Dear J-
Yesterday, out thrifting, I picked up The Long Secret, by Louise Fitzhugh. Those of you who already suspect I’m soft in the head can chuckle and nod (slowly, for my sake) at me buying yet another kid’s book — this I’ll say, at least once: I’ve never read a Newbery Award winner that I regretted reading. And I’ve done pretty well in keeping up with them, too; up until graduating high school, I’d read pretty much all the award winners through 1992. Children’s literature doesn’t mean written for children, after all.
But, on the other hand, amongst Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret, along with her other books (including Sport, published posthumously featuring that same odd New York world), there’s not a single Newbery Award winner. Doesn’t matter. Harriet the Spy is the best-known work, and as such I won’t discuss it here beyond giving it a ringing endorsement. Besides, you won’t understand The Long Secret without having had an appreciation of Harriet (and, to a lesser extent, Janie; otherwise you’ll believe they’re the most evil characters in The Long Secret without some context).
The focus of The Long Secret is on Beth Ellen Hansen; the plot has sufficient hooks in it for the publisher to bill it as a true sequel to Harriet the Spy and the continuation of Harriet’s misadventures, but that’s just frosting on the cake of Beth Ellen’s relationship with her mother, Zeeney, and her grandmother (the otherwise un-named Mrs. Hansen). It revolves around the surprise return of Zeeney (after having taken off to Europe for the past seven years) and the differing expectations of mothers and daughters — the grandmother hoping that Zeeney has matured, Zeeney thinking that Beth Ellen would regard her as a mother, not a stranger, and Beth Ellen not knowing both how to react or how she’s expected to react.
It’s instructive to note that the three friends Fitzhugh exposits into novels — Harriet, Beth Ellen, and Simon (“Sport”) — all have difficult relationships with their parents. Dig back into Fitzhugh’s personal history and you’ll see family drama worthy of any soap opera. Each child takes on a different aspect of Fitzhugh, I believe — each one a window into the author’s mind, but with only a limited view, you don’t see the complete picture. But I think that their immortality is guaranteed because just like any other window, you see through it and you see yourself in it, at least a little dim reflection if the house isn’t dark.
J-, I grew up shy and am still, to some extent; there’s possibly some gregarious phlegmatic man waiting to burst forth, but I prefer to think of it as being overly cautious amongst strangers. I still have vague memories of nattering away happily to the girl in the waiting room — I was five — about my age, my parents’ ages, what they did, where we lived, the color of my bedroom — and abruptly being dragged off, nearly by my ear, as I started to delve into far more personal subjects. If I’m guarded, it’s out of a sense of mistrust for the world; I remember the biggest difference between the Bay Area and Boston was strangers smiling, which I chalked up at the time to the difference in weather (if it was as cold as Boston everywhere, no one would want to smile and risk shattering their teeth). Yet I learned to appreciate the Boston greeting of indifference until you’d developed a relationship — it’s a question of trust, naturally, and paradoxically, anyone trying so hard must have some ulterior motive, right?
Beth Ellen’s grandmother doesn’t sit down to speak with her — I mean really speak — until late in the book.
Mrs. Hansen folded her paper and took off her reading glasses. “I’ve thought a great deal about yesterday, as I’m sure you have too.” Mrs. Hansen seemed to get embarrassed suddenly, because she looked out the window. “But we’ll talk about that in a minute.” She turned and looked directly into Beth Ellen’s eyes. Over the hawk nose the large eyes were violet in the morning light. “You’re very timid, aren’t you?”
“What?” Beth Ellen was caught completely unaware.
Her grandmother looked away. “I suppose you’re timid because you’ve had to grow up here with an old lady. You haven’t had any real life. But there’s something I want to tell you about timidity, about shyness.”
Beth Ellen searched her grandmother’s face to see if she were angry, but the face looked impassive. I’m going to be told I’m bad, she thought.
“Shy people are angry people,” said Mrs. Hansen and snapped her head around to see Beth Ellen’s reaction.
I am not a lady, thought Beth Ellen. It’s coming now. She’s going to say I am not a lady.
“You know,” said her grandmother, smiling, “it’s important to be a lady, but not if you lose everything else, not if you lose yourself in the process.”
Beth Ellen felt her mouth drop open.
“There are times when we must express what we feel even if it is anger. If you can feel it and not express it … it might be better, but you must try to know what you feel. If we don’t know what we feel, we get into trouble.” She looked hard at Beth Ellen. “You’re a very angry little girl. I have no idea what you’ve been doing about it because you’ve never shown any of it before yesterday, to my knowledge.”
— Louise Fitzhugh, The Long Secret
Beth Ellen’s got a different set of issues; she’s been told all her life that she doesn’t have a choice, that her opinion is meaningless, let the adults decide it for you. But looking back, wasn’t I too quick to accept what other people wanted for me? It’s a delicate art, like teaching bicycle riding: how fast do you take off the training wheels? When is it time to let go?
Mike
Dear J- 