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| Editors: | |
| James Blasingame | James.Blasingame@asu.edu |
| Lori A. Goodson | lagoodson@cox.net |
Katherine Paterson's Lyddie: Travel Within andBeyond
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we
must carry it within us -- or we find it not.
-- Ralph Waldo EmersonIn Lyddie, Katherine Paterson's 1991 young adult novel about an impoverished mid-19th-century farm girl who overcomes economic and socialobstacles, travel serves as a metaphor for Lydia Worthen's spiritual growth.Forced to work to repay her family's debts, thirteen-year-old Lyddie journeysfar beyond her home in her quest for money. Transcending this material goal,she learns self-reliance and becomes her own person. Lyddie thus offerstoday's adolescent reader an excellent opportunity to learn from historicalfiction.
The Story
The narrative begins in November, 1843. A huge bear that charges throughthe Worthens' cabin door convinces Mrs. Worthen that Judgment Day is imminent;consequently, she flees with her two youngest daughters, Rachel and Agnes, toher sister's farm, leaving Lyddie and Charlie behind. Some months later, shewrites Lyddie and Charlie (age ten) that they must work to pay debts of theirfather, who abandoned the family years earlier when he went West to seek hisfortune. Consequently, Lyddie sells their farm animals to neighbors. JeremiahStevens, a Quaker (a Friend in both senses), generously gives her $25 for thecalf sired by his bull even though he is entitled to half of the $25 himself.Leaving her beloved home, Lyddie resolves to return. Luke Stevens, the youngestof the four grown Stephens sons, drives Charlie to Baker's Mill to work as anapprentice, then takes Lyddie to Cutler's Tavern, ten miles away, where shebegins her servitude in the kitchen.
Before she crosses the threshold of the tavern, she thinks, "I ain't freeanymore. . . once I enter I'm a servant girl -- no better than a black slave"(p. 18). However, the adversity she will endure during her year there willstrengthen her character. She learns a great deal from her friend Triphena, thecook, who never married because she refused to be a slave to any man. One daywhile Lyddie churns milk into butter, Triphena tells her about two frogs thatfell into a pail of milk. "One drown right off . . . . But the other kicked andkicked, and in the morning they found him there, floating on a big pat ofbutter" (p. 28). Determined to be the kicker in the butter churn, Lyddieresolves to turn adversity to her advantage.
In contrast to the generous Luke and Triphena, others make Lyddie's lifedifficult. Her father had deserted the family, and in order to repay thefather's debts her mother made Lyddie a servant to Mrs. Cutler -- "a woman soobviously rich in this world's goods [but] so mean in the use of them" (p. 23).The overseer of the tavern watches Lyddie "like a barn cat on a sparrow,"making her rise early and work hard until late and confining her to sleep in anairless attic passage under the eaves.
But even enslaved, Lyddie dreams of a better life. Working at the tavern, shelearns of two financial opportunities. Lyddie talks with a young woman, dressedelegantly in pink silk, who clears $2 a week as a factory girl in Lowell,Massachusetts. At this time, Lowell was becoming the center of textile mills inthe rapidly expanding American industrialization. Lyddie also hears men talkingabout the $100 reward for the capture of a runaway slave. Although she hasnever seen a black, she knows she would jump at the chance to pay off herfather's debts with that much money. But her attitude about slavery is about tochange. When Triphena gives her a few days off after Mrs. Cutler goes toBoston, Lyddie travels home, unaware that the Stevenses are sheltering afugitive slave in the Worthen cabin they lease. She quickly sympathizes withthe plight of this kind black man, Ezekial Abernathy, who has taught himself toread so that he can preach the Bible to his people. He warns Lyddie, "a littlereading is an exceedingly dangerous thing" because it can give a person dreamsof freedom. Indeed, this advice -- similar to Francis Bacon's "A littlelearning is a dangerous thing" -- foreshadows Lyddie's own destiny to becomeeducated. Not only does she forego the $100 reward for a slave, but she alsogives him all the money that Luke Stevens had given her for the calf.Overwhelmed with this opportunity for freedom, Ezekial says, "I hope you findyour freedom as well, Miss Lydia" (p. 43). Lyddie sees their common bond: shehas worked like a slave at the tavern with no money to show for it.
Lyddie's decision to seek her fortune in Lowell comes sooner than expected whenMrs. Cutler fires her for being away without permission. Traveling towardLowell, Lyddie finds it ironic that slaves flee north to freedom, but she istraveling south. She befriends the coach driver, who gets her settled with hissister, Mrs. Bedlow, at a Lowell mill boardinghouse. However, the hostileenvironment of the Concord Corporation mill quickly dispels her dreams ofendless opportunity. Although Lyddie is freed from Mrs. Cutler's bondage, thereader senses that this level of bondage at the mill is even more destructivebecause Lyddie chooses it. The descriptive imagery of the factory is ominous,with its fence and locked gate looking like a "jail yard." The cotton mill -- agigantic six-story brick building -- seems to "glower down" at her through itsmenacing rows of windows in the cold, gray April drizzle. Inside, the manager,Mr. Graves, "a fat, prosperous-looking man" (p. 59), is rude and impatient withher. Next, a clerk instructs her to sign a contract and gives her a detailedlist of the Concord Corporation's regulations -- neither of which she can read.When Lyddie gets a smallpox vaccination, she seems like a slave being branded:"a doctor cruelly gouged her leg and poured a mysterious liquid directly intothe wound." When a nasty sore develops, the girls laugh at Lyddie's distress,assuring her she should be grateful that she will never get the pox. She faceseven more monsters in the weaving room -- an "inferno" and "hellish city" withits "beasts of prey" (pp. 63-63), the deafening, dangerous, massive looms. Evenworse than the machines is the aptly named overseer, Mr. Marsden -- "mars"means "master" in the black dialect, and "den" is an allusion to the factory asthe "lion's den."
Protecting Lyddie from him is her mentor and best friend, Diana Goss. AlthoughDiana does not fit the Roman deity's description entirely (virgin goddess ofthe moon and hunting), she does assume the goddess's role as protector ofwomen. Diana Goss had came to the mill fifteen years earlier as a ten-year-oldorphan. Now, Diana moves "from loom to loom like the silent angel in the lion'sden, keeping Daniel from harm" (p. 65). Later, the now-expert Lyddiereluctantly takes on this mentor role for Brigid, an Irish girl, and teachesher to operate the dangerous, speeded-up machines, just as Diana had done forLyddie. Later, she becomes Brigid's guardian angel protecting her from beingraped by Marsden.
However, when Diana initially tries to make Lyddie understand that "the natureof slavery [makes] the slave fear freedom," Lyddie angrily replies, "I'm not aslave" (p. 69). Unwilling to see the truth, Lyddie refuses to join anIndependence Day rally to express support for the growing movement to adopt aten-hour work day. At this point Lyddie fails to see beyond her myopic visionof the mill only as a source of money -- not as a master enslaving her andother powerless poor girls. Yet her perception becomes clearer as the daysgrind on.
The factory girls work thirteen grueling hours a day, six days a week. At 4:30a.m., the wake-up bell clangs; by 5:00, they have cleaned their machines andhave begun work; at 7:00, they are "set free" to rush down the street to theirboardinghouse for breakfast. Then by 7:35 they return to the inferno'sear-splitting noise. At noon, they get thirty minutes for lunch. In theevening, a bell rings to end their thirteen-hour day. It is no wonder Lyddieempathizes with Oliver Twist when Betsy, her roommate, reads Dickens' bookaloud to her. In fact, Betsy even talks of quitting the mill and going out Westto Oberlin College. She is truly an inspiration for Lyddie, who now begins ajourney into the world of books in search of self-knowledge. Reading entrancesLyddie so much that she spends her hard-earned wages on an elegantly-boundedition of Oliver Twist. She copies pages and places them on the framesof her machines. Being transported into Dickens' world helps her endure thedehumanizing drudgery. Later, she hears that Dickens had toured her mill; infact, Diana gives her Dickens' American Notes for General Circulation(1842), a rather romantic view of Lowell mills in contrast to "the satanicmills of England" (p. 132). Dickens' book, however, omits descriptions of lungdisease, blacklisting, sexual harassment, and other realities of Lowell'smills. Lyddie also ignores these evils because the metaphorical "bear" of anarrow spirit still rages within her as long as money controls her.
To earn more money, Lyddie becomes a superior worker -- fast, nimble, diligentin tending to more machines "speeded up to demon pace" in unbearable heat. Herhigh pay reflects her proficiency. Based on piece rates, she makes $2.50 aboveher $1.75 deduction for room and board a week. However, she becomes one of theliving dead. She works as mechanically as her looms, ignoring her surroundingsand taking no pleasure from food. She even passes up spiritual nourishment atchurch because she is too exhausted. However, because Lyddie makes more moneythe more hours she works, she refuses to sign the ten-hour-day petition thatDiana circulates. Lyddie too vividly recalls working sixteen-hour days for Mrs.Cutler (who sent Mrs. Worthen fifty cents a week -- if she remembered),so she does not want to jeopardize her improved financial situation.
Yet, Lyddie begins to waver about her good fortune with the mill. She hearsstories of mill workers' accidents; for example, a girl had broken her neck ina fall and a man had been crushed to death loading cloth onto a railroad car.When Diana takes up a collection for a little Irish girl who was badly hurtwhen she caught her hair in spinning machinery, Lyddie refuses to "give acontribution to some foreigner when she had her own poor baby sister to thinkof" (p. 101). In fact, Lyddie even resents sending money to her mother becauseshe loves seeing her account balance grow each payday. Unwilling to see howmill girls are cruelly exploited, Lyddie gets upset when Betsy, a mill workersince the age of ten, sings this protest song:
Oh! Isn't it a pity such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a slave,
I will not be a slave,
For I'm so fond of liberty
That I cannot be a slave. (p. 92)Insulted by being called a slave, Lyddie fiercely responds, "I ain't a slave! .. . I ain't a slave" (p. 92). Although Lyddie senses her growing anxiety whenBetsy says the Bible encourages the struggle against injustice, she stilldenies the reality of the mill's cruel exploitation. For example, when Marsdenproudly shows her off to foreign dignitaries touring the mill, bragging thatshe is "one of our best girls," Lyddie smiles politely but feels "like a prizesow at a village auction" (p. 86). The girls know Lyddie well; one says, "OurLyddie loves money too much to risk trouble" (p. 95) -- undoubtedly hintingthat "the love of money is the root of all evil" (Timothy 1:10).
In spite of her desperation to earn still more money to regain the family farm,circumstances beyond her control soon broaden her vision so that she canclearly see the nature of her enslavement. One day she is cut badly on thetemple by a broken-loose shuttle. Overseer Marsden, sickened by all the blood,screams for the other girls to take her away. After Lyddie is well enough toreturn to work, Marsden makes sexual advances toward her, patting her andsaying "You're my prize girl." She thinks, "I'm not your girl. I'm notanybody's girl but my own" (p. 109) and moves quickly to escape his grasp.
A new Lyddie emerges as a result of her head injury and the cruel twists offate that quickly ensue: her baby sister Agnes dies; her mother is committed toan insane asylum and later dies; Lyddie takes custody of little sister Rachel;and both she and Rachel endure serious illnesses. Surviving all theseadversities makes Lyddie even stronger. She buys two books, a Bible andNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written byHimself -- both reminding her of Ezekial's comforting voice. She likesPsalms best. Her Bible-reading foreshadows Lyddie's move away fromself-interest. Inspired by these Biblical songs, she uses them as models forcomposing her own: "By the rivers of Merrimack and Concord there we sat down,yea, we wept, when we remembered . . ." (p. 156). Freed from the shackles ofilliteracy, Lyddie achieves a new strength of mind and body.
The novel's climax occurs when she courageously saves Brigid from the lecherousMarsden's sexual attack. Without thinking of the dire consequences, Lyddiedumps the fire bucket, full of stagnant water, on his head. Vengefully, Marsdenhas Lyddie fired for moral "turpitude." Not understanding the meaning of"turpitude," she cannot defend herself in front of Mr. Graves. However, Lyddiehas no regrets. She has protected Brigid as if she were her sister; in fact,she remembers acting just as instinctively to save her little sister threeyears earlier when the bear who rampaged through their cabin left only when itgot its head stuck in a kettle of boiling oatmeal. The images of victory --defeating the menacing bear with the kettle over its head and defeating themenacing man with the bucket over his head -- strike similar chords. Theparallel becomes clear as Lyddie thinks, "Better to feed Rachel and Agnes tothe bear" (p. 162) than not rescue this innocent child Brigid from the monster,Marsden. Her priorities have changed, enabling her to place moral principlesover material gain.
Lyddie has traveled far, both beyond her home and within herself, by developinga social conscience. Before she leaves Lowell, she buys a dictionary, looks up"turpitude," and is astounded. Certainly she is not of vile, based, depraved,or shameful character. She is merely ignorant, but not for long, she vows.Being fired unjustly motivates Lyddie to make butter rather than to drown inthe milk.
No longer enslaved in body and spirit to the mill, she realizes the freedomthat money can buy. She has saved $243 in wages and the generous $50 Ezekialsends her to repay the $25 loan she gave him. Ezekial has adopted the surnameFreeman after reaching freedom in Canada. The former slave inspires Lyddie tobe free also.
By the novel's end, she comes full circle as she walks back to her Vermontcabin, which the Stevenses purchased. Luke Stevens, who visited her in Lowell,proposes marriage, but Lyddie will not remain in the exact spot where she beganher journey. Freed by money and greater self-knowledge, she gently rejectsLuke's marriage proposal. She is not sure where she is going until next Lukeasks her softly, "Then if thee will not stay, where will thee go?" As Lyddiebegins to reply "I'm off," she knows what she has to do. She is off "to staredown the bear! The bear that she has thought all these years is outsideherself, but now, truly, knows is in her own narrow spirit. She would staredown all the bears!" With "her whole body alight with the thrill of hernew-found decision, she continues, "I'm off to Ohio. There is a college therethat will take a woman just like a man" (p. 181). Lyddie knows that years latershe will return home to the Vermont mountains and accept Luke's proposal onlyafter she has found herself. Reborn in mind and spirit from her three-yearordeal, she vows to herself, "I won't come back weak and beaten down andbecause I have nowhere else to go. No, I will not be a slave, even to myself .. ." (p. 182). Lyddie's journey, beginning with a hungry bear's search forfood, ends with her own search for knowledge -- to satisfy her own hunger, tobe her own person. She travels beyond her home, returns, and begins anotherjourney, a spiritual quest within herself. She has learned self-reliance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous 1841 essay "Self Reliance" was written in Concord,Massachusetts, not too far away from Lowell. Perhaps Paterson alludes to thisprophet of self-sufficiency in naming Mary Emerson, an optimistic young womanwho organizes the factory girls to petition for ten-hour workdays. Mary'svision inspires the new Lyddie, even though by the time Lyddie comes to add hername to the petition, she learns that the Massachusetts legislature has alreadyignored the four thousand signatures submitted. The important point, however,is that she finally makes a commitment to act against injustice. Her growthfrom the naivete of adolescence to the experience of young adulthood marks theend of a long journey. Now she can embark on another rite of passage as shetravels to Oberlin College in Ohio.
Perhaps, at Oberlin, Lyddie will read these words from Emerson's"Self-Reliance": "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world." LydiaWorthen already understands the wisdom of Emerson's advice, "Let a manthen know his worth." Her travels within and beyond have taught her thetruth of the final words in "Self-Reliance": "Nothing can bring you peace butyourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
Works Cited
Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. Dutton, 1991.
Laura is an associate professor of English at the University ofSouth Carolina at Sumter.
