Little Monsters

Title: Junior Miss

Author: Sally Benson
Publisher: Random House, 1941
Setting: New Yorker-land
Provenance: formerly the property of Marjorie Tremblay, a present from Cousin Albert, 1941
Fun: playing "Stepano, a drunken butler" in The Tempest; lily of the valley perfume; Pink Beauty, a (dead) trained mouse
Quote: "Look, Fuffy!" Judy exclaimed, "There's George Wade's house. Did you ever see anything like it? They haven't got a furnace or anything and they live there all winter. They throw their cans in the front yard. We can come down and get some if we want them for anything."
"They have lice," Lois said.

I bought the cheapest, most smudged copy available on Ebay and got a reward.
Sally Benson wrote the stories that were turned into the movie Meet Me In St. Louis. Those stories were originally published in the New Yorker, as were the Junior Miss stories. (Junior Miss was turned into a Broadway play which ran for two years and had a subsequent life as a movie, radio series and tv show.*) All this would lead one to believe that Junior Miss will be winsome and cheerful and all about the magic of being a young lady. This illusion is destroyed 4 pages in:

[Judy] was tall for her twelve years and heavily built. From her shoulders to her knees she was entirely shapeless, which gave her a square, broad look in spite of her height. Her summer tan had faded and her face had rather a ghastly yellow tinge. Below her skirt, which was too short for her, her legs were hard, muscular and covered with scratches. Her dress, a soft blue one, smocked at the sleeves, was supposed to hang gracefully...but instead looked as though she had been stuffed into it. She wore two rings on her fingers -- an aquamarine and a turquoise in gold settings. She had outgrown them and they drew her fingers in at their bases and made them look like sausages. She wore two charm bracelets of a brassy color and a locket and chain fastened so tightly around her neck it seemed it might throttle her. In the locket was a rather dim snapshot of a kitten and a clear picture of Tyrone Power. Her dark brown hair hung straight below her ears and was held in place by numerous bobbie pins and two ready-made bows. Her toenails, under her wool socks and scuffed brown oxfords, were painted with a decadent pink mother-of-pearl polish.
She sucked in her stomach, held her breath, and pulled her dress in at the waist. And, while the change in her silhouette reflected in the mirror was almost imperceptible, her eyes shone with a terrible optimism.

The reader is not being invited to identify with Judy, but to scrutinize her, and to discover that she's fat, vain and sentimental about kittens. This, I think, puts Junior Miss outside the realm of teen novels, one of the basic concepts of which is self-identification on the part of the reader. Junior Miss' origin in the New Yorker would seem to support this, but I can't for the life of me figure out whom the book was written for. Judy and her sister Lois think about little but nail polish, facials, beauty tips from magazines, and growing up as quickly as possible so they can wear stockings, perfume and "perfectly stunning" cruise clothes. Some writers can make this sort of thing charming, but Benson keeps sticking the knife in. The reader is made aware not just that these obsessions are frivolous but that they are complete failures. There's a moment in each story when one of the characters -- usually one of the parents -- will glance obliquely at the futility of life in general, and then smooth everything over and move on. Did sophisticated New Yorker readers in 1940 find this soothing? Did they think Judy and Lois amusing creations just like their own daughters? Did the irritatingly mournful comedy of the stories make them chuckle? I can't really answer that, any more than I can decide if this is a book you're supposed to enjoy or one to send a chill up your spine.

*Per Wikipedia, Junior Mints candy, introduced in 1949, was a play on "Junior Miss," which was still going strong on the radio at the time.

Queens of the Genre, Part II: Beverly Cleary

Title: Sister of the Bride
Author: Beverly Cleary
Publisher: William Morrow, 1963
Setting: Bayview, California, just over the cloverleaf from Berkeley
Fun: folk songs, Tootie Bodger; the Latin Club Banquet; burlap placemats
Quote: "At the end of each semester there is a party," continued Rosemary with a mischievous smile. "That is when the girls who work while their husbands go to school are awarded their Ph.T. degree." Barbara had heard of a Ph.D. degree, but never of a Ph.T. This was a new one. "What does that stand for?" she asked, pulling on her nightgown. "Putting Hubby Through," answered Rosemary, laughing.

Beverly Cleary had already established herself with Henry Huggins and the first Ramona book when she began writing teen novels in the late 1950s. (She also worked on the novelization of Leave It to Beaver around that time, so perhaps she was willing to turn a hand to anything that would find a ready market.) The result was four novels -- Fifteen, Jean Loves Johnny, The Luckiest Girl and Sister of the Bride -- which have remained in print. All of these novels are fairly simple romances with fairly typical characters. And yet they have the mysterious characteristic of looking ahead, not backwards. They are time capsules -- right down to the cost of a can of tamales at Safeway (4 for 39 cents) -- but they don't read like them. Consider this passage from Sister of the Bride, describing the guests at Rosemay's bridal shower:

"Although the sisters had always lumped the Amys together, there was actually a variety of women in the room -- the Amy who wore leather sandals and wove her own skirts, another who was active in the League of Women Voters, the mother whose calm was never disturbed by her six children, the mother who wanted to write but couldn't find the time, an Amy whose rough hands and deep tan were the result of hours spent in her hillside garden."

It's hard to read this without a sense of recognition, even 50 years later. And so it goes with the plot of the book. Barbara's parents are teachers (her mother teaches "slow" students) in a hilly suburb of San Francisco. Her brother wants to be a folk singer. Her sister Rosemary, who is without a trace of political consciousness, attends Berkeley. Her fiance works in the "Rad Lab," there, helping to smash atoms. And upon hearing that her sister is engaged, Barbara naturally dreams of silverware patterns, a country-club reception and catching the bouquet. But then the book opens up. Barbara visits her sister's prospective new home -- a slovenly apartment they will occupy rent-free in exchange for playing landlord. She begins to think about marriage beyond the magazine covers, and about the two boys who sometimes occupy her attention. Suddenly they don't look much like marriage material -- if she wants to marry at all.

"Life was interesting, something to be explored, and suddenly a wedding did not seem nearly so desirable...She did not even know which she preferred, Bill's thoughtless exuberance or Tootie's fumbling seriousness. But she did know one thing -- it was going to be fun to find out."

Queens of the Genre, Part I: Maud Hart Lovelace

Title: Emily of Deep Valley
Author: Maud Hart Lovelace
Illustrations: Vera Neville
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1950
Setting: Deep Valley (a.k.a. Mankato), Minnesota
Fun: Little Syria; frog legs; the Browning Club; the election of Woodrow Wilson
Quote: "I'm through high school, I'm finished with something, but I'm not beginning anything. That's wrong. When you finish something, you always ought to begin something new. But I'm just going to go on doing housework, looking after Grandpa."

I have never counted myself a huge fan of the Betsy-Tacy books. Perhaps it was growing up in the 1970s, but I always felt there was something pallid about the whole series. Betsy never has any problems that can't be solved by going on a picnic and I think there is one recorded instance, in the whole ten books, where she says something not-very-nice about another girl. But one aspect of Betsy-Tacy has always seduced me, and that is the idea that to stand on the verge of adulthood about 1912 or so must have been bliss. Psyche knots, watch bracelets, organdy dresses, the Philomathians, Class Day, the Junior-Senior banquet -- all the girls happy and self-confident, the boys full of mischief and fun -- the entire insular American world at their feet.

Emily is a spin-off of Betsy-Tacy. Set in the same town, and full of off-hand references to Betsy Ray and Tib Mueller, it is also a little darker, as if Lovelace wanted to rework some of her earlier themes in a more realistic way. For Emily Webster, unlike Betsy, has problems that can't be solved by going on a picnic.

Emily has been raised by her grandfather, a Civil War veteran who lives mainly in the past. He sees no sense in sending Emily to college -- he thinks he was generous to let her finish high school. Unlike Emily's high-school friends, who troop happily off to the "U" anticipating sorority rushes and all kinds of fun, Emily knows that college would really mean something to her -- she wants to be a sociologist, like her idol, Jane Addams. Instead she is left in Deep Valley as winter comes on, without a friend, male or female, her own age.

Emily, however, does not repine. She buys a new hat, begins formal study of the works of Robert Browning, and learns to do the "Gaby Glide." And she takes a look at the community around her, including the Syrian immigrants who live on the wrong side of the slough. There's a notable anti-immigrant feeling in Deep Valley, but Emily, with the help of handsome, interesting, Jed Wakeman, organizes a boy's club as well as citizenship and English classes for the adults.

None of this comes easily. Lovelace was good at drawing scenes of adolescent fun and friendship -- sleigh rides, sing-a-longs, skating parties. In this book she inverts the usual: the most painful scene in the book occurs when Emily sits through such a sleigh ride with an unwilling date, knowing she doesn't fit in and detesting the silliness of the girls she has been friends with all through high school:

"[Their] talk would be about their colleges, their new experiences. She had had new experiences, too, she thought with proud resentment, but when she was with the crowd they seemed to be of no importance. It was true even with the girls...She wasn't tired of her friends, but she was tired of pursuing them as though her own life were worthless."

By the end of Emily of Deep Valley, the last tie to her old crowd has been cut when she turns down the patronizing Don for Jed Wakeman. They will stay in Deep Valley, Jed teaching, Emily continuing her work with the Syrians. In the Betsy-Tacy books, "the crowd" is a source of strength -- a rock of friendship in the tumult of life. But Emily creates a satisfying, independent life for herself only by growing beyond the crowd. I never read Emily of Deep Valley as a child -- as it wasn't part of the regular Betsy-Tracy books the Lexington library didn't have it.* But if I had I think it would have redeemed the entire series for me.

*By some miracle, the Henderson Public Library, which does not have most of the upper books of the Betsy-Tacy series, has a 1950 first printing of Emily of Deep Valley. So far they have not cast it off onto the "Pages for Pennies" shelf.

The Original: Maureen Daly

Title: Seventeenth Summer
Author: Maureen Daly

Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1942 (Currently available from Simon and Schuster)

Setting: Pre-Pearl Harbor Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin

Fun: Beers at Pete's; Cokes at McKnight's drugstore; the bakery truck; meeting the train.

Quote: "It's almost like a secret police system -- no one escapes being checked on. At least no one who counts. The checkers keep their eyes open for new prospects among the young sophomore girls who are growing up and showing signs of datable promise. They only watch out for the very pretty or very popular girls, so it is the most serious catastrophe of all not even to be noticed by the checkers...Most of them didn't know my name until I began to date Jack."

In 1941, Maureen Daly, a college student, wrote a novel about a girl who falls in love with a boy just outside her social circle. Published a year later, Seventeenth Summer became the first "young adult" novel -- targeted specifically to girls too old for Nancy Drew but unwilling to read adult literature. More simply put, Maureen Daly established the genre I write about here. But Seventeenth Summer is more than some obscure 1940s novel. It's a classic work -- a beautiful, subtle and haunting story which distills, moment by moment, the suspense of adolescent love, the cross-currents of family life, and brevity of the Wisconsin summer, all against the background of small-town life in the months before World War II.

Nominally, Seventeenth Summer is about the relationship between Angie Morrow and Jack Duluth, who comes into her life because he drives the bakery truck. Although the social gulf between them is not immense, Jack has no prospects beyond the bakery, while Angie is going to college at the end of the summer. In actuality, much of the book is caught up with Angie's observation of her family-centered life. She is poised between the brand-new idea of what independence with Jack might mean and regret at the disruption of everything she knows. She observes other teenagers at roadhouses and keg parties with the distance of an anthropologist, preferring the structured world of her close-knit family. And yet she can't quite turn away from the thrill of Jack. One of the things that marks Seventeenth Summer as "young adult" is that Daly acknowledges Angie's physical attraction to Jack:

His shoulders above the water were smooth and brown, shiny with the wet, and when he moved the muscles in his arms made a barely perceptible ripple. He swam out a short distance, and then signaled me to come in.

Why is there always that self-conscious feeling about looking at a boy in swimming trunks?

I had always thought it was something like voting, that you weren't really supposed to start feeling with your heart till you were at least twenty-one. And here I was looking at him so hard I could almost feel myself seeing the clean, wet look of his crew cut and the familar coarse knit of his football sweater, while my heart was pounding till it made my voice quavery.

Although Angie politely refuses to elope with Jack, at the end of the summer she leaves Fond Du Lac for the outer world he represents.

Maureen Daly never wrote another teen novel. She married a journalist and later wrote about her travels with him, as well as some books for younger children. If Seventeenth Summer was to a large extent drawn from her own life -- and it reads that way -- this is understandable. The teen writers who came after her would be more prolific, and more professional, but also shallower and lighter. But the same themes established by Daly -- the pull between family and independence, the thrill of attraction, and the quest to grow up, would be at the center of them.