is being reasonable, especially because at that point, she doesn’t know his real identity or how he is beginning to feel about her. I think Judy’s acts of defiance also help to make her more of an equal to Jervis by the end of the book, although not completely because he is still older and richer. What puts Judy on a better footing with Jervis is that she has come to realize the benefits of her education and that she is now her own person. She doesn’t have to marry Jervis because of his money because she is starting to establish her own life. She has become a published writer and has had independent employment experience, and there are young men who find her interesting. She could have chosen to pursue Jimmie instead, but at that point, she really didn’t want to. Choosing Jervis was a real choice for her because she did have other options, and when she made that choice, she was unaware of his status as her benefactor, making that not a factor in her choice.

One other thing that I’d like to mention is that, at no point in the story, does Judy ever discover her parents’ true identities. When I read a book that features an orphan with an unknown past, I often find myself wondering who her parents are and if that backstory will be revealed in the course of the story. In this book, it is not revealed, and Judy never expects that it will be. She has always lived at the orphanage, and at her age, she has no expectations that her parents will suddenly come looking for her. She feels the absence of family and relatives in her life because it makes her different from other people, and she wants someone close to her to confide in, but she has no expectations of meeting any blood relatives. She makes no attempt to find them and doesn’t spend much time speculating about who they are. Jervis has no more idea who Judy’s parents are than Judy does, and it doesn’t matter to him. In the end, the story isn’t about what Judy came from or who her family was but about the person that Judy becomes.

Posted on by TracyC

Samantha Saves the Day

American Girls

Samantha Saves the Day by Valerie Tripp, 1988.

This is part of the Samantha, An American Girl series.

Samantha and her family are spending the summer at their summer home at Piney Point. Besides Grandmary, Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia will be there. Cornelia has also brought her younger sisters, a set of twins named Agnes and Agatha. They are close in age to Samantha. Grandmary’s friend, Admiral Archibald Beemis, is also visiting from England.

The family’s summer home isn’t just a single house. They have a lodge in the style of a log cabin and separate guest cottages. This summer, Samantha and the twins will get a cottage to themselves with no adults. The girls have fun exploring the area around the lake together. However, there is one place that Samantha is afraid to go, the island in the lake called Teardrop Island. The only way to get to the island is by boat, and there are sharp, treacherous rocks in that part of the lake. That was where Samantha’s parents had their boating accident and drowned during a storm. To Samantha, Teardrop Island is a place of sadness and danger.

One rainy day, the three girls go up to the attic of the lodge to look for more paintbrushes so they can paint pictures. In the attic, they find old clothes and pictures of Samantha’s family. They also find Samantha’s mother’s old sketch book, labeled “Happy Memories of Teardrop Island.” In the sketch book, she drew pictures of Samantha and her father as they had picnics and played by a waterfall. Samantha was a very young child at the time, and she has no memories of having been on the island with her parents. From the pictures, it looks like it used to be her family’s favorite place.

Seeing the pictures makes Samantha want to visit the island once more, hoping to bring back memories of her earlier visits and her parents. The next day, the three girls go out to the island and try to find the places that Samantha’s mother drew in her book. Teardrop Island turns out to be a beautiful place, and Samantha loves it. The more time she spends there, the more she feels like she has been there before, although her memories are vague and dream-like.

However, the girls forgot to tie up their boat, and they find themselves stranded on the island! A storm comes, and the girls are afraid. When the Admiral tries to come out to the island to help them, he is injured, and the girls realize that they are going to have to find a way to save him! Can they make it home through the storm, or will they meet the same fate as Samantha’s parents?

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how people would spend their summers during the early 1900s. Wealthy families like Samantha’s would go to summer homes in the countryside to escape the heat of the cities.

The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

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Samantha Learns a Lesson

American Girls

Samantha Learns a Lesson by Susan S. Adler, 1986.

This is part of the Samantha, An American Girl series.

Samantha attends Miss Crampton’s Academy for Girls in Mount Bedford. She is doing well and has some friends at school, but she misses her friend Nellie. She knows how poor Nellie’s family is and worries about how they are doing.

One day, Samantha comes home from school to a surprise: Nellie has returned to town with her family. Samantha’s grandmother recommended Nellie’s family to a friend, Mrs. Van Sicklen, who has hired Nellie’s father as a driver and Nellie’s mother as a maid. Nellie and her sisters will also be helping with household chores. They will also get the chance to go to school, although they will be attending public school and not the private school that Samantha attends.

When they begin attending school, Nellie’s younger sisters do fine in the first grade, where they are expected to be beginners, but Nellie herself has trouble in the second grade. Nellie is a little old for second grade, so the other children make fun of her for being there, and she is so nervous that she makes embarrassing mistakes in front of her teacher and the other students. Nellie thinks that perhaps she’s too old to start going to school, but Samantha realizes that what she needs is a little extra help.

Samantha talks to her own teacher and explains the situation. She says that she would like to help teach Nellie what she needs to know, but she is not sure what Nellie needs to know in order to pass the second grade. Samantha’s teacher, Miss Stevens, thinks that it is nice that Samantha wants to help Nellie and gives her a set of second grade readers to study with pages marked for assignments. Samantha tells her grandmother what she is planning to do, and she says that it is fine, as long as the extra tutoring doesn’t interfere with Nellie’s house work too much.

Nellie accepts Samantha’s help at their secret, private “school” that Samantha calls “Mount Better School.” During their lessons, Samantha discovers that Nellie is very good at math because she used to have to help her mother with shopping and had to keep track of her money. Nellie cannot always come for lessons because of her work, but Samantha’s tutoring helps her to improve.

One day, when Samantha is walking home from school with Nellie and her sisters, a mean girl from Samantha’s school, Edith, sees them and criticizes Samantha for spending time with servants. She says that her mother would never allow her to play with servants. Samantha asks her grandmother what Edith means, and her grandmother says that Edith is a young lady. When Samantha asks why she is allowed to play with Nellie, her grandmother says that they are not really playing, that Samantha is helping Nellie, which makes it different. That explanation doesn’t entirely satisfy Samantha.

However, her grandmother is both understanding of the help that Samantha has been giving to Nellie and serious about the need to help others. When Edith’s mother and other ladies of the neighborhood come to visit and complain about Nellie’s family and how Samantha is spending time with them, Samantha’s grandmother defends them and says that Samantha is doing good.

Meanwhile, Samantha’s school is preparing for a public speaking contest with the theme “Progress in America.” To prepare for her speech, Samantha asks her grandmother, her Uncle Gard, and other people what they think about progress and what the best inventions are. They mention inventions like the telephone, electric lights, automobiles, and factories. Samantha is fascinated by the idea of factories and the variety of products that they can make. However, when Samantha reads her speech to Nellie, Nellie is not nearly so enthusiastic about factories as a sign of progress. Nellie used to work in a factory herself, and she knows that they are not pleasant places. She tells Samantha how factories are noisy and how dangerous the machines are for the workers. The factory workers are also very poorly paid, which is why the products they make are so cheap.

Nellie’s stories about factories bother Samantha. When it is time for the public speaking contest, Samantha delivers a changed version of her speech in which she discusses the dangers of child labor and how some form of progress, particularly ones that endanger children, are not good forms of progress. Samantha’s thoughtful speech wins the contest, and her grandmother understands that Samantha has been learning things from Nellie even while teaching her.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about education and child labor during the early 1900s.

The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Meet Samantha

American Girls

Meet Samantha by Susan S. Adler, 1986.

This is the first book in the Samantha, An American Girl series.

Samantha Parkington is a nine-year-old orphan. She belongs to a wealthy family and lives with her grandmother, called Grandmary, in the Hudson Valley in New York. Grandmary is often strict with Samantha, trying to teach her to be a proper young lady, but Samantha finds it difficult. Samantha’s grandmother loves her, but she has very old-fashioned ideas about how girls should behave. When Samantha wants to try making and selling boomerangs in order to earn money to buy a doll, using instructions from The Boys’ Handy Book, her grandmother stops her, saying that young ladies do not earn money. She would rather that Samantha earn the doll as a reward for doing what she is told and practicing her piano lessons. Samantha also has an uncle, Uncle Gard, who has a girlfriend named Cornelia. Cornelia is a more modern woman, who would see nothing wrong with Samantha wanting to earn some money.

One of her grandmother’s servants, a black woman named Jessie, is kind and motherly to Samantha. Jessie often patches Samantha up after her various escapades and mishaps. Jessie’s husband, Lincoln, is a train porter, and Jessie tells Samantha exciting stories about the places that Lincoln has seen in his work, like New Orleans. Sometimes, Lincoln brings Samantha post cards from these places.

Samantha soon learns that a new girl her age is coming to a neighbor’s house. She has been wanting a playmate, so she goes over to the neighbor’s house to introduce herself. The new girl’s name is Nellie, but she has come to be a servant for the neighbors, the Rylands. Nellie’s family is poor, so Nellie needs to work as a maid help her parents earn money and support her younger sisters. Samantha is surprised when Nellie describes her family’s circumstances in New York City. Samantha has never been poor, and she doesn’t know what it’s like to be cold and hungry. Nellie says that the air in the countryside is better for her, and she gets better food working for the Rylands. Nellie tells Samantha that she has never been to school, and Samantha offers to teach her.

Then, Jessie suddenly announces that she is leaving her job at Grandmary’s house. Grandmary doesn’t seem surprised, but Samantha is. Jessie offers no explanation for leaving, and when Samantha tries to ask, Grandmary and the other servants do not want to talk about it. Samantha tells Nellie about Jessie leaving, coming up with fanciful reasons why she might leave her job, but Nellie offers the practical explanation that Jessie might be having a baby. Nellie knows more about it than Samantha because she has younger sisters, but she acknowledges that adults of this time period do not like to talk about people having babies, particularly in front of children. Neither Nellie nor Samantha entirely knows why.

However, Samantha is still concerned about Jessie. Samantha doesn’t know where Jessie lives, but Nellie does. The two girls sneak out one evening to visit Jessie and learn for themselves what the matter is. This is the first time that Samantha has been to the part of her town where black people live, further opening her eyes to the lives of people from lower classes of society. Nellie is a little surprised at how Samantha, who is more educated, sometimes knows so little about the ways that other people live.

It turns out that Jessie does have a new baby. Jessie reassures Samantha that she and the baby are fine, but since her husband needs to travel because of his job as a train porter, she needs to stay at home with her baby now. Samantha thinks of a way to help Jessie keep her job and care for her baby at the same time, persuading her grandmother to let Jessie come back. Unfortunately, Nellie soon has to leave because Mrs. Ryland doesn’t think that she’s strong enough to work as a maid and decides to send her back to her family in New York City. Samantha gives Nellie her new doll as a going-away present, and she is very concerned about how Nellie and her family will manage.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how wealthy people and their servants lived during the early 1900s.

Something that occurred to me later is that Jessie is about the right age to be Addy‘s daughter, from another American Girls series. I don’t think that there’s a real connection between Jessie and Addy because the Samantha books were written before the Addy series. However, when I stopped to think about their relative ages (Addy would be about 49 years old in 1904, and Jessie is probably in her 20s), it occurred to me that if Addy had a daughter, she would probably be an adult at this time, and she might be doing something very similar to what Jessie is doing, working as a seamstress.

The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Secret School

The Secret School by Avi, 2001.

The year is 1925, and what 14-year-old Ida Bidson wants most is to graduate from her community’s small, one-room schoolhouse so that she can go to high school in a nearby city.  She dreams of becoming a teacher when she grows up, and she knows that she can’t do that without more education.  The problem is that, in her rural community in Colorado, not everyone thinks that higher education is important, especially for girls.

When their teacher’s mother becomes ill toward the end of the school year and the teacher has to leave, the man in charge of the local school board, Mr. Jordan, doesn’t want to bother to hire a new teacher to finish off the year.  In fact, it seems a little dubious about whether they’ll even get a new teacher in the fall.  Ida is crushed because, without a teacher, she can’t graduate this year as planned, and she had just about persuaded her parents to let her attend high school in the fall.  Her friend, Tom, is in a similar position.  More than anything, he wants to work with radio, the latest technological development of their time, and he also needs to attend high school.  (So far, he’s just been teaching himself by reading Popular Mechanics – the magazine started in 1902 and is still in circulation today.)  However, Tom comes up with a plan that could help everyone: What if Ida becomes their teacher?

Ida knows that there’s no way that Mr. Jordan would actually hire her as the new teacher.  Everyone knows that he’s a miser and that a large part of the reason they’re not getting a new teacher is that he doesn’t want to have to pay for one.  Besides, what school board would hire a 14-year-old girl who hasn’t yet graduated?  After discussing it with the other children, they make the decision to keep their school open secretly with Ida as their secret teacher.  Although Ida confesses the truth about what they’re doing to her parents, most of the others don’t, figuring that they’ll wait to tell them when the school year officially ends in another month.

Although it’s a daunting challenge, going from student to teacher while still continuing her own studies, Ida sees it as the only way to get what she wants.  She does her best to act out the part of teacher, telling her friends to call her “Miss Bidson” when she’s teaching instead of “Ida”, giving them their assignments to study, and checking their work. 

Most of the other children agree to her terms as their new, secret teacher, although one boy, Herbert, deliberately gives her a hard time.  Herbert’s future ambitions don’t include higher education, and he was originally looking forward to having an early summer break.  At first, he delights in trying to push Ida, to see how she’ll deal with him as a discipline problem.  Ida partly earns his cooperation by pointing out with him that their secret school is voluntary, that no one is making him come, that they had all voted to make her the teacher, and that if he makes problems for the other students, they can also vote him out of the school.  The thought of being rejected by his friends for making problems keeps him more or less in line.

Then, a woman from the County Education Office, Miss Sedgewick, comes to the school and finds Ida teaching there.  She is the one who administers tests to graduating students, and she has come to ask how many students will be tested this year.  Ida is forced to admit her circumstances to Miss Sedgewick.  Miss Sedgewick is surprised to discover that Ida is both teacher and student and says that she isn’t quite sure if she can give the exams if the local school board has officially closed the school.  She leaves, promising to look into the matter.  What she eventually tells them is that they can keep the school open with Ida as the teacher, but in order for the children to get credit for their work, they will all have to take exams at the end of the year, not just Tom and Ida.

As the end of the school year approaches, Ida does her best to prepare the other children for the exams and thinks about how her relationships with them have changed.  Tom, her best friend, has become more her student and less her friend, which feels uncomfortable to her.  She also has her own studying to do if she hopes to pass the exams herself, which is difficult both with her teaching work and the work that she must do on her family’s sheep farm.

Then, Herbert’s father, who doesn’t value education at all and just wants Herbert home to work their farm, finds out what they’re doing and gets Mr. Jordan to shut the school down for good.  Ida feels like all her dreams and hard work have been for nothing.  However, a talk with Herbert changes her mind.  Herbert knows that his father fears his education.  Herbert’s father is afraid that Herbert will look down on him for not having as much education or that Herbert will want to leave him.  Herbert admits that he’s been very unhappy at home because his father is a bitter, angry man who doesn’t treat him much better than he does other people.  Herbert has actually learned more than he pretends at school and really does have plans to leave home.  Herbert also tells Ida that his father and Mr. Jordan are planning a secret meeting to close the local school permanently, purposely telling only people they know will agree about it, not local people who value education. 

Knowing about the secret meeting gives Ida’s parents, as well as other parents in the community who support their children’s education, to show their support for their children’s hard work.  Faced with their opposition, Mr. Jordan agrees to let the school remain open while the children take their final exams.  Ida not only does better on the final exam than she had feared, but she finds an ally in Miss Sedgewick, who will help her fulfill her wish to attend high school and become a real teacher.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

Grandfather’s Dance

Grandfather’s Dance by Patricia MachLachlan, 2006.

This is the final book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series.

Cassie is now in the fourth grade, and things are changing in her family. Cassie has come to love her little brother, John, called Jack, who is now a young child who likes to follow their grandfather around and imitate him. Caleb has gone away to school, and Anna is getting married, which is the major event of the story. Through the planning and anticipation that precedes the wedding, Cassie still keeps her journal, with its occasional flights of fancy.

Anna’s wedding brings new excitement to the family farm and thoughts of both the future and the past. Cassie, unlike her older half-siblings, has never been to Maine or met her relatives there, but Sarah’s brother and aunts are coming to the farm for Anna’s wedding. The others remember the last time they saw these relatives, and Cassie looks forward to seeing them.

Cassie wonders about why people get married, and she can’t imagine anyone she loves enough to marry and spend her life with, except maybe her dog. She tries to picture her own future wedding, with a dog as the groom, but it bothers her that she can’t picture her grandfather at her wedding. At first, she can’t quite figure out why she’s having trouble picturing him in the future, but the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes how old her grandfather is. He even comments on his age, saying that he’s getting older every day. Her grandfather seems to be increasingly feeling his age and his heart condition. Before Anna’s wedding, Cassie and her grandfather talk about her future wedding, and her grandfather tells her that he might not be there when she is married. Cassie tries to convince him that he will be, but he says, just in case he can’t, maybe they should have a wedding for Cassie now. He has Cassie put on the nice dress that she will wear to Anna’s wedding, and they stage a mock wedding for Cassie and their dog, Nick, so her grandfather can say that he was at Cassie’s wedding, too.

Anna’s wedding is beautiful, and Cassie and the others enjoy having Sarah’s brother and aunts visit. After the wedding, they have a picture taken of the whole family together. Sadly, it is the only picture of all of them together. Soon after, Cassie’s grandfather dies. All of the wedding guests are still visiting, so they attend the funeral. Jack is still a little boy and upset and confused by their grandfather’s death, but Cassie assures him that their grandfather loved them and that they won’t forget him. The title of the book comes from a little dance that their grandfather did for Jack earlier in the story, which Jack later imitates after his death.

In the back of the book, the author explains how her family was the inspiration for the family in the book. The grandfather in the story was based on the author’s father, and part of the dedication is to him. The author’s father died two years before this book was published. The farm and landscape around it are kind of a combination of the places where her family has lived in North Dakota, Kansas, and Wyoming, which is probably why the books in the series never specify which state they’re in.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

More Perfect Than the Moon

More Perfect Than the Moon by Patricia MacLachlan, 2004.

This is the first book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall Series that is narrated by Cassie, the younger daughter in the family. 

By this time, Cassie is about eight years old, and her grandfather, who rejoined the family in the previous book, has been living with them for a few years.  Caleb has also found a girlfriend (Violet, Maggie and Matthew’s daughter).  When Cassie writes entries in the family’s journal (started by Anna in the first book), they are partly fantasy, like when she thinks that Caleb and his girlfriend will someday marry and go to live in Borneo, where they will eat wild fruit.  When Caleb tells her that the things she’s writing aren’t the truth, she says, “It is my truth.”  (Oh, criminy!  I hate it when people say that.  Well, she doesn’t really mean it in the sense that I’m sick of hearing it.  I like games of pretend, but only those where the people playing them realize that it’s both a game and pretend.)  Fortunately, it’s just that Cassie is an imaginative child, and most of what she imagines is wishful thinking about things she would like to see happen.  With Cassie, the journal becomes not just a documentary of family events but of her feelings about them and what she imagines.

As Cassie grows more observant because of her writing, she notices that her mother’s behavior is changing.  Sarah is sleeping a little more, and she doesn’t always want to eat. Cassie worries that she’s sick.  Then, one day, Sarah faints.  Jacob takes Sarah to the doctor, and in the journal, Cassie writes about how her mother is well and will bring home a perfect present for her, “More Perfect than the moon,” in the hopes that it will come true.

When Sarah comes home and Cassie tells her what she wrote, Sarah says that it is true because she is pregnant.  Her perfect present will be a new baby.  Cassie doesn’t think that a baby sounds like a perfect gift.  She doesn’t want the baby because she doesn’t want things to change.  She is determined not to love the new baby.  Anna (who is now engaged to her boyfriend, Justin) tells Cassie that she didn’t love her at first, either, but she came to love her.  When Cassie asks Anna what made her love her as a baby, she says that she couldn’t help it and that she’ll understand when the new baby arrives.  All the same, Cassie can’t help but wish her mother would give birth to a cute little lamb instead.

Then, Cassie hears Sarah telling her friend, Maggie, that she thinks she’s too old to have a baby.  Cassie knows that Anna and Caleb’s mother died giving birth to Caleb, and she worries that the same thing could happen to her mother.  She thinks that the “terrible baby” is putting her mother’s life in danger.  Sarah tells her that’s not really the case, that she just thinks that it will be difficult to run after a young child again.  Still, Cassie worries and tries to keep an eye on her mother.  Sarah tells her that it isn’t necessary and that she will let her know when she needs her, like when the baby is going to be born.

As everyone guessed, Cassie’s feelings about the baby change once he arrives and she sees him for the first time.  At one point, Cassie admits to Sarah that some of the things she writes in her journal are nasty, but Sarah understands and says that one of the reasons to keep a journal is “To put down feelings. That way they don’t clutter up your head.”  Sarah knows that Cassie has a lot of worries about the new baby and the changes that will come in their family, and she knows that the journal is a way for Cassie to sort out her feelings. Once Cassie gets her worries and bad feelings out of the way, she is better able to move on to better things. Journals can be therapeutic.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Caleb’s Story

Caleb’s Story by Patricia MacLachlan, 2001.

This book is part of the Sarah, Plain and Tall Series, but while the first two books are narrated by Anna, this book is narrated by her brother, Caleb.

When the book begins, Caleb says that Anna is now going to live in town, finishing school and working for the local doctor.  Her boyfriend, Justin, is the doctor’s son, and he has gone to Europe to fight in World War I.  Sarah worries about Anna because of the influenza epidemic.  Anna has given him a journal in order to write about the things happening on the farm while she’s away.  Caleb isn’t as much of a writer as Anna, and he can’t imagine what he’ll find to write about, but Anna assures him that he’ll find something.

While Caleb is play hide and seek with his little half-sister, Cassie (who is now four and a half years old), Cassie says that she saw a man behind their barn who asked her about their father.  At first, Caleb thinks that Cassie imagined the whole thing, but she insists that she didn’t.  However, Caleb later finds the man in the barn, suffering from cold.  The family brings him inside to warm up, and he says that his name is John.  They try to ask John about who he is and where he came from, but he is evasive at first.  He says that he used to be a farmer, and he starts to help a little with farm chores.

The truth about John comes out when Jacob returns from taking Anna to town.  John is actually John Witting, Jacob’s father.  For years, Jacob believed that his father was dead.  It comes as a terrible shock to see him suddenly, after all this time.  Jacob is angry that John apparently abandoned his family and left him to believe that he was dead.

The children have many questions about their grandfather and where he’s been all these years, but John remains evasive for some time.  Sarah tries to encourage Jacob to talk to his father and learn what he needs to know about him, but Jacob resists because he’s too angry.  Caleb notices his grandfather taking pills, and Sarah discovers that it’s heart medicine.

The imagery in the story is pretty bleak, compared to the other books, even the drought descriptions from Skylark.  It’s winter, and people are dying during the influenza epidemic.  People have black wreaths on their doors, some because of influenza deaths and some because they have relatives who died fighting in World War I.  At one point, they see a bonfire in the cemetery because the ground is frozen, and they need to thaw it enough to dig a new grave.  When they get closer, they see that it’s a baby’s coffin, which upsets Sarah.

When Jacob finally demands that his father explain himself and his presence there, John says that he wanted to see how things turned out.  The two men argue and push each other, and Jacob accidentally falls over a plow and breaks his leg.  John sets the broken leg, saying that he’s done it before, but Jacob is still angry with him.

Eventually, John talks to Caleb about his past, admitting that he was wrong to leave years ago and saying that he can’t really blame Jacob for how he feels about it because his bad decision has affected Jacob’s whole life.  John quarreled with his wife years ago, and he felt like the two of them couldn’t live together anymore. (I have to admit that, after John had earlier tried to tell Jacob that things weren’t the way he thought they were, I was really disappointed because this explanation is exactly the way I figured it was.)  Jacob keeps saying that John could have at least written, but the truth is that John can’t read or write until Caleb begins teaching him. (If this is what John meant by things not being the way Jacob thought they were, it’s a little less disappointing.)  When Sarah is accidentally lost in a snow storm outside, and John helps Jacob save her, the father and son finally make peace with each other.

The movie version of this book is called Winter’s End, and it is the last of the series to be made into a movie. Actually, I think that the movie may have actually been made before the book (I’m a little confused by the movie’s date, but it looks like it was first). The movie and the book are pretty close to each other. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Skylark

Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan, 1994.

The second book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall Series picks up about two years after the first book, shortly after Sarah marries Jacob, the father of Anna and Caleb.  That summer is very dry, and people worry about when it will rain next.  If there is no rain, their farms will be in danger.  Some people have been known to simply abandon their farms and move on during especially long dry spells.  Jacob says that their family won’t leave, no matter what, because “Our names are written in this land,” meaning that they have a commitment to it because they were born there and make their lives from the land.  However, Sarah was born in Maine, and Caleb worries that, if the dry spell goes on too long, Sarah will want to return to Maine.

The year goes on, and Sarah settles in to life on the farm.  Her cat, Seal, has kittens.  Sarah reflects on the baby animals and seems thoughtful about babies.  However, people are becoming ever more concerned that the water in the wells is lower than usual.  As people keep hoping for rain, Sarah gets a letter from Maine, saying how lovely and green everything there is.  The land around the farm is dry and brown, and the family has had to ration their water carefully, their supplies running increasingly low. 

Eventually, a family from the area has to pack up and leave because their well is dry.  Sarah is upset, trying to think of some way around the problem, but there is nothing to be done.  Everyone’s supplies are running low, and they’re already doing everything that can be done.  Sarah hates feeling helpless against the problem.  When Sarah’s best friend, Maggie, talks about leaving with her family, Sarah says that she hates the land because it takes so much and gives nothing back.  Maggie tells her that she’s like a lark that hasn’t come to land yet and that, if she is hoping to survive in this land and make a home there with Jacob, she will have to write her name in the land, just as he has.

Although the characters become increasingly distressed, in a way, I like the story for that.  Sarah is a strong, capable woman, but even she doesn’t have all the answers to every problem.  It’s upsetting for her to realize that, but it’s very human.  After the family’s barn catches fire and burns down, Jacob persuades Sarah to take the children and visit her family in Maine.  While they are gone, he will take care of the animals and try to keep the farm going, waiting for rain.

In Maine, Sarah and the children stay with Sarah’s aunts.  Aunt Mattie, Aunt Harriet, and Aunt Lou, who have never married, are called “The Unclaimed Treasures.”  They shower the children with affection.  Still, the children miss their father and worry about what is happening on the farm.  Sometimes, the children have bad dreams in which their father is unable to find them.

In the end, the rain comes on the prairie, and Jacob comes to Maine to collect his family.  Then, the family learns that Sarah is expecting a baby.  Anna worries a little because her mother died giving birth to Caleb, but Jacob and Sarah reassure her that everything will be fine.  When they return home, Sarah writes her name in the dirt, signaling her commitment to her new life on the prairie.

There is a movie based on the book that follows the story very well. In fact, some of the dialog is almost word-for-word from the original. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies – including one in Spanish).

Posted on by TracyC

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, 1985.

This is a popular book to read in schools in the United States, the first in a series.  It’s a Newbery Award winner, and it shows aspects of farm life during the early 20th century and the concept of mail-order brides, a practice from American frontier days where men living in the West or Midwest, where there were not many available women in the population, would write to agencies or advertise for a bride from the East.  The process for arranging these marriages could vary, but it typically started with written correspondence before the man and woman would meet in person.  In this book, the man looking for a bride, Jacob Witting, is a widower with two children who has a farm on the Great Plains.  The story is narrated by his older child, Anna. The book isn’t very long, and it’s a pretty quick read, but it’s filled with colorful imagery and emotion.

Anna has had to help take care of her little brother, Caleb, since he was born.  Their mother died shortly after giving birth to him, and Caleb frequently asks Anna questions about what their mother was like.  Anna’s memories of their mother are fading because she was still very young when she died, but she really misses her.

Then, Jacob tells the children that he has advertised for a bride from the East, the way a neighbor of theirs did.  The children like their neighbor’s new wife and wouldn’t mind having a mother like her.  The father has received a reply to his advertisement from a woman in Maine, Sarah Wheaton.  Sarah has never been married, and now that her brother is getting married, she feels the need for a change in her life.  She loves living by the sea in Maine, but she is willing to move to start a new life.  She says that she would like to know more about Jacob and his children.

Jacob and the children write letters to Sarah, getting to know her better.  They come to like each other, but the children worry about whether Sarah will change her mind about coming to see them or whether she’ll like them or their farm when or if she comes.  When Sarah tells them that she’s coming during the spring, she says that they will know her because she will be wearing a yellow bonnet and describes herself as being plain and tall (the title of the book).

Sarah will stay with the family for a time while they decide if they can be a family together and if she will marry Jacob that summer.  There are adjustments that they will all have to make.  Life on the prairie is very different from what Sarah is used to, and the children still worry that she won’t want to stay.  Sarah brings seashells from Maine to show them, and they teach her about the local wildflowers.  One of my favorite scenes was where Sarah cuts Caleb’s hair, and they put the hair clippings out for birds to use in their nests.  Caleb was particularly concerned about whether Sarah would sing like their mother used to, and Sarah does. 

Through it all, the children can tell that Sarah really misses the sea.  Sarah does say that the land around the farm kind of rolls, a little like the sea, and they play in a haystack, like it was a dune by the sea.  When they visit their neighbors, Sarah talks with Maggie, the mail-order bride who came from Tennessee.  Maggie understands Sarah feels, missing her home in Maine, and it upsets Anna to hear them talk about missing their old homes.  However, Sarah says that things were changing at home, and Maggie comments that, “There are always things to miss, no matter where you are.”  What the women realize is that, although they miss their old homes, they have grown to love the new people in their lives and would miss them if they tried to go back to where they came from.

At one point, Sarah goes to town alone, and the children worry that she won’t come back, but she does.  She just went to town to buy colored pencils in her favorite sea colors.  Sarah does stay and marry Jacob, setting up the rest of the series.

The book is available to borrow and read for free on Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

There is a movie version of this book, which follows the story pretty well. The book wasn’t specific about the time period, although it seems to take place during the early 1900s. The movie and its sequels are set during the 1910s, which makes sense for the rest of the series. The book also didn’t say exactly where the farm was, but the movie clarifies that it’s in Kansas. The movie also emphasizes how much the whole family, particularly Jacob and Anna, misses the mother who died.  In the movie, Jacob forbids the children to use any of his dead wife’s things and doesn’t want to talk about her.  However, when Sarah realizes that trying to avoid his wife’s memory is hurting Anna, she brings out some of the dead wife’s belongs to use, helping the family to make peace with the past and prepare for the future. 

In the movie, Jacob’s pain over his wife’s death is partly about guilt as well as grief. The book doesn’t really talk about why Anna’s mother died after childbirth, but in the movie, Jacob has a painful discussion with Sarah about how he blames himself for his wife’s death because the doctor had warned them that they shouldn’t have any more children after Anna.  Apparently, Anna’s birth had been difficult and caused complications because his wife was so young, and the doctor had said that having another child would be dangerous.  However, after a few years went by, they decided to try for a son to help run the farm, thinking that enough time had gone by for it to be safe.  When his wife died giving birth to Caleb, Jacob felt terrible, thinking that he should have taken the doctor’s warning more seriously and not tried to have another child.  Confessing all of this to Sarah helps Jacob to make his own peace with what happened.  However, none of this discussion appears in the book.

In both the book and the movie, Jacob also has to adjust to Sarah’s different personality.  Sarah is more stubborn and independent than his first wife, with her own way of doing things.  Living with her is different from living the mother of his children.  However, Jacob comes to love Sarah for the person that she is.