Book Review: Betsy In Spite of Herself

Once the Betsy-Tacy books hit high school, they run together a bit in my mind, so it’s interesting to reread Betsy In Spite of Herself and discover what’s actually there. As it turns out, this isn’t the book with the Okto-Deltas (that must be Betsy Was a Junior), but it does feature Betsy’s visit to Milkwaukee, her first boyfriend Phil Brandish (whom I had forgotten entirely, sorry Phil), and her ongoing struggle to reconcile her serious ambitions with her effervescent social life.

Betsy has known from a young age that she wants to be a writer, and wants to give focused attention to her writing and even, occasionally, her studies more generally. But she’s lively, extraverted, popular in the good old-fashioned sense that everyone likes her; her friends are always dropping by the house, and she's lured away from her work by the siren song of rides in the surrey or fudge-making parties.

But, popular as she is, Betsy frets that the boys don’t like her the way that she wants them to: they see her as a friend, a jolly good companion, not a romantic prospect. If only she could change her personality! If only she were more mature and sophisticated and a little bit bored with everything (awkwardly, she’s one of nature’s enthusiasts), or dramatic and mysterious and quiet…

Over the Christmas holidays, Betsy is invited to visit her friend Tib in Milwaukee, and she thinks that this is her chance: she’ll come home a completely new person! Unfortunately, her natural enthusiasm keeps getting in the way: rather than developing a sophisticated boredom, she’s swept away by the fascinating of visiting a city that was, at the time, still very much a German town, where German is the main language spoken and the whole city pauses in mid-afternoon for the German custom of coffee and cake.

(Lovelace is fantastic at travel writing: she knows just how to pick the most telling and delightful details.)

But when she comes back to Deep Valley, Betsy is determined to give her new personality a spin, anyway. It’s hard to be a new person with her old Crowd, who know Betsy as her usual silly self, so instead she sets her sights on a boy she barely knows: Phil Brandish, who is obsessed with his red automobile, which indeed turns out to be his only topic of conversation. They date for a few months.

This relationship is fascinating to me because Betsy is always aware, at some level, that she’s not at all in love with Phil. She wants to try out her new personality and she wants to have a boyfriend and she picks Phil because he’s an upperclassman with a car, two intriguing signs of high social status.

I suspect that this sort of calculation lies behind a lot of relationships, and not just in high school, but it’s rare to see it in books and especially rare to see a heroine acting this way. But it’s very true to life, and as Betsy’s sister Julia comments, this bit of floundering was actually an excellent growing experience for Betsy. Fascinating a boy (albeit by acting like someone she’s not) has given her confidence; and trying to make herself into a new person has given herself a new appreciation for her own genuine good qualities. It’s all been good practice for when she meets the boy she actually loves - not to mention an excellent experience that will enrich her writing.

***

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but on my road trip I’m going to be visiting Mankato (Lovelace’s hometown, on which Deep Valley is based), and it’s occurred to me that I could read Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown’s library scene in Betsy’s library (now the Carnegie Arts Center). Will they allow this?? I can but try.