I first read The Egg and I decades ago. I remembered it as being really funny and light. I've been into this homesteading you tube thing so I thought, hey, I'll revisit the Egg and I. And yes it does have funny parts but it did not improve on rereading for me. In fact it made me a little sad. The first time I read it I didn't know the marriage portrayed would break up in four years. Now reading it I can see all the strain and the growing alienation. I hadn't remembered that she had gotten married at age 18 to a man 13 years her senior. Big red flags going off there. And then the way she portrays the Indians or Native Americans made me feel so sad for them. They had completely descended into the most sordid way of life. And MacDonald doesn't portray the other country folk around her too much better. I mean they are sordid and so stupid themselves. She's married to a chicken farmer and she hates chickens. She marries a guy who loves the rugged life but to her it is exhausting and unnecessary. The men in the book are all louts who do their physical work and then have lots of time for drinking and lazing about. While a woman's work is truly never done. And then some of the stuff she does or says is so really dated now. For instance she looks down on the country folk for breast feeding their children. Or she leaves her toddler napping in their truck pinned in with a blanket and pins while she goes around to visit the county fair. Apparently everybody did this but now, oh my goodness, you'd get slapped with a criminal charge of negligence.
So I was disappointed in the book and a little bit in myself for being disappointed. I still love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle though.
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I read The Egg and I a long time ago and really don't remember it at all. The book that stuck with me was The Plague and I, about her time in a TB sanatorium - for some reason I read it two or three times as a teenager. I had never realised that she was the same Betty MacDonald who wrote Mrs Piggle Wiggle!
ReplyDeleteI read The Plague and I too and I really liked it so much! I read that about 10 or 12 years ago, so it is still fairly fresh in my memory.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know she wrote about having TB! I will have to look it up. I love her writing style (the way she anthropomorphized Stove just killed me), and I admired how she found humor even in adverse living conditions (and with a VERY inconsiderate husband). But I was simply blown away by how hard she worked, pregnant and with small children.
ReplyDeleteHer husband was not considerate to say the least. Except at the end there when he decides to move their operation to a more modern, less isolated farm. But I guess that didn't help matters.
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