I read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to to my 10 year old daughter, also named Rebecca. It is a classic story written by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, who also wrote another story we enjoyed, The Birds' Christmas Carol. The prose is old-fashioned and lovely. I'm always amazed at how elevated the language in supposed children's books was back in the good old days. I think people just thought in more nuanced ways.
The story opens with Rebecca arriving by stage coach at the home of her two maiden aunts. Her own mother married badly, in the eyes of the world, and is left a poor indebted widow with seven children. They have the terrible shame of having a mortgage on the family farm (how quaint, to be ashamed of being in debt!). The maiden aunts have been persuaded to take on the raising of Rebecca to help out with the finances. Rebecca's mother hopes it will be the 'making of her.'
Rebeccca is only ten when she arrives. She's a plucky young girl with charisma. She lives on a deeper plane than most of those around her and has a special gift for poetry. Aunt Miranda, her dried up, narrow-minded, New England-frugal aunt makes Rebecca miserable at first but as the years go by, Miranda comes to love her and Rebecca learns to forgive her aunt. There are lots of well drawn characters that inhabit the little village of Wareham, the stage coach driver and his wife, Rebecca's kinder maiden aunt, Jane, Rebecca's best friend Emma Jane, her school teachers, her annoying schoolmate, Huldah, etc.
I found the story and character of Rebecca really charming in the first part of the book, when she is younger. As the book progresses and Rebecca goes away to boarding school for her high school career, I found that author switched subtlely to a more tell than show way of illuminating Rebecca's character. This bothered me a bit. Also, there is a growing, but very mild, romantic development between a much older man and young Rebecca. At the end of the book you discover, in a very poetically obscure way, that the older man, Alan Ladd is indeed in love with her. He's 34 and Rebecca is still 17 at the end of the book. I guess I am too much a creature of my time, but I just find that age difference creepy. It always bothered me in Jane Austen books too.
But overall, the book is very charming in that old-fashioned way. If you want to read a piece of turn of the century Americana, this is the book for you!
One last thought. The book reminded me, initially, of Anne of Green Gables. There is a similiarity in that they are both coming of age books about a plucky poor girl succeeding in life, mostly through education. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was written in 1903 and Anne of Green Gables in 1908. Frankly, Anne of Green Gables is the better story, but this one is very much in the same vein and is worth a read as well.
I read this book on my Kindle.
For more book reviews go to 52 Book in 52 Weeks.
I really enjoyed this book when I was a girl, although like you, I like Anne better. I love the fact that old children's books didn't twaddle down the vocabulary as so many do today. :-) I think children can enjoy these stories just as much, and they benefit from being exposed to new words and eloquent turns of phrase even if they don't understand it all. You made an interesting point about the older writing reflecting more nuanced thought.
ReplyDelete