Healing by sunlight

The Katy Carr books have stood the test of time because of their depictions of the simple joys of childhood and the sweetness of cherished summer days.

What Katy Did, Susan M Coolidge’s 1872 book about a mid-western family, begins with the narrator sitting in a meadow. It’s a perfect summer’s day — the sky is blue, there is green grass around her, and a brook bubbling nearby. Soon enough the summer insects start their chorus and among them are the katydids, calling out and arguing with each other. It sets off a train of thought in the narrator’s mind about a girl named Katy Carr. The eldest child of a large family whose mother has died sometime before the story starts, Katy is a headstrong, impatient girl who tries and tries but fails to reach the ideal that her father and aunt would prefer her to be.

And so the foundation is laid for Katy to learn that life is not all fun and games — that trials and tribulations come into each of our lives when we least expect it and sadly, for some of us, that can happen during our childhood days. What Katy Did is a classic of children’s literature and many of us who are inclined to read would no doubt have come across it in our youth. This year would mark 150 years since it was first published by the same firm that brought out Little Women — the publisher, Roberts Brothers of Boston, had wanted to tap into the public demand for realistic depictions of girlhood in 19th century America and What Katy Did fit the bill to perfection.

Love and nature

Susan Coolidge was the pen name of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who was, like Katy Carr, a mid-westerner. She was born in 1835 in Ohio to a wealthy family and had a long and prolific writing career as a children’s author. During the Civil War she worked as a nurse and after her father’s death moved to Rhode Island with her family where she lived till her death in 1905. She never married.

Coolidge’s heroines were not shy wallflowers. They were strong-willed girls who dreamt and strived for independence. Katy Carr does experience a terrible accident (a result of refusing to listen to her aunt, the attraction of a new swing and an inability to control her impulses) and finds herself bed-ridden for almost four years. She goes from being a wild and carefree child to one who is depressed and immobile, confined to a room in one corner of the house. Katy’s trauma takes time to heal and she requires love, nature and sunlight to mend.

At the time the book was published, convalescence therapies were still pretty primitive and though it may not seem radical now, Katy’s healing process aided by a family who never stop loving her and who don’t ignore her plight was clearly something novel to the reading public at the time. It’s no wonder the book and its sequels that followed Katy and her siblings as they grew up became such huge best sellers at the time. The books continue to have a special hold on children's imagination (and that of quite a few adults) even now.

Part of its enduring appeal is of course the reader’s affection for the fiercely independent Katy and the hope that she heals and recovers and returns to her family whole. But also, I suspect, what has made the story stand the test of time are its depictions of the joys of childhood — of the sweetness of long summer days, of playing with sisters and brothers and friends under trees and by rivers, and knowing that even the darkest of times eventually come to an end when you have love and hope by your side.

The author is a Bengaluru-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great. Come, raid the bookshelves with us.