Forming the Feminine


by Theresa Fagan

They Loved To Laugh
by Kathryn Worth
Bethlehem Books * Ignatius Press
254 pp.
1-800-757-6831

    When hunting for books for girls in these days of rampant feminism, it is especially important to choose books that help, not hinder their formation in femininity. Confusion abounds about the feminine role and it carries over into children’s literature. I once came across a daughter’s praise of her mother, who was a brilliant cook. She was, she said, “a passionate woman who above all loved to please and surprise her family.” Contrast that with the attitude of others who would dismiss that same mother as someone who “just stayed home and baked cookies.” Edith Stein says that the essence of a woman’s soul, the deepest feminine yearning is to “give love and receive love...to be raised above a narrow, day to day existence.” Some people resist the idea of the feminine because they confine it to “doing things” as opposed to “loving someone.” Our daughters must learn to value every act of service for what it is: a witness to the worth of the human person, and thus, a way of promoting the progress of the whole human race.

    A wonderful passage in the book Caddie Woodlawn sums it up so well. Caddie is a tomboy whose father tries to help her identify with her role as a woman. He tells her:

It is the sisters and wives and mothers, you know, Caddie, who keep the world sweet and beautiful. What a rough world it would be if there were only men and boys in it, doing things in their rough way! A woman’s task is to teach them gentleness and courtesy and love and kindness. It’s a big task, too, Caddie—harder than cutting trees or building mills or damming rivers. It takes nerve and courage and patience, but good women have those things. They have them just as much as the men who build bridges and carve roads through the wilderness. A woman’s work is something fine and noble to grow up to, and it is just as important as a man’s. But no man could ever do it so well.

    Some classics that deal with or exemplify the feminine are Little Women, The Yearling, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, and The Diary of Selma Lagerlof (1936).

    They Loved to Laugh, written in l942 and now reprinted by Bethlehem Books, is another good book parents will be glad to hand to their young adolescent daughters. The girls will enjoy its quick pace, its engaging style and its romantic plot. And almost without realizing it, they will absorb a lot of wisdom. The story traces the growth into womanhood of Martitia, a recently orphaned sixteen year old girl. She goes to live with the Gardners, a large Nantucket Quaker family who have migrated to rural, pre-Civil War North Carolina. She arrives lonely, grieving, gullible, fearful and hopelessly untrained in the arts of running a home. She finds a merry, hard working family with wise parents who delight in their children: five handsome, masculine, high spirited sons, aged fifteen to twenty-one, and an accomplished, pragmatic, sharp-tongued daughter named Ruth.

    The parents accept Martitia and so do the boys, though their exuberant ways overwhelm and repulse her. She suffers shame and humiliation at the hands of Ruth, who never misses an opportunity to underscore her uselessness. At each of Martitia’s fumbling attempts around the house, Ruth quotes to her, “Every tub ought to stand on its own bottom.”

    In her gratitude and admiration for this wonderful family, Martitia aspires to be “useful.” The story chronicles her valiant struggles to become accomplished in the arts of housewifery. Through her work well done, Martitia learns patience, joy and fortitude. She earns the grudging respect of Ruth and also, she wins the love of two of the Gardner sons. Which of the two she will marry is a major point of interest, and the romantic scenes are very attractive.

    The contribution of this book is that it holds up the creating and running of a joyous home in such a positive light. The wise and understanding Mrs. Gardner is an exemplary mother. Martitia beautifully sums up her inestimable worth by saying, “Only such a woman could produce such sons.” Her skills at churning butter, baking pies and weaving wool are never mere chores but rather, the way she gives happiness to those she loves.

    A lesser theme deals with the question of what does a man look for in a woman. The author contrasts Martitia’s poetic sense and love for beauty with Ruth’s skilled but cold pragmatism. The author goes on to make the point that for a man, a woman’s being learned is less important than her having a tender and understanding heart. Which is very true. Unfortunately, she appears to juxtapose the two, as though the development of the intellect were inimical to the truly feminine. It’s a minor theme, but in the latter part of the book she puts a very few but really flawed remarks into the mouths of her most attractive male characters, and risks undoing the tremendous good she does throughout the rest of the book. For example, the following is said to Martitia when she is seventeen and troubled by slavery:

“You are too pretty to understand large questions like slavery, child. It takes learned females like Sarah to think on such matters. But between you and me, I like females to be handsome rather than intellectual. Sarah’s nose is too large.” Martitia felt comforted.

    That Martitia, at seventeen, accepts this, may move some bright girls to reject her and all she has come to embody. From the text itself it is not clear whether the author includes these and other remarks only for historical accuracy or because they also support her theme. In her preface she states that her “interest in this story is to re-create as nearly as possible the inward truth of historic character, not the outward accuracy of historic detail.” However, in this one area she fails to help the reader distinguish between what she upholds as enduring truth and which are the flawed assumptions of the past. Parents could ward off any negative reactions by pointing out the historical context of this theme before their daughters begin this otherwise delightful book.

Theresa Fagan grew up with nine brothers (and three sisters). They are descendants of a Nantucket family.

The Catholic Faith - January/February '98 - Table of Contents