In Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series, readers encounter the embodiment of innocence. The girls—Elizabeth (“Betsy”), Anastacia (“Tacy”), and later Thelma (“Tib”)—are far from prim and get up to all manner of mischief, but their continuous enthusiasm for life is a lesson to the world-weary in what unjaded life, being fully alive, is like.
The uneventful and unglamorous existence of the families in a small fictional town in Minnesota does not evoke heroic fascination. Raising those vexing questions of truth and fiction, Lovelace based the stories closely on her childhood. The fictional Deep Valley, Minnesota, is a narrative replica of Lovelace’s town of birth and early life, Mankato, Minnesota.
Writing about the books, Lovelace opined, “I could make it all up, but in these Betsy-Tacy stories, I love to work from real incidents.” She elaborated, “The Ray family is a true portrayal of the Hart family. Mr. Ray is like Tom Hart; Mrs. Ray like Stella Palmer Hart; Julia like Kathleen; Margaret like Helen; and Betsy is like me, except that, of course, I glamorized her to make her a proper heroine.” Investigation confirms that Tacy and Tib are based on Lovelace’s childhood companions, Frances “Bick” Kenney and Marjorie “Midge” Gerlach.
The flesh-and-bones reality behind the stories of girls finding amusement in their backyards explains the appeal. There is no doubt that little girls would do such things; looking at little girls today, you’ll find they do much the same. Whether “making house” in the empty piano box or mixing up a heinous concoction using every item in the pantry, little girls in 1890s Minnesota and today anywhere will do remarkably similar things. What, then, is enjoyable about reading such tales of ordinary life?
The retelling captures the enthusiasm. The cynical adult sees how every one of Betsy’s bright ideas will fall short in every way and produce waste and mess. Children are the ones who are optimistic enough to try things. There is, inevitably, waste and mess. The valiant dreams of culinary discovery or marvelous adventure are dashed by the experience of deficiency, lack of skill, and the dull weight of quotidian life. Yet, the children remain undeterred. One failed enterprise finished, they are already on to the next one, certain of perfect results.
Like Marian in Roxaboxen, Betsy is the bossy one who commands the narrative. Like Marian’s playmates, the other children of Deep Valley don’t mind Betsy. A community encourages patience with the faults of another, and the children seem to recognize the fun that such a narrative leader offers them. It seems the other girls do what she says because they know her ideas will be better than what they come up with. The simplicity of children allows them to be influenced. Of course, most of us never lose the tendency to be influenced by others; it’s worth examining the extent to which this remains.
The Betsy-Tacy books are not all fluff and backyard games. The stories include harrowing episodes and, taking place in the late nineteenth century, there is an awareness of death. The innocence of children shines through in moments like the death of Tacy’s baby sister, Bee. The summer following the Easter season funeral of Bee, Betsy is surprised to discover she has a new baby sister after returning from a stay at her uncle’s farm. As Tacy came to her friend with emotional distress at the loss of a baby, so Betsy comes to Tacy distressed at having gained one. To the adult, this incongruity could produce anxiety and awkwardness, but for the children, there is no suggestion of comparison, only comfort for a friend in pain.
A noticeable feature of the Betsy-Tacy books is the abundance of children. Hill Street is brimming with children in-and-out of games played until the sun sets late on a summer evening.
Some people have proposed a thought experiment of imagining the world without children. How would it be changed and impoverished? This mental exercise is far from experimental for many people but simply the reality of being born into a small family, associating almost exclusively with small families, and encountering a baby only after giving birth to one’s own. What is lost when children are not present, observing the world through their skewed and untutored eyes, reenacting it with seemingly boundless energy and enthusiasm?
There can be a temptation to treat the universe of Betsy-Tacy with an intense nostalgia. The joie de vivre on the written page might seem adequate. We all know children can’t run around unsupervised and be allowed to mess things up in the kitchen these days. We are too safe for such nonsense.
Giving into nostalgia would be a mistake. There is in the study of children, in books and in life, an invitation to rekindle that childlike innocence that allows one to do anything in this world. Each of our actions, small as it is, can seem so insignificant as to be meaningless, a drop in the ocean. To the jaded, that ocean is one of pain and suffering. Yet, what alternative is there to muddling through and making the most of it one small but meaningful act at a time?
A clear illustration of this is found in the origin of Lovelace’s best-loved books, the ten Betsy-Tacy novels. Lovelace’s daughter, Merian Lovelace Kirchner, was described as “the little girl whose pleadings for just one more bedtime story gave birth to a beloved series of children’s books.” It seems the undaunted persistence of a child inspired the writing of the series: “She pestered her mother so often for a new story about Betsy Ray and her friend Tacy Kelly that Mrs. Lovelace, who had concentrated on short stories and historical novels, decided to put Betsy and Tacy on paper.”
More than eighty years later, the series remains a delight. It’s no wonder that the Betsy-Tacy Society is still going strong.
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