Laura Lee Hope
Grosset & Dunlap, 1904
Genre: Realistic Fiction, “Tot” Series
Description
The
original Bobbsey Twins book is really nothing more than chapter vignettes
telling little stories from the lives of the Bobbsey Twins—eight-year-old Bert
and Nan and four-year-old Freddie and Flossie. While there is a clear passing
of time, most of the chapters are singular events with only minor plot continuity.
The
first chapter is the twins’ making shoe box houses followed by going outside to
play football and jump rope in the second chapter. On the way to school, Danny,
the neighborhood bully, throws powerful snowballs at Bert. After school Bert
attacks him and Danny throws a shard of ice. Bert ducks, but the ice breaks a
store window. Meanwhile, Freddie and Flossie make a snow house. When Freddie attempts
to give the house a window he causes an avalanche and buries himself but he is
rescued by Dinah, the cook. Freddie and Flossie get to go shopping for
Christmas with Mrs. Bobbsey. Their
mother decides to go looking at rugs and tells them to stay where they are.
Flossie gets distracted by dolls while Freddie decides to go back to the first
floor by riding the elevator. He soon sees toys and gets distracted and ends up
lost. Stuck in a storeroom, Freddie awakes from a nap and it is dark. Soon a
security guard finds him. Meanwhile, the town has been frantic. Freddie is alright because he has found a tiny black kitten and is allowed to keep it who he has named Snoop. The family decides to go for a ride in the country. They stop at
the home of a friend of Bert's, Bob. The boys decide to drive the horse carriage
to see a hockey game. On the way home from a hockey game the boys start a horse race with another young boy and Bert doesn't like it much. They win but
the horse doesn't stop running. They get thrown off into the sandpit. Soon it
is springtime so the twins decide to fly a kite. Unfortunately, Snoop gets
stuck on it. The cat ends up on top of the barn and Bert gets a ladder from Mr.
Roscoe. Danny comes along and begins throwing rocks at Snoop. Roscoe sees Danny
and comments that he is a very bad boy. At school the next day, Danny confronts
Bert complaining that he told about the broken window. Bert denies it. It turns
out that Mr. Roscoe had seen Danny break the window but didn't know who he was
and after recognizing him the other day finally turned him in. In the end the
Bobbsey’s plan their trip to visit their aunt and uncle in Meadow Brook which
is a story that would be told in the Bobbsey Twins in the Country.
Thoughts
and Nuggets of Wisdom for Research
The
original 1904 edition of the Bobbsey Twins is much different from the 1950s
revisions that most people grew up with. The original is actually longer (22
chapters compared to 18 and some 50 pages longer) than the revision and, quite
frankly, a bit more boring. While the mystery series of the 1930s hit it big
and the revision focused on the twins’ solving mysteries like their other
series book pals (Nancy, the Hardys, etc.) the original was very much the
originator of the “tot” form of series books—those that feature not teenagers
but much younger children. It also reflects the time it was written in because
it is a very family-orientated story and many books from the early 1900s
focused around the home.
This
book, because of its time period, is full of such awesomeness!
First,
there is the issue of gender. Older twins, Bert and Nan, are described as
having a dark complexion, brown hair and eyes, and Bert's voice is stronger
than Nan's (for some reason that is an important character trait to mention!).
Freddie and Flossie are described as “short and stout” – round, fair, and
blue-eyed. Papa calls Flossie his “fat fairy” and Freddie his “fat fireman.”
The whole family lives in the large town of Lakeport. Mr. Bobbsey, Richard, is
a lumber merchant. Readers finally learn on page 133 that Mrs. Bobbsey's first
name is Mary (how typical).
Early on
(page 8!) there is an interesting gendered conversation that occurs when Dinah
asks if Freddie if he is going to grow up to be fireman. Bert says he is going
to grow up to be a soldier. Nan says, “I shouldn't want to be a soldier and
kill folks.” Freddie replies with, “Girls can't be soldiers. They have to get
married, or be dressmakers, or sten'graphers, or something like that”
(stenographers). Good thing to know that these old books were teaching poor
girls that they had no decisions in life for what they wanted to be—it’s either
typist, wife, or mother.
Next
comes what I call the infamous jump rope scene. It is too hilarious. Mrs.
Bobbsey sends the kids outside to play. All the neighborhood boys play football
while the girls skip rope. Nan jumps rope with Grace Lavine. Grace reaches 40
jumps when her mother calls out to her, “Grace, don't jump so much. You'll get
sick.” Grace is described as “headstrong” and a girl who always wants her own
way. She doesn't care if jump roping gives her a headache. Grace decides she's
going to try to reach 100 jumps and at 97 she falls down “in a heap.” She is
white as a sheet and has fainted dead away. The girls think she is dead and Mr.
Bobbsey is fetched to call for a doctor. What follows is the best line of narration
ever:
“Mr.
Bobbsey was startled and with good reason, for he had heard of more than one
little girl dying from too much jumping” (p. 14).
Jump
rope can KILL you! That is the most important message learned from the first
Bobbsey Twin book. The only remote medical explanation given is from Danny who says,
“Rope jumping brings on heart disease” (p. 16). This is his reply to another
girl who says that jumping rope is just as physically demanding as football. Clearly
football, a sport for boys, is safe and jump roping, a girls’ hobby, is not.
Clearly, girls should avoid strenuous activity.
Nan gets
scolded for turning the rope for Grace when her mother told her not to jump. After
the doctor comes it says, “Grace was resting quietly in an easy chair and the
doctor had ordered that she be kept quiet for several days. She was very much
frightened and had told her parents that she would never jump rope again” (p.
19). Later in chapter 16 the twins attend a party at Grace’s house and readers
learn of her eventual fate: it was “now quite certain that when her mom told
her to do a thing or to leave it alone it was always for her own good” (p.
127).
Other
examples of gendered messages occur when walking home from church one day, the
boys start a snowball fight while the girls act more dignified and wash each
other's faces with fresh snow. When Bert has trouble sleeping because of his
guilt at the broken window that Danny broke, he thinks he sees a white figure
in his bedroom. He decides that he could call out to Nan but she might “call
him a 'fraid cat—something he despised” (p. 38). Later on, when Nan admits to
seeing Bert’s “ghost” she admits to being nervous but says that she tried to
poke it with an umbrella. Bert laughs at her foolishness but Mr. Bobbsey, in an
unprecedented way of standing up for girls, says, “It was more than you tried
to do” (p. 154).
Gender
is expressed in the tales of shopping. During the first trip to the mall, Freddie
has $.25 and so does Flossie and they both want to pool their money to buy
something for their mother. Flossie suggests a doll and Freddie suggests a car.
However, Nan says that they should get her cologne and a handkerchief (p. 71)—more
appropriate gifts for a woman and very gendered. Later when asked what they
want for Christmas, Freddie wants a fire truck, a railroad track, blocks and
picture books. Flossy wants dolls and clothes, the red trunk, slippers, and
card games. Nan just wants a set of furs. Bert wants some books, games, a
pocket knife, a wagon, and money (p. 115). The children all pool their money to
buy presents for their mother, father, and Dinah and Sam. Mr. Bobbsey receives
a cravat, Mrs. Bobbsey gets some flowers, Dinah gets an apron, and Sam get some
gloves (p. 115).
Lastly,
a few other instances include a story of one night before Christmas when the
children are alone and decide to bake some cakes. The narration reads, “It was
Burt who spoke about cake making first. Queer that a bully should think of it,
wasn't it? But Burt was very fond of cake, and did quite some grumbling when
none was to be had” (p. 106). In another story, with the latest snowfall the
lake is iced over and everyone enjoys skating on it. Bert is a better skater
than Nan. However, Bert would like to learn some fancy moves. Nan says that
skating is like dancing, but Burt says it is actually better because he “did
not care for dancing at all” (p. 67). Finally, when Freddie gets lost in the
mall and Mrs. Bobbsey can’t find him we see a line of narration that describes
how incompetent women must be just because they are women. Even though she’s
supposed to be the one in charge of the household and the children she can’t
even handle losing a child in a public place. The chapter ends with, “Almost
frantic with fear, Mrs. Bobbsey telephone to her husband, telling him of what
had occurred and asked him what had best be done” (p. 78). Clearly, losing her
child has caused her brain to fry and she can’t think logically about what she
should do.
The
other important thing about this original Bobbsey Twins book is the fact that
is it extremely racist. Dinah and Sam are the two main African-American
characters in the story. Dinah is the family’s cook. She speaks in horrid
vernacular and dialect: “Well, I declar' to gracious! If yo' chillum ain't gone
an' mussed up de floah ag'in” (p. 6). (“Floah” in this case being “flour”.)
When readers are introduced to Sam, he is described as the “man of all work.”
He and Dinah live in “pleasant rooms” above the stable (p. 21). One of the few
illustrations in the book (done in nice glossy format) depicts the scene of
Dinah rescuing Freddie from his caved in snow house. She is drawn in a horribly
racist way. One might confuse her for Aunt Jemima—she's wearing a dotted dress,
a headscarf, and apron, and is depicted as having a very large nose and puffy
lips.
The
last form of racism is expressed in Flossie’s doll obsession. Flossie loves
dolls. She has five of them, one good, one okay, two that are missing parts,
and one called “Jujube, a colored boy, dressed in a fiery suit of red, with a
blue cap and real rubber boots. This doll had come from Sam and Dinah and had
been much admired at first but was now taken out only when all the others went
too” (p. 57). When Flossie has friends over, she tells them, “He doesn't really
belong to the [doll] family, you know. But I have to keep him, for Mama says,
there is no colored orphan asylum for dolls. Besides I don't think Sam and
Dinah would like to see their doll child in an asylum” (p. 57). Lastly, the
poor Jujube’s home is described as: “The dolls were all kept in a row in a big
bureau drawer at the top of the house, but Flossie always took pains to
separate Jujube from the rest by placing the cover of the pasteboard box
between them” (p. 57).
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