(no subject)

[skygiants]

In other Childhood Classics About Christianity, I also recently reread The Witch of Blackbird Pond, a book I loved and still love about NEW ENGLAND and how it is full of REALLY JUDGMENTAL PURITANS.

The heroine of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Kit Tyler, was raised in luxury in Barbados, but after the death of her grandfather and subsequent loss of his fortune, decides that her only choice is to descend on her long-lost Puritan relatives in Connecticut and inform them that she is a member of their household now. She brought all her prettiest clothes! This is going to go great!

While en route to Connecticut, Kit jumps in the water to save a little girl's doll. This is her first mistake, as all the other passengers immediately start judging her for:
- heedlessly and foolishly ruining what looks like a REALLY EXPENSIVE dress
- which is kind of a legitimate reason to be judgy
- but also, not drowning! like a witch!!

Except for Nat, the captain's son, who is instead busy judging her for:
- talking about the slaves she used to own like it's not a big deal
- which is a super extra legitimate and good reason to be judgy
- ... but also for BEING RUDE ABOUT HIS BOAT, HOW DARE

Anyway, Kit lands and meets her relatives: sweet but tired Aunt Rachel, beautiful bratty cousin Judith, saintly lame cousin Mercy, and and disapproving uncle Matthew, who judges Kit for:
- owning fancy dresses
- trying to give Judith and Mercy fancy dress
- getting bored in church
- wanting to read books that are not the Bible
- being a Royalist who approves of the king despite the fact that he's obviously terrible
- playing make-believe with the children like a devil-worshipping Theater Person
- turning up on his doorstep with literally no advance warning and suddenly making him responsible for a teenaged girl from Barbados in extreme culture shock
- admittedly the last one was a little bit rude
- I too would balk

There are about five people in town who do not spend all their time judging Kit:
- Mercy, who is too saintly to judge anyone, and also busy with a love triangle between her and Judith and the nice-but-kind-of-boring divinity student down the road
- Aunt Rachel, who is very nice but also so, so tired
- William, Kit's new suitor, who turns up at her house to creepily stare at her during incredibly awkward courting dates
- Prudence, the little girl who lost her doll, who loves Kit but can only hang out with her in secret because of her abusive family
- Dame Hannah, the sweet old Quaker woman who lives just outside of town, who is both non-judgmental AND non-creepy AND makes really good cake! FRIEND JACKPOT

So, Kit starts secretly hanging out with Hannah as much as possible. (Secretly, because Puritans really REALLY do not disapprove of Quakers.) Also, she's friends with Nat the captain's son, who becomes significantly less judgy when he and Kit are teaming up to help fix a sweet old Quaker woman's roof.

Meanwhile, in a C-plot, the whole town is stressing about the king revoking their charter, which is a super interesting bit of historical detail that is honestly mostly lost on Kit who does not really care about the Connecticut charter and early American political conflicts.

...and then in my memory the book ended with basically everyone getting accused of witchcraft,
- Nat does not get accused of witchcraft, he just pranks William in a fit of jealousy and gets put in the stocks for a while and then banished from town, which honestly is his own fault
- but Hannah gets accused of witchcraft and Kit and Nat help her escape from the angry mob
- and then Kit, inevitably, gets accused of witchcraft, but Nat and Prudence and in a surprise twist Uncle Matthew all team up to get her out again
- though Uncle Matthew is remains judgy, he has nonetheless accepted that he is Responsible For This Teenager and Responsibility Means Not Letting Your Teenagers Get Burned At The Stake
- New England Is A Cold Harsh Place With Cold Harsh Judgy People But They Have A Virtue And Proud Strength That Is Uniquely Their Own
- but despite recognizing the worth of Uncle Matthew and the Puritans, Kit eventually decides Puritanism is not for her and skips town with Nat, who also possesses Proud New England Strength but has a lot more fun with it
- surprisingly happy ending for all!

Comments

[percysowner]

I read this when I was young, middle school maybe? I know I liked it. I mostly remember when young divinity student has been captured by Indians? Escapes and runs to Uncle Matthew's house and falls into Mercy's lap, which suddenly reveals the love they never admitted to because Judith would be upset and Mercy was too saintly to upset Judith? I mean I think that was from Witch of Blackbird Pond, if not there is another kids book with a saintly sister in wheelchair.

Anyway, 40 years later I'm volunteering at a community theater and to my real surprise, they are doing a production of Witch of Blackbird Pond. They left out the aforementioned lap falling, so maybe it was a different book. So there is a young adult play of this book, it's not bad actually, although a bit heavy handed.

[coffeeandink]

That is totally this book. I thought it was the most romantic gesture ever when I was a kid.

[skygiants]

As coffeeandink says, that was definitely in this book! A surprising amount happens in a surprisingly small volume, and feels extremely well-paced for all that.

I'm glad to hear there's a play even if it omits the lap-falling! I'm honestly a bit surprised there's never been a film, it seems tailor-made.

[starlady]

I liked this one a lot too. Dame Hannah was pretty rad.

[skygiants]

I was never the kind of person who made friends with strange elderly women, but this book (and Anastasia Krupnik) made me want to be.

[kore]

I LOVED THAT BOOK FROM THE FIRST MOMENT I READ IT AS A GIRL AND STILL HAVE A COPY. ahem. I remember it was pretty well-written and as you point out, Kit has some actual flaws -- not Mary Sue flaws, but she's impetuous, doesn't think much about the HUGE amount of privilege she has, isn't interested in much beyond her own life and is really determined to bitch and moan every step of the way. But she's also generous, open-hearted, dedicated to doing the right thing and does try to learn. Fine Lines was pretty good on this:

Kit tutors poor Prudence Cruff and makes friends with Hannah Tupper, the older Quaker woman. But she's also a former slaveowner who seriously considers marrying William Ashby simply to escape the cycle of hard labor of her uncle's house. She acts impulsively, which means she saves people with her kindness, but she also endangers them at the same time. Yes, she takes Prudence Cruff away from the poverty of her upbringing and teaches her to read, but she also nearly closes Mercy's school. Yes, she saves Hannah from the angry mob who comes to torch her house, but her visits are partly what has drawn attention to the woman in the first place. Yes, she's brave to go see Hannah, but she also exposes her entire aunt's family to the condemnation of the community.

I'm always surprised when I see the book was written in 1958; somehow it feels like it could have been from much later. I wonder if the author kind of wrote it as a secret corrective to The Crucible, which opened in 1953.

DAME HANNAH <333

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's honestly pretty interesting to me how much Elizabeth George Speare sort of presents without comment about Kit's life in Barbados and all the complex history of that period -- and also how easy it would be for her plot to make all the Puritan stuff endless misery, whereas towards the end of the book Kit sort of realizes there are plenty of less miserable bits, she just hasn't been a part of the community enough to know about them. While still not letting them off the hook for, you know, burning the houses of sweet old ladies. Part of Kit's difficulties are Puritan Intolerance, and part of them are culture shock, and part of them are just Kit being an understandably selfish teenager.

[kore]

Part of Kit's difficulties are Puritan Intolerance, and part of them are culture shock, and part of them are just Kit being an understandably selfish teenager.

Yeah, I was trying to reread the first Harper Hall book a while ago, which I unreservedly adored as a kid, and just kept like I was getting slapped in the face by "This is SO UNFAIR! She is SPECIAL and NOT LIKE ALL THE OTHER GIRLS!" Maybe I was overreacting, but it just started to really get on my nerves. One thing I really liked about WOBP was that Kit is like the other girls in the book, and they're like she is, too, even though they're from such different backgrounds. It's not a "sometimes you have to realize what you were looking for all along is right in front of you" ending, thank goodness, because she can LEAVE, but you really get the sense she's underestimated and prejudged these people and they've done the same to her, and now at least they're trying.

[misslucyjane]

I remember loving this in junior high. Feels like time for a reread.

[skygiants]

It was a very enjoyable one!

[thistleingrey]

I'd forgotten nearly everything except the Quaker x Puritan thing and the judginess. It was on a book list when I was in sixth grade.

[skygiants]

I've owned a copy for as long as I can remember -- it's high up there among my pieces of favorite American children's lit. Though, weirdly, I don't think we ever got it for school or as part of a book list.

[cofax7]

Oh, I loved that book. I also have fond memories of EG Speare's The Bronze Bow, which is a historical novel set in Roman-occupied Jerusalem.

[skygiants]

Somehow I never read anything else by Speare, which, given how much I liked Witch of Blackbird Pond, seems peculiar and possibly like a thing I should remedy.

[rymenhild]

I read The Bronze Bow as a child because I liked Witch of Blackbird Pond. As a good Jewish girl I was pretty taken aback by surprise!Jesus, though!

[tree_and_leaf]

I read The Bronze Bow as a child - sort of. I had a second hand copy and it turned out the last ten pages were missing, and I never saw another copy.

[allchildren]

I am confused right now, because I have certainly been aware of this book's existence for my entire reading life, thus I know it has always been within easy reach at school etc., and I think I just sort of assumed at some point that I must have read this book? Like if you asked me if I had read this book I'd say sure, it's the Witch of Blackbird Pond, just one of those things you read when you're a kid. Like The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle! BUT I DO NOT REMEMBER A SINGLE GODDAMN WORD OF THIS, which makes me feel like actually maybe I didn't ever read it, and at a certain point just accepted its place in my life as literary furniture whose cover I would pass at the library and then nod knowingly like ah, the witch is in her blackbird pond, all is right with the world.

?????!

In other news, I have been reading Thus Was Adonis Murdered almost exclusively during baths (so: slowly), and I must let you know how ardently I love and adore the high number of hypothetical bisexual hijinks behind the scenes. [seal hands clapping with joy]

[whimsyful]

I have been reading Thus Was Adonis Murdered

I love the Hilary Tamar series! Such witty, comfort mysteries. (Tax law hijinks! semi-epistolary format! Lazy narrator of unknown gender!) I liked Adonis, but I loved The Shortest Way to Hades and The Sirens Sang of Murder.

[skygiants]

I have been saving up a post about them until I've read all four (I have now read three) but I'm enjoying them SO MUCH that when I literally shoved the first one into allchildren's hands in a Berkeley used bookstore.

[skygiants]

FUNNILY ENOUGH, I have never actually read the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle! Just seen it appear in many, many libraries and on book lists etc.

Also: YES RIGHT??? God. Julia Larwood, Hapless Bisexual, wandering blithely through Europe accidentally seducing other people's wives.

[jothra]

I CAN FIX THIS PROBLEM

[kore]

....I just had the exact opposite experience of this because I would have swore I read that Doyle book and after reading the description of it on Wikipedia, NOPE. In my case I think this is at least partly because of the little tear-out coupon pages that used to be in the backs of YA books, with titles and a capsule description, so you could get familiar with A Little Demonstration of Affection or A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich or M. C. Higgins, the Great or Jacob Have I Loved</> without reading them at all.

[allchildren]

Weirdly I feel this sort of validates my belief in the Literary Furniture of Our Lives.

[genarti]

Whereas I actually never read either The Witch of Blackbird Pond or The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, but I continually manage to mix them up anyway!

Also to vaguely feel as if I've osmosed more of the plot than I really have. (I did have a vague idea of the premise of The Witch of Blackbird Pond -- I think I started it once as a child, and wandered away when it didn't immediately contain magic blackbirds or something -- but I still have no idea whatsoever what happens to Charlotte Doyle. I think there's maybe sailing involved at some point??)

[shati]

Wasn't there also a cat????

[skygiants]

They have to stop in the middle of rescuing Hannah to go back for the cat! (The cat is fine.)

[ironymaiden]

I loved this book, which is why I was so excited to make a friend at summer camp who was from The Real Wethersfield and also loved the book. I was obsessed with swimming at the time so those judgy Puritans were definitely The Worst.

[skygiants]

At the time I was definitely like 'ugh, those judgy Puritans!' during the swimming scene and at THIS time I'm definitely like 'OK BUT LAUNDRY WAS INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS'

[destina]

Hi, just surfing through from a friend's reading list...I still own my childhood copy of this book, and your descriptions made me laugh. So great. :D

[skygiants]

I'm glad you enjoyed! :D

[conuly]

I'm continually annoyed at how the Puritans are depicted as only wearing black and white. Historical note: THIS IS NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT TRUE.

[skygiants]

Mercy gets a nice gray shawl! Um.

[conuly]

Exactly. In real life, the Puritans loved color in their wardrobes. It looks nice - and it's not vainly expensive, like black or white.

[amelia_petkova]

I always liked this book but my strongest memory of it is from the beginning of 7th or 8th grade: we'd been assigned to read it over the summer and were filling out worksheets in English class. Everything was going fine until I got to the stupidest question, "What is the meaning of the title?" The title means that there is a woman who LIVES AT BLACKBIRD POND and people think SHE'S A WITCH, DUH! Not in those exact words and without capslock, but you get my point. You could go into that the title might be referring to Kit or Hannah, but almost twenty years later I still say it was a stupid worksheet.

[skygiants]

EVERYONE IS WITCHES! It's witches all the way down!

(Every so often I read a book that has 'questions for your class!' or 'questions for your book group!' helpfully delineated in the back, and they are almost always terrible.)

[sasha_feather]

I loved this book as a kid but don't remember any of this! Thanks for the recap.

I loved "Calico Captive" a lot and read it to literal pieces. I wonder if I'd find it racist now though.

[skygiants]

I never read "Calico Captive," but from the Wikipedia summary now I'm wondering the same!

[pseudo_tsuga]

I loved this book! For some reason, it always pairs in my mind with Wise Child where there were ACTUAL witches. A lot of the details have escaped me so it's time for a reread, I think.

I mainly remember wanting to be friends with the Quaker woman too! She seemed like such a good companion

[skygiants]

I can see the link, both of them were very good books for A+ mentorship by wise older women! A good topic and somewhat rare