Literature - Betty MacDonald
When
asked to list my favorite authors or books, I’m sometimes criticized
for not including enough (or indeed any,) women. When I say that it’s
because I like funny books, said critics can get pretty angry.
Of course I don't mean that women aren't funny - of course they are (or rather, can be, just as with men,) but a few unfortunate historical factors come together in a kind of Venn diagram for why the shelf of great female humorists is lamentably small. First, there aren’t that many funny authors of any sex - I think humorists are the unsung heroes of literature, almost always written off by critics as unserious and therefore not literary. Second, for most of history the proportion of male to female authors of any kind has been ludicrously unbalanced. Third, a sense of humor is just one of the many qualities of character which has for a very long time been roundly discouraged in women but encouraged in men. I fear generations of readers have suffered an unknowable misfortune in the many funny books which went unwritten by women.
But of course there are funny women authors: Nancy Mitford, Flannery O’Conner and Jane Austen spring immediately to mind. Unfortunately they’re few and far between. This is why I was so happy when someone recommended Betty MacDonald to me. I’d never heard of MacDonald, but she was an incredibly popular author in the 1940’s and 1950’s for her comical memoirs and children’s books, selling millions of copies and gaining national fame (as well as a dedicated fan-base in the UK.)
One the best things about MacDonald’s memoirs is that they are explicitly about the life of women of her time and indeed what might be considered uniquely female experiences, but the humor is confidently universal, never boxing itself in by struggling to seem self-consciously “feminine” in style or target or intended audience. This seems to me a very rare and bold and wonderful thing for a female author to do in the middle of the last century. Or any time, probably.
Her first and most famous memoir, “The Egg and I,” tells the story of young Betty, newly married, following her mother’s advice for marriage and agreeing to support the career and wishes of her husband, whatever they may be. Unfortunately for Betty, during their honeymoon her new husband Bob announces that what he’s really always wanted to do is start an egg farm in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Knowing nothing about farming, egg or otherwise, but desiring a happy marriage at any cost, Betty agrees and the two take up residence in a small leaky cabin somewhere in the thickly-wooded mountains of Washington State.
What ensues is Betty’s deep-end plunge into the worlds of crop rotation, animal husbandry, bear defense, and foraging added on to the traditional wifely duties of cooking, cleaning, and birthing and raising children, all while her husband, increasingly invested body and soul into the raising of their little egg empire, grows more and more estranged from her life and needs.
Like Jerome K. Jerome, MacDonald, while always unimpeachably funny, occasionally digs into her toolbox to really impress the audience and set a scene with vivid description:
It’s a credit to MacDonald’s brilliance as a storyteller that she can chronicle a year of near-inaction in the rarified and morbid setting of a TB clinic with so much wit and humor. Again, she reveals to the reader a world most people don’t experience firsthand - then it was egg farming, this time it’s a very possibly terminal illness - and a way of living and type of experience that would have been unique to women at the time: the nearly thankless realm of a farmer's wife in the first book, the enforced ennui of a women's hospital ward in the second. In both instances, MacDonald is thrust into situations that are not of her choosing, whether it's by wanting to please her selfish husband or by being laid low by illness and then feeling a pressure on all sides to get well at all costs.
MacDonald’s descriptions of hospital life and the oppressively dull routines forced on her and her fellow consumptives are funny, depicting a place where anything joyful is forbidden in the name of resting the lungs and the nurses’ directive seems to be to to remind the girls how lucky they are to be convalescing in such a wonderful institution. She chronicles each day’s minutiae with wit:
Of course I don't mean that women aren't funny - of course they are (or rather, can be, just as with men,) but a few unfortunate historical factors come together in a kind of Venn diagram for why the shelf of great female humorists is lamentably small. First, there aren’t that many funny authors of any sex - I think humorists are the unsung heroes of literature, almost always written off by critics as unserious and therefore not literary. Second, for most of history the proportion of male to female authors of any kind has been ludicrously unbalanced. Third, a sense of humor is just one of the many qualities of character which has for a very long time been roundly discouraged in women but encouraged in men. I fear generations of readers have suffered an unknowable misfortune in the many funny books which went unwritten by women.
But of course there are funny women authors: Nancy Mitford, Flannery O’Conner and Jane Austen spring immediately to mind. Unfortunately they’re few and far between. This is why I was so happy when someone recommended Betty MacDonald to me. I’d never heard of MacDonald, but she was an incredibly popular author in the 1940’s and 1950’s for her comical memoirs and children’s books, selling millions of copies and gaining national fame (as well as a dedicated fan-base in the UK.)
One the best things about MacDonald’s memoirs is that they are explicitly about the life of women of her time and indeed what might be considered uniquely female experiences, but the humor is confidently universal, never boxing itself in by struggling to seem self-consciously “feminine” in style or target or intended audience. This seems to me a very rare and bold and wonderful thing for a female author to do in the middle of the last century. Or any time, probably.
Her first and most famous memoir, “The Egg and I,” tells the story of young Betty, newly married, following her mother’s advice for marriage and agreeing to support the career and wishes of her husband, whatever they may be. Unfortunately for Betty, during their honeymoon her new husband Bob announces that what he’s really always wanted to do is start an egg farm in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Knowing nothing about farming, egg or otherwise, but desiring a happy marriage at any cost, Betty agrees and the two take up residence in a small leaky cabin somewhere in the thickly-wooded mountains of Washington State.
What ensues is Betty’s deep-end plunge into the worlds of crop rotation, animal husbandry, bear defense, and foraging added on to the traditional wifely duties of cooking, cleaning, and birthing and raising children, all while her husband, increasingly invested body and soul into the raising of their little egg empire, grows more and more estranged from her life and needs.
Like Jerome K. Jerome, MacDonald, while always unimpeachably funny, occasionally digs into her toolbox to really impress the audience and set a scene with vivid description:
I watched mornings turn pale green, then saffron, then orange, then
flame colored while the sky glittered with stars and a sliver of a
golden moon hung quietly. I watched a blazing sun vault over a mountain
and leave such a path of glory behind that the windows of mountain homes
like ours glowed blood red until dark and even the darkness was tinged
and wore a cloak of purple instead of the customary deep blue. Every
window of our house framed a vista so magnificent that our ruffled
curtains were as inappropriate frames as tatted edges on a Van Gogh. In
every direction, wherever we went we came to the blue softly curving
Sound with its misty horizons, slow passing freighters and fat waddling
ferries. The only ugliness we saw was the devastation left by the
logging companies. Whole mountains left naked and embarrassed, their
every scar visible for miles. Lovely mountain lakes turned into plain
ponds beside a dusty road, their crystal water muddy brown with slashing
and rubbish.
I loved the flat pale
blue winter sky that followed a frosty night. I loved the early frosty
mornings when the roofs of the chicken houses and the woodshed glowed
phosphorescently and the smoke of Bob’s pipe trailed along behind him
and the windows of the house beamed at me from under their eaves and
Stove’s smoke spiraled thinly against the black hills.
Another specific talent of MacDonald's are her sometimes mouth-watering accounts of food to rival M.F.K. Fisher:
I accepted as ordinary fare pheasant, quail, duck, cracked crab,
venison, butter clams, oyster, brook trout, salmon, fried chicken and
mushrooms. At first Bob and I gorged ourselves and I wrote letters home
that sounded like pages ripped from a gourmand’s diary, but there was so
much of everything and it was so inexpensive and so easy to get that it
was inevitable that we should expect to eat like kings. Chinese
pheasant was so plentiful that Bob would take his gun, saunter down the
road toward a neighbor’s grain field and shoot two… and come sauntering
home again.
But best of all, in the great tradition of humorists
like Mark Twain, MacDonald’s writing shines in the dialogue and dialects
of her characters, no more so than in the mouths of her neighbors, the
ever-cussing Mrs. Kettle and her lazy lisping husband Paw Kettle:
Mrs. Kettle began most of her sentences with Jeeeeeesus Key-rist and
had a stock disposal for everything of which she did not approve, or any
nicety of life which she did not possess. “Ah she’s so high and mighty
with her ‘lectricity,” Mrs. Kettle sneered. “She don’t bother me none - I
just told her to take her old vacuum cleaner and stuff it.” Only Mrs.
Kettle described in exact detail how this feat was to be accomplished.
As Mrs. Kettle talked, telling me of her family and children, she
referred frequently to someone called “Tits.” Tits’ baby, Tits’ husband,
Tits’ farm, Tits’ fancywork. They were important to Mrs. Kettle and I
was glad therefore when a car drove up and Tits herself appeared. She
was a full-breasted young woman and, even though Mrs. Kettle had already
explained that the name Tits was short for sister, I found it
impossible to hear the name without flinching. Tits was a Kettle
daughter and she had a six-month-old son whose name I never learned as
she referred to him always as “You little bugger.” Tits fed this baby
pickles, beer, sowbelly and cabbage and the baby ungratefully retaliated
with “fits.” “He had six fits yesterday,” Tits told her mother as she
fed the baby hot cinnamon roll dipped in coffee…
…Paw alone retained his savoir faire. He came clumping up onto the
back porch exuding barnyard odors and good will, and after a few hearty
stamps to loosen any loosely caked mud or manure he settled himself full
length on the shiny leather couch. Mother said to Mrs. Kettle, “Do you
mind if I smoke?” “Not at all, not at ALL,” boomed Paw. “Thmoke A WHOLE
CARTOON if you have a mind to. Anyone want a THIGAR?” and he laughed
uproariously as he proffered a much-chewed cigar end.”
The other
MacDonald book I read was “The Plague and I,” one of the sequels to the
first book. Betty is now divorced, although this is never explicitly
dealt with in the book (it was still something of a taboo subject in the
1940’s,) and she is raising her children with the help of her mother
and sisters when she is diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to live in a
sanitarium. It’s a credit to MacDonald’s brilliance as a storyteller that she can chronicle a year of near-inaction in the rarified and morbid setting of a TB clinic with so much wit and humor. Again, she reveals to the reader a world most people don’t experience firsthand - then it was egg farming, this time it’s a very possibly terminal illness - and a way of living and type of experience that would have been unique to women at the time: the nearly thankless realm of a farmer's wife in the first book, the enforced ennui of a women's hospital ward in the second. In both instances, MacDonald is thrust into situations that are not of her choosing, whether it's by wanting to please her selfish husband or by being laid low by illness and then feeling a pressure on all sides to get well at all costs.
MacDonald’s descriptions of hospital life and the oppressively dull routines forced on her and her fellow consumptives are funny, depicting a place where anything joyful is forbidden in the name of resting the lungs and the nurses’ directive seems to be to to remind the girls how lucky they are to be convalescing in such a wonderful institution. She chronicles each day’s minutiae with wit:
Sunday
morning at five o’clock I heard the sweet-faced, gentle Catholic Fathers
going softly from room to room on the promenade, blessing their people…
and even though I am an Episcopalian I often wished that one of them
would stop at my bed. …The other ministers came too, but only on
occasion and usually during visiting hours. No doubt their intent was
good but to attempt to make contact with God during visiting hours was
as futile as trying to pray at a cocktail party.
Again, MacDonald
is at her best with her characters and dialogue, in this case a somewhat
fluid cast of nurses, doctors, and roommates who come, go, and reappear
at various stages of her treatment. Most notable among these are
Eileen, the oversexed rule-breaker with red fingernails, Minna, the
tattling southern belle and darling of the ward nurses, and the
unforgettable Kimi, an unusually tall Japanese girl with a dry and
morbid wit coupled with inborn grace and poise:
When the nurse made her rounds that evening Minna said “You know that
ole list didn’t have a bed lamp on it and it’s so dahk and lonely heah
in the cohnah. Ah wrote mah Sweetie-Pie to bring me a bed lamp but it
won’t be heah until next visitin’ day. Ah suah am lonely.” The Charge
Nurse brought her a bed lamp, which had probably belonged, Kimi gently
reminded her, to some patient who had died. At the time Eileen didn’t
have a bed lamp either and she was furious. As the Charge Nurse finished
attaching Minna’s lamp, Eileen said “Well, Jesus, honey, it’s dark ovah
heah too,” but all she got was a cold look.
Minna had only one visitor…”Sweetie-Pie,” her adoring husband.
Sweetie-Pie was about fifty years old, bald, fat, and doughy-faced, but
he brought Minna flowers and candy and bath powder and fruit and bath
salts and jewelry and perfume and bed jackets. She always referred to
him as though he were a cross between Cary Grant and Noel Coward and
said often, “Ah just don’ know how I was lucky enough to get that big
ole handsome husband of mine.”…
…Eileen had said, “You can stop right after the ‘big old,’” and strangely enough Minna began to cry…
…After [Sweetie-Pie] had gone, Minna sat up and ate every crumb of her
supper including two helpings of the main dish. Kimi looked over at
her, wearing a new pink angora bed jacket and happily eating soup, while
the mournful steps of the deflated Sweetie-Pie dragged along the
corridor, then said softly, “With what a vast feeling of relief he will
close the lid on your coffin.” I choked on my soup and Eileen shouted
with glee. Minna said only, “Next week he’s bringin’ me a pink hood to
match this jacket.”
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We have a very special Betty MacDonald fan club surprise for you.
Tell us your favourite satirical text of Wolfgang Hampel's book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier, please and you'll get several fascinating Betty MacDonald fan club items for free.
Wolfgang Hampel's very successful book is available in many countries around the world. ( see links below )
Wolfgang Hampel's very witty book 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is No 1 Buecher de TOP List.
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Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung "Vita Magica" der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg
Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
The best president ever
Roger Cicero - ESC winner 2007
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Tell us your favourite satirical text of Wolfgang Hampel's book Satire ist mein Lieblingstier, please and you'll get several fascinating Betty MacDonald fan club items for free.
Wolfgang Hampel's very successful book is available in many countries around the world. ( see links below )
Don't miss this unique Betty MacDonald fan club offer, please.
Wolfgang Hampel's very witty book 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is my favourite animal ) is No 1 Buecher de TOP List.
Wolfgang
Hampels sehr witziges Buch ' Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' ( Satire is
my favourite animal ) ist No 1 Buecher de TOP Liste.
Many greetings - viele Grüße
Mats
Many greetings - viele Grüße
Mats
buecher.de - Schnell, Günstig, Versandkostenfrei
Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft, weil Krimi-Königin Ingrid Noll Wolfgang ... sehr, daß wir die monatliche literarische Veranstaltung Vita Magica von Wolfgang Hampel bald einmal besuchen können.
Wolfgang Hampel's Satire ist mein Lieblingstier in Buecher de TOP list
You can order Wolfgang Hampel 'Satire ist mein Lieblingstier' (Satire is my favourite animal)
U.S.A.
United Kingdom
Australia
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Czechia
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Norway
Poland
Romania
Slovak Republic
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
The Netherlands
Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
Informationen über die Kultveranstaltung "Vita Magica" der Akademie für Ältere in Heidelberg
Wolfgang Hampel - Satire ist mein Lieblingstier ( Satire is my favourite animal )
The best president ever
Roger Cicero - ESC winner 2007
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
you can join
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald Society
Vita Magica
Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club
Wolfgang Hampel - Betty MacDonald fan club - and Vita Magica Founder
on Facebook
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
