Books I Have Loved

Title: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
First Read: At Home
When: 1960s

It was my own fault. I was tidying up the spare room and glanced down in the bookcase there that holds my favorite books, and I couldn't resist picking it up, just to read the first paragraph or two. The next thing I knew, I was immersed again.

There are some things you may want to know about Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. First, like many books that are categorized as children's books (Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, Anne of Green Gables, Beautiful Joe, etc.) it wasn't written as a children's book. (This explains chapters like "Over the Teacups" and the almost-sermon closing to "A Change of Heart.") Not only that, it was one of the bestselling books of 1904. (Not children's book, mainstream book, along with The Crossing by Winston Churchill and eight others.) Jack London and Mark Twain were big fans. And if you think Rebecca is a "rip off" of Anne of Green Gables, think again: Anne came out five years later.

Oh, and if you've seen the 1930s Shirley Temple film by the same name, you haven't seen Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The only resemblance between the two pieces of media is a kid named Rebecca and an older woman named Miranda. There was a classic silent film of it, with Mary Pickford as Rebecca, but it's a madcap, unsatisfying one; the closest good Rebecca film I've seen was a 1978 British-produced four-part story that appeared on the PBS series Once Upon a Classic.

I first met Rebecca in the early 60s, via the reliable Whitman classics series (alas, not with the more accurate cover posted above, but the 60s one with her in a terrible blue dress). It's the story of Rebecca Rowena Randall, sent from her family's small struggling farm (widowed mother and six other children) to the care of her two spinster aunts, practical and intractable Aunt Miranda and sweeter but still practical Aunt Jane, so she can obtain an education and help pay off the family mortgage. I fell in love with loquacious, inventive, imaginative Rebecca, and felt sorry for her stuck under the strict thumb of dour, disapproving Aunt Miranda. I admired her spunk, her intelligence, and later her courage in facing the setbacks in her life. And who wouldn't want a good friend like Emma Jane or an inspirational teacher like Emily Maxwell? It was only as I was older that I appreciated the adult items in the story: Wiggins' emphasis on not losing your imagination and creativity as you get older, her examination of Miranda Sawyer's joyless life (and the one remark of Aurelia near the end of the book where you realize at one time Miranda had her own romantic dreams), the sheer pleasure Rebecca takes in life even after disappointments.

Some of it is old-fashioned now, and the notion that Adam Ladd might be romantically interested in Rebecca is rather creepy today seeing that he is twice her age. However, this was common practice in the 19th century when a woman was considered adult and marriageable at eighteen. Since it was a man's responsibility to care for the woman he married, she was supposed to marry someone who could provide a good living for her and their eventual family. At eighteen men were still considered boys. A smart woman married a man who was "established" with a good job or thriving business, which usually meant he would be at least in his late 20s. But I still re-read with delight, discovering afresh each time Rebecca's boundless ability to recover after the blows life deals her, how she remains uncowed by setbacks.

Did you know there was a sequel? No, I'm not talking about the dumbed-down Eric Wiggin [no relation!] trilogy that combined Rebecca and its sequel and then married Rebecca off to Adam Ladd in a fevor of preachy, overdone claptrap Christianity (in a book that was already Christian-based) that killed off significant characters and indiscriminately married those left to everyone else. Yuck. Read the real sequel, New Chronicles of Rebecca, which has further tales not only about our heroine, but about the Simpson family and what happened to Emma Jane, and even the mysterious reference made by Rebecca to dancing with Mr. Ladd at a "flag raising."