BETSY IN SPITE OF HERSELF

Sequel to Maud Hart Lovelace’s Heaven to Betsy. Betsy is now a high-school sophomore, and like any self-respecting teenager, she wants nothing more than to change everything about herself. She sets her sights on Phil Brandish, a rich newcomer to town who drives a bright red automobile (cars are still an exotic rarity in Deep Valley in 1907, and Lovelace adorably describes the red auto “passing with almost meteorlike swiftness, fifteen or twenty miles an hour”). Seizing the opportunity of a Christmas trip to visit her friend Tib in exotic Milwaukee (seriously: Lovelace makes much of Milwaukee being, as Betsy’s father says, “so German that it’s like a foreign city”), Betsy resolves to return “Dramatic and Mysterious,” which involves spelling her name “Betsye,” laughing and smiling less, wearing green all the time, sprinkling her speech with “foreign phrases,” and dousing herself in Jockey Club perfume. She does succeed in attracting Phil, but at the expense of fun times with the Crowd, of course. Her true friends don’t like her new personality (“Cab said she put on airs, acted la de da”), and Phil turns out to be a stick-in-the-mud who’s jealous of Betsy spending time with anyone else and talks about nothing but his car (and attempts to get “spoony” with Betsy by holding her hand, apparently an inappropriate liberty that prompts her to declare, “You might as well know, I don’t hold hands”). Betsy knows she doesn’t truly love Phil, “But Phil was big and handsome; he was rich and he was a junior. He was very exciting.” On the one hand, Betsy’s behavior is exasperating, especially when Phil dumps her for being her true, “silly” self and she’s so upset she once again loses the Essay Contest to Joe Willard, but on the other hand, I sort of appreciate that Lovelace doesn’t punish her too badly for it. Betsy learns she should be true to herself, but there’s something admirably assertive and healthy in her experimentation, as her sister Julia points out: “You wanted Phil, and you went out and got him. It took determination. It was all right. And you couldn’t have done it without a little of what Cab calls ‘la de da.’” “But I didn’t keep him,” Betsy responds. “Silly!” says Julia. “You didn’t want to.”

What I found most interesting about the book was the portrayal of Joe, Betsy’s future husband, who I never found that appealing as a teen (because he wasn’t overtly fun or funny, like the other boys in the Crowd) but is now starting to seem like a hot Mr. Darcy type to me. Before she starts going with Phil, Betsy decides Joe should become part of the Crowd, but when she invites him to drop by her house sometime, he rudely rebuffs her, saying it would “bore” him. Later, Miss Sparrow, the librarian, gives Betsy valuable insight into Joe’s character, revealing that he supports himself entirely on his own, working at the Creamery after school and on threshing crews in the summer to pay for his room and board and save money for college. Though Joe’s hard luck story verges on making him sound saintly, there’s endearing vulnerability about it too:

“He has no father or mother. He has to work for a living. And being barred from the usual things high school students do, he takes refuge in books…He isn’t a boy who pities himself. Not at all. He has to work, but he makes that an adventure. He would really like to play football or baseball after school, but he can’t. He has to go to the Creamery. So he just makes plans about playing them in college…His routine is quite satisfactory to him but only because he puts out of his mind the things he cannot have… If he let you draw him into your Crowd, he would constantly be embarrassed. He would be forced to admit that he isn’t, perhaps, quite as lucky as he thinks he is. Don’t you see, Betsy? Living as he does now, he doesn’t mind shabby clothes. But he is a proud boy. He wouldn’t like coming to call on you in shabby clothes. When you urge him to come he gets desperate. He just has to be rude.”

Awww. And how cute is it that, just like Elizabeth Bennet falling in love with Darcy after seeing his house, Betsy’s heart warms toward Joe when she learns that he “just about lives at the library”: “She loved the library too…the quiet, the smell of books.” Hooray for sexy, sexy libraries!