determination and perseverance.
If we consider the era in which these books were written, it becomes apparent why these books were successful. The fields of medicine that dealt with the causes and treatment of paralysis were not yet developed, so the idea of using the mind to overcome such disabilities seemed as good as any. Moreover, those who did show improvement and recovery were deemed to have done so for positive reasons, while those who remained unchanged were thought to have lapsed faith. In short, it was a self-fulfilling belief system, so it was assumed to be true.
There was also the prevailing notion that unabashed children, and girls in particular, were somehow in possession of a magic charm that overrode the jaded cynicism of adults. Of course, all three authors happen to be female themselves, but one would be hard pushed to find a boy in literature imbued with similar charm. This is the veneration of female virtue that prevailed at that time. It is the ‘marianismo’ of the female, as contrasted with the machismo of the male. In What Katy Did, this is especially so, as the implication is that Katy suffers her accident precisely because she is a tomboy. When she eventually recovers, her cousin teaches her how to be more feminine and appreciative in her outlook. Thus, femininity is good for the girl and good for those who are touched by it.
An American Childhood
Of course, What Katy Did is also a tale of American childhood. In this respect, it shares a good deal with Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was published just four years later, in 1876. Twain – real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens – was born in the same year and had been a journalist during the American Civil War. Both stories are good yarns, in the sense that they have effective characterization and plots that keep the reader amused and entertained. As such, Woolsey and Twain jointly set the precedent for what the modern children’s novel should be. There was certainly a ready market in the post-war climate, in which parents were beginning to forget the horrors of war and their children had either been too young to remember or had been born in the aftermath.
If What Katy Did is about the process of childhood, then What Katy Did at School is about the transition from childhood to adolescence, and What Katy Did Next is a coming-of-age story. It is also a travelogue aimed at the aspiring classes of American society, who were likely to have the finances and the adventurous spirit to take a trip around Europe at the close of the 19th century. Heritage is seemingly far more important to citizens of the US than those of Britain, possibly because the country is historically young. It’s a bit like an adopted child wanting to trace its birth parents, or providing provenance for an antique – the hope is to find meaningful connections and more depth and value through genealogy and history.
Katy is invited to travel to Europe as a reward for taking care of Amy, the daughter of Mrs Ashe, while Mrs Ashe herself was nursing her nephew through illness. They travel by steamer across the Atlantic to Ireland, then to England, and on to continental Europe. Coolidge describes Katy’s surprises and disappointments at the things she experiences along the way. Essentially, it is a vicarious read, for the amusement and escapism of the reader.
With the passage of time, the What Katy Did books have acquired a new significance as documents of a bygone era. In an age when crossing the Atlantic is typically achieved in passenger airliners in a matter of hours, it is fascinating to consider the pace of travel by sea in those days. The same goes for journeying overland before the age of motor vehicles. This upper-class European adventure from one point of cultural and historical interest to another was known as The Grand Tour.
Due to the limitations of transportation technology, the itinerary for such a tour could span the course of months, sometimes years. The leisurely rate of progress meant that people had time to enjoy fine cuisine and exotic entertainments. They also had the time to write journals and diaries, which they often embellished with drawings and watercolour paintings. Some even experimented with photography, which was a new wonder of the age. This was the beginning of ‘tourism’ (hence the word we use today), although it would be another hundred years before the layperson could afford to globetrot by jet. The eponymous Katy is very much the product of her age and her class, as was her author.
Woolsey wrote many other books, including two titles that followed the antics of Katy’s siblings – Clover (1888) and In the High Valley (1890) – but none was ever as popular as the What Katy Did books. In the US, these books had helped to restore the idea of what being American was all about. In Britain, they were a breath of fresh air in a staid Victorian and then Edwardian milieu.
Publication
One of the reasons that Woolsey managed to find a publisher in the first place was her clever approach of the Roberts brothers. They had published Little Women (1868–9) by Louisa May Alcott and had established a niche for realistic girls’ literature. When Woolsey came along, they were more than happy to add her work to their portfolio, realizing that it had the same commercial appeal.
In the character of Katy, Woolsey tapped into the awkwardness and self-consciousness felt by many girls and that resulted in a vast readership that identified with Katy. In turn, the author based Katy on herself, which was why she was able to make her personality so well observed and believable. Key to this was Katy’s height and lankiness, which made her conspicuous when she would rather have passed unnoticed. Generally, children do not like to have traits that distinguish them as different from the norm, as it only serves to amplify their self-awareness and anxiety. This desire to attenuate is what Woolsey understood so well in Katy and it is what brought her to life in the minds of her keen readership.
The Roberts brothers chose Addie Ledyard as the illustrator of What Katy Did. She illustrated many other books at that time and became the illustrator of choice, because of her rounded style. Her attractive line drawings can be found in children’s novels by Woolsey (Coolidge), Louisa May Alcott, Helen Hunt Jackson, Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards and Louise Chandler Moulton. Ledyard was able to lend all of these women a collective identity as a stable of authors who fit into a similar mould. Her images gave the books a familiarity that created a shared readership of young girls who wished to collect the range of different titles. From a historical point of view, Ledyard’s illustrations provide information about the informal dress code of that era, which is useful, as most photographs and paintings have a more formal ‘Sunday best’ feel to them. Ledyard also contributed drawings to St. Nicholas Magazine, which was a very popular children’s magazine first published in 1873.
The September sun was glinting cheerfully into a pretty bedroom furnished with blue. It danced on the glossy hair and bright eyes of two girls, who sat together hemming ruffles for a white muslin dress. The half-finished skirt of the dress lay on the bed; and as each crisp ruffle was completed, the girls added it to the snowy heap, which looked like a drift of transparent clouds or a pile of foamy white-of-egg beaten stiff enough to stand alone.
These girls were Clover and Elsie Carr, and it was Clover’s first evening dress for which they were hemming ruffles. It was nearly two years since a certain visit made by Johnnie to Inches Mills, of which some of you have read in “Nine Little Goslings”; and more than three since Clover and Katy had returned home from the boarding-school at Hillsover.
Clover was now eighteen. She was a very small Clover still, but it would have been hard to find anywhere a prettier little maiden than she had grown to be. Her skin was so exquisitely fair that her arms and wrists and shoulders, which were round and dimpled like a baby’s, seemed cut out of daisies or white rose leaves. Her thick, brown hair waved and coiled gracefully about her head. Her smile was peculiarly sweet; and the eyes,
