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Jan. 23rd, 2015 08:11 amFive Little Peppers And How They Grew is probably the work of Improving Edwardian Literature that I remember best from my childhood (after Little Women, or maybe tied with Little Women, if that counts as Improving Edwardian Literature.) It's a classic rags-to-riches story -- five plucky poor children work hard and virtuously support their mother and have grand times because they're all so cheery and virtuous despite the fact that they appear to be constantly on the verge of starving to death. But then they make friends accidentally with a nice young rich boy, and charm his cranky but SUPER rich father, and then the cranky rich father basically adopts the entire family including the mother and they all settle down into happy and implausible prosperity. It's like Annie times six!
(I feel it's important to note that the cranky rich father doesn't marry the mother or anything, he just decides to let them all stay in his house forever. IT'S A BIG HOUSE. IT'S FINE.)
There are also like twelve sequels, which I vaguely knew when I was a kid but never read. Recently I was struck with enormous curiosity about them, because, like, OK, what does happen to an impoverished country family after they've been implausibly adopted into the upper crust? So I read Five Little Peppers Midway and Five Little Peppers Grown Up.
These books are such a strange mixture of high drama over really minor things and high drama over things that are SUPER SOAP OPERA. Like, it's high drama all the time, and it's the exact same emotional tone whether it's The Littlest Pepper accidentally getting locked in a closet for a few hours ("OH MY GOD, SHE MIGHT HAVE DIED!!!!") or The Most Mischievous Pepper not wanting to do his schoolwork ("OH MY GOD, HE'S DISAPPOINTING MAMSIE!!!!") or, you know, everyone almost dying in a train crash that takes the lives of several other passengers.
Aside from having high drama, the Peppers' other favorite things to do are to reminisce about their happy days in their poverty-stricken hovel ("isn't it great there aren't any other poor families in the village who need it right now so we can go and hang out there whenever we want!") and passive-aggressively guilt each other into behaving the way virtuous Edwardian children should -- Polly Pepper, the Oldest and Prettiest and Most Virtuous, is a huge fan of the silent treatment. If anyone dares to speak up about having feelings of unhappiness, like the Most Mischievous Pepper having a horrible time at school because, you know, he grew up in a poverty-stricken hovel and barely learned to read, they get gravely disappointed and silent treatmented at until they hastily backtrack and pretend they never had those feelings at all. Emotional health for everyone!
It's also really weird because, like, five years go by between the first book and the second and all of the kids sound exactly the same. Including the Littlest Pepper, who is now eight, but still crawling into everyone's lap and being adorably charming exactly the same way she did when she was three.
The actual main plot of Five Little Peppers Midway, such as it is, centers around a mean aunt of the cranky rich father's who comes to stay in the house and disapproves MIGHTILY of the fact that he's adopted a whole bevy of plucky poor people. She tries in vain to get other people to agree with her that this is kind of weird, but everyone else in the upper-crust society is just like "Oh, but the Peppers are so charming! I too wish I could adopt them!" because this is a strange alternate universe in which adopting the virtuous poor is totally normal.
Apparently taking this to heart, the Evil Aunt decides to get her revenge by trying to turn the Littlest Pepper into her own personal companion, which is what ends with the Littlest Pepper getting locked in a closet for a few hours and ALMOST DYING!!!!, and then there's a kind of amazing climactic scene where the Evil Aunt turns out to be a crack shot with a pistol and saves the house from burglars, and then she dies and leaves the Littlest Pepper all her money out of guilt for accidentally getting her locked in a closet that one time. So that's all right. And then the Littlest Pepper decides to donate all her dolls to poor people --
-- oh, yeah, that's something else, by the way. Now that the Peppers aren't poor anymore, they super get their kicks out of being really conspicuously and condescendingly charitable? Like, the scene with the dolls involves Daddy Warbucks bringing a small horde of poor children around the back and having them all explain loudly to the Littlest Pepper that they've NEVER had a doll so she can feel much better about herself for giving all her dolls away, and it's kind of gross.
Then after the Littlest Pepper inherits all that money, in Five Little Peppers Grown Up she decides to set up an orphanage for poor kids and it's even grosser -- like, it's Christmas, and all the Peppers swoop in with their rich friends and dispense largesse and make these poor kids listen to a long lecture on how they wouldn't have ANYTHING, NONE OF THIS, NOTHING, if it wasn't for the generosity of the Evil Aunt. What a way to spend Christmas! (And the one black kid at the orphanage cries and clings to the Littlest Pepper and everyone else is weirded out and tries to detach her, because these books are also quite racist.)
But that's not the main plot of Five Little Peppers Grown Up, the main plot is about how everyone wants a piece of Polly Pepper and people are proposing to her left and right -- usually by first going to the nice young rich boy who adopted them in book one and being like "well, YOU'RE practically her brother, YOU ask her if she'll marry me!" Which is awkward every time, given that a.) Polly has four actual brothers and b.) he is clearly the series designated love interest. Eventually, at last, he too proposes. When she's in a room with her mom. While holding her hand, and also her mother's. This would not be my idea of romance, but then I'm not a member of the most virtuous no-longer-poor family in the whole world.
Anyway, now I know What Happened To The Peppers and my curiosity is satisfied. I think I'm OK leaving the other nine sequels, though.
(I feel it's important to note that the cranky rich father doesn't marry the mother or anything, he just decides to let them all stay in his house forever. IT'S A BIG HOUSE. IT'S FINE.)
There are also like twelve sequels, which I vaguely knew when I was a kid but never read. Recently I was struck with enormous curiosity about them, because, like, OK, what does happen to an impoverished country family after they've been implausibly adopted into the upper crust? So I read Five Little Peppers Midway and Five Little Peppers Grown Up.
These books are such a strange mixture of high drama over really minor things and high drama over things that are SUPER SOAP OPERA. Like, it's high drama all the time, and it's the exact same emotional tone whether it's The Littlest Pepper accidentally getting locked in a closet for a few hours ("OH MY GOD, SHE MIGHT HAVE DIED!!!!") or The Most Mischievous Pepper not wanting to do his schoolwork ("OH MY GOD, HE'S DISAPPOINTING MAMSIE!!!!") or, you know, everyone almost dying in a train crash that takes the lives of several other passengers.
Aside from having high drama, the Peppers' other favorite things to do are to reminisce about their happy days in their poverty-stricken hovel ("isn't it great there aren't any other poor families in the village who need it right now so we can go and hang out there whenever we want!") and passive-aggressively guilt each other into behaving the way virtuous Edwardian children should -- Polly Pepper, the Oldest and Prettiest and Most Virtuous, is a huge fan of the silent treatment. If anyone dares to speak up about having feelings of unhappiness, like the Most Mischievous Pepper having a horrible time at school because, you know, he grew up in a poverty-stricken hovel and barely learned to read, they get gravely disappointed and silent treatmented at until they hastily backtrack and pretend they never had those feelings at all. Emotional health for everyone!
It's also really weird because, like, five years go by between the first book and the second and all of the kids sound exactly the same. Including the Littlest Pepper, who is now eight, but still crawling into everyone's lap and being adorably charming exactly the same way she did when she was three.
The actual main plot of Five Little Peppers Midway, such as it is, centers around a mean aunt of the cranky rich father's who comes to stay in the house and disapproves MIGHTILY of the fact that he's adopted a whole bevy of plucky poor people. She tries in vain to get other people to agree with her that this is kind of weird, but everyone else in the upper-crust society is just like "Oh, but the Peppers are so charming! I too wish I could adopt them!" because this is a strange alternate universe in which adopting the virtuous poor is totally normal.
Apparently taking this to heart, the Evil Aunt decides to get her revenge by trying to turn the Littlest Pepper into her own personal companion, which is what ends with the Littlest Pepper getting locked in a closet for a few hours and ALMOST DYING!!!!, and then there's a kind of amazing climactic scene where the Evil Aunt turns out to be a crack shot with a pistol and saves the house from burglars, and then she dies and leaves the Littlest Pepper all her money out of guilt for accidentally getting her locked in a closet that one time. So that's all right. And then the Littlest Pepper decides to donate all her dolls to poor people --
-- oh, yeah, that's something else, by the way. Now that the Peppers aren't poor anymore, they super get their kicks out of being really conspicuously and condescendingly charitable? Like, the scene with the dolls involves Daddy Warbucks bringing a small horde of poor children around the back and having them all explain loudly to the Littlest Pepper that they've NEVER had a doll so she can feel much better about herself for giving all her dolls away, and it's kind of gross.
Then after the Littlest Pepper inherits all that money, in Five Little Peppers Grown Up she decides to set up an orphanage for poor kids and it's even grosser -- like, it's Christmas, and all the Peppers swoop in with their rich friends and dispense largesse and make these poor kids listen to a long lecture on how they wouldn't have ANYTHING, NONE OF THIS, NOTHING, if it wasn't for the generosity of the Evil Aunt. What a way to spend Christmas! (And the one black kid at the orphanage cries and clings to the Littlest Pepper and everyone else is weirded out and tries to detach her, because these books are also quite racist.)
But that's not the main plot of Five Little Peppers Grown Up, the main plot is about how everyone wants a piece of Polly Pepper and people are proposing to her left and right -- usually by first going to the nice young rich boy who adopted them in book one and being like "well, YOU'RE practically her brother, YOU ask her if she'll marry me!" Which is awkward every time, given that a.) Polly has four actual brothers and b.) he is clearly the series designated love interest. Eventually, at last, he too proposes. When she's in a room with her mom. While holding her hand, and also her mother's. This would not be my idea of romance, but then I'm not a member of the most virtuous no-longer-poor family in the whole world.
Anyway, now I know What Happened To The Peppers and my curiosity is satisfied. I think I'm OK leaving the other nine sequels, though.
