Us by Mrs. Molesworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
First published in 1885, ‘Us’ is a fairly typical piece of children’s literature for this age. The good are good, the bad are bad, and the upper classes are full of moral upstanding-ness and the lower classes (particularly gypsies) are the worst. They are prejudices of the time, and though I don’t excuse them in the slightest, it’s important to recognise that they exists and that they colour this book quite substantially. Having said that however, it’s also important to recognise that this is a ferociously well-written book. Honestly, I was surprised by how post-modern it felt at points; Mrs Molesworth engages in asides to the reader, ruminations upon the motives of the characters, and genuinely tells this story in such a fresh and dynamic manner, that it doesn’t feel like an 1885 kind of story at all.
The children, however, are tools. Forgive me, but I can’t describe them in any other manner. Everybody is besotted with their angelic ways and their fair appearance, but then the kids accidentally break a bowl, don’t confess, decide to buy a new one from the gypsies, and then get stolen by said gypsies, and really there’s nobody to blame but their own idiocy at this point. Of course there’s some social commentary at play here and some pointed moralising about how it’s best to confess to your sins otherwise you might be stolen by gypsies and sold to a circus man, but that’s all par for the course for the books of this era. They work to maintain the status quo, whether it’s right or wrong. (I was particularly amused, for example, that the Noble Gypsy Boy Who Helps Out The Tool Children gets the happy reward of being their servant).
Baby speech aside (forgive me, but if you write about “mouses” and “teef”, that will always make you lose brownie points with me), not everybody does this as well as Mrs Molesworth. Us was a real surprise and a solid, solid read.
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Daisy May Johnson 