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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Mother Carey's Chickens," Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin crafts a heartwarming narrative set against the backdrop of rural New England, where themes of family, resilience, and the unexpected joys of childhood unfold. The book depicts the life of the Carey family, particularly focusing on the relationship between nurturing mother figures and their children, all woven into a rich tapestry of evocative descriptions and poignant dialogue. Wiggin's literary style is characterized by her lyrical prose and an inherent optimism, echoing the sentimental traditions of late 19th-century American literature while simultaneously pushing boundaries in her exploration of female agency and socio-economic challenges. Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin was an influential American author and social reformer. Growing up in a large, loving family propelled her interest in childhood and maternal relationships, themes that are central to "Mother Carey's Chickens." As a pioneer in children's literature, Wiggin's experiences as a kindergarten teacher and her involvement in educational reforms already hinted at her understanding of children's needs, inspiring her to create narratives that resonate deeply with young audiences and their caretakers alike. This charming novel is a must-read for anyone interested in classic American literature or the rich tapestry of familial love. Wiggin's thoughtful insights into childhood and parental devotion offer timeless lessons, making it a delightful read for both adults and children alike. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Mother Carey's Chickens
Table of Contents
Introduction
Out of loss and tightened means, a family learns to transform scarcity into sufficiency through work, imagination, and the steadfast warmth of a mother’s care.
Mother Carey’s Chickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin is a classic of domestic fiction that blends humor, sentiment, and moral reflection. First published in the early 1910s, it is set in the United States during the early twentieth century and focuses on the rhythms of ordinary life. The novel’s canvas is intimate—a household, a neighborhood, a circle of friends—yet its concerns are wide: how people sustain one another, how a home is made rather than found, and how character is revealed in the quiet persistence of everyday choices.
At its core is the Carey family, facing financial and emotional upheaval after a profound change in circumstance. Guided by a wise and optimistic mother, they relocate to simpler quarters and begin the steady work of rebuilding their lives. The plot unfolds in a sequence of domestic episodes—small crises, modest triumphs, and unexpected kindnesses—rather than in sensational twists. Readers encounter a warm, gently comic, and deeply humane narrative voice that offers solace as much as entertainment. The mood is hopeful without denying hardship, making the book a companionable experience that values tenderness, resilience, and practical cheer.
Wiggin invites readers to consider the ethics of thrift and generosity, the dignity of labor, and the quiet heroism embedded in caretaking. The story emphasizes how leadership can look like listening, planning, and nudging rather than commanding. It also explores the formative power of example: children learn not from lectures but from the lived habits of patience, courage, and gratitude. Community matters here, too—neighbors become part of the fabric of survival and joy. These themes are presented without sermonizing, emerging naturally from the family’s efforts to make a home that shelters spirits as well as bodies.
Stylistically, the book balances bright humor with a reflective, almost conversational poise. Wiggin’s scenes are built from tactile detail—meals prepared, rooms arranged, conversations braided with jokes and gentle reproofs—so that the reader feels the texture of domestic life. The structure is episodic, allowing characters to deepen through repeated, ordinary contact rather than dramatic revelations. A sense of moral clarity guides the narration, but the tone remains affectionate and observant rather than severe. The result is a narrative that is both comforting and bracing, attentive to the small economies by which affection, time, and energy are saved and shared.
For contemporary readers, the novel’s relevance is striking. It models resourcefulness under constraint, showing how purpose can be found in tending a household, supporting loved ones, and building trust within a community. Its attention to repair—of rooms, routines, and relationships—speaks to present-day conversations about sustainability and care work. It also foregrounds the agency of young people, who experiment, fail, and try again under the shelter of maternal steadiness. Without prescribing solutions, the book poses enduring questions: What constitutes real wealth? How do we measure success when money is scarce? What does a flourishing home require of each member?
Approached as a family chronicle, Mother Carey’s Chickens offers a restorative reading experience: intimate in scale, luminous in feeling, and steady in its moral compass. It rewards readers who enjoy character-driven storytelling where change is measured in attitudes, habits, and rooms slowly made beautiful through attention. As a work from the early twentieth century by a pioneering American author of children’s and family literature, it also offers a glimpse of its period’s values and aspirations. Above all, it is a novel about making and keeping a home—in spirit and in practice—when circumstances demand ingenuity, patience, and a stubborn belief in brighter days.
Synopsis
Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Mother Carey’s Chickens follows the resilient Carey family during a period of change and loss. The title comes from the children’s nickname, a reminder of their mother’s steady, guiding presence and their habit of bringing cheer wherever they go. At the outset, the family’s life is modest but close-knit, with routines shaped by a father’s service and frequent moves. The story centers on the mother and her four children—Nancy, Kathleen, Gilbert, and Peter—whose affection for one another is matched by practical resourcefulness. Early chapters establish tone, relationships, and the family’s shared belief in making the best of limited means.
A sudden bereavement alters the Careys’ prospects, and financial constraints require decisive changes. With calm determination, Mrs. Carey leads the family to exchange city compromises for the possibilities of a rural life. A worn but roomy house in a New England village, available cheaply if they can repair and maintain it, becomes their focus. The move is both necessity and experiment, testing whether affection and ingenuity can substitute for money. The narrative tracks the packing, farewells, and first glimpses of their new surroundings, emphasizing the mother’s quiet leadership and the children’s mix of apprehension and excitement as they face unknown responsibilities.
Arrival at the old house introduces practical challenges and small discoveries. The rooms are shabby, the garden neglected, and the roof unreliable, but the layout suggests warmth and possibility. Each child adopts tasks suited to temperament: Nancy’s organizing flair, Kathleen’s neatness, Gilbert’s strength, and Peter’s eagerness. Neighbors offer advice, barter, and sometimes skepticism, while the family learns local customs and rhythms. Scenes of cleaning, mending, and improvising form the early backbone of the narrative, as the Careys test each idea against their budget. Their first successes—however modest—reinforce a central pattern: shared labor, cheerful economies, and respect for the mother’s standards.
Domestic transformation becomes both plot and theme. The family reimagines furnishings, turns castoffs into serviceable comforts, and cultivates the garden for food and pleasure. To stretch funds, they experiment with home industries and careful saving, tracking coins and chores with equal seriousness. Letters, songs, and household rituals keep spirits steady, while nearby friends provide practical help. The children’s personalities sharpen through responsibility: Nancy proves imaginative and steady; Gilbert wrestles with pride; Kathleen balances taste and order; Peter develops courage. The house, once dilapidated, begins to feel like home, symbolizing the way cooperation and purpose can reshape circumstances without extravagance.
A shift occurs when a cousin from a wealthier branch, Julia, comes to live with the Careys temporarily. Accustomed to comforts, she challenges the household’s plain habits and tests its patience. Rather than confront her head-on, Mrs. Carey relies on consistent expectations and example. Nancy includes Julia in projects and school life, offering companionship without abandoning the family’s standards. The village provides a neutral stage where contrasts in upbringing play out in everyday tasks and small social obligations. Gradually, Julia observes how affection and usefulness earn regard, setting up a quiet arc of reconsideration that unfolds alongside the Careys’ adjustments.
Another thread centers on Gilbert, whose budding independence leads to mistakes with real consequences. An impulsive choice obliges him to make restitution, and he accepts work to clear the obligation. The sequence highlights the story’s emphasis on honesty and earned self-respect rather than punishment alone. At the same time, Nancy organizes a modest entertainment and community effort to meet necessary bills, demonstrating the practical link between creativity and solvency. These episodes show how the family confronts setbacks openly, using them to teach skills and character. The community’s measured support mirrors the Careys’ own ethos: help paired with personal responsibility.
As seasons turn, the house grows into a lively hub for neighbors and school friends. Harvests, holidays, and small performances mark time, and the family’s thrift becomes a kind of craft. A distant owner or benefactor, once merely a name on a lease, becomes aware of the improvements and of the Careys’ reputation in the village. Hints of decisions beyond their control—about property, prospects, and future security—gather in the background, creating tension without overshadowing daily scenes. The narrative balances homely detail with a widening horizon, suggesting that the stability the family builds may soon be tested.
A period of strain arrives, including illness, bad weather, and difficult news that affects plans and loyalties. The children step into larger roles: Nancy steadies morale, Kathleen keeps order, Gilbert chooses duty over pride, and Peter proves unexpectedly helpful. Julia faces a moment that requires choosing between comfort and commitment, clarifying the changes she has undergone since arriving. Throughout, Mrs. Carey remains the quiet center, guiding without dramatics. The sequence crystallizes the book’s blueprint: courage expressed as steady doing, love as daily service, and hope as a practical habit. Their home, though fragile, holds because its bonds hold.
The closing chapters gather the threads into a forward-looking outcome without grand gestures. The family’s work yields a measure of security, and the relationships forged through shared effort endure. Each child emerges with clearer purpose and a place in the home’s ongoing enterprise, while Julia’s path resolves with new understanding. The book leaves readers with a coherent message: that cheerful industry, good will, and imagination can convert scarcity into sufficiency and strangers into neighbors. The title’s figure is apt; like the hardy sea birds sailors watch in rough weather, Mother Carey’s chickens persist, heartening others as they go.
Historical Context
Mother Carey’s Chickens unfolds in early twentieth‑century New England, largely in a small coastal community that evokes rural Maine while maintaining close cultural and economic ties to Boston. The period around 1900–1912 saw modest town life shaped by fishing, timber, and seasonal resort trade, with rail links funneling urban visitors to summer houses along the Atlantic. Households relied on kerosene, wood stoves, and increasingly the telephone, while electricity and indoor plumbing spread unevenly beyond city centers. The novel’s domestic spaces, neighborhood reciprocity, and class encounters mirror this region’s blend of old Yankee frugality and the rising presence of urban wealth vacationing in New England’s seaboard villages.
The Progressive Era’s domestic science movement decisively frames the novel’s world. Chemist and social reformer Ellen H. Swallow Richards (1842–1911), the first woman to study at MIT (1870s), organized the Lake Placid Conferences on Home Economics (1899–1908) and helped found the American Home Economics Association in 1908, promoting sanitation, nutrition, budgeting, and efficient household management as public goods. By 1910, high schools in Boston and other cities were adding domestic science courses; the USDA distributed bulletins on canning, safe water, and food preservation, while municipal boards encouraged household hygiene to combat infectious disease. The home was newly cast as an engine of civic health and moral stability rather than a purely private sphere. This agenda intertwined with practical tools: standardized recipes, cost accounting, and the spread of labor‑saving arrangements within modest means. Rural and small‑town families adopted these ideas selectively, aided by mail‑order catalogs and local lectures. Within this climate, Mother Carey’s Chickens valorizes frugality, meal planning, mending, and home improvement as intelligent, progressive labor. The family’s reorganization of a worn summer house into a sanitary, orderly, welcoming dwelling stage‑manages core home economics ideals—good ventilation, cleanliness, thrift, and cheerful cooperation. The mother’s pedagogy of character through domestic tasks reflects the era’s belief, voiced by Richards and kindred reformers, that household management was a science with measurable social returns. The narrative also tacitly engages emerging public supports for family welfare—debated in the late 1900s and realized in the first mothers’ pension laws beginning in 1911—by portraying the precarious finances of a widow who must make economy serve dignity and education for her children.
The Spanish–American War (1898) and subsequent naval expansion set a cultural backdrop for the Carey family’s military ties. The 1898 war, fought in Cuba and the Philippines, ended with the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898), ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. Admiral George Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay (May 1, 1898) symbolized a new American sea power later dramatized by the Great White Fleet’s world cruise (1907–1909). The book’s title borrows sailors’ lore—“Mother Carey’s chickens,” the storm petrels—while the absent officer‑father and the family’s resilience mirror households affected by late‑1890s service, deployments, and the uncertainties of military life.
Financial shocks of the era, especially the Panic of 1907, supply a realistic context for middle‑class retrenchment. Triggered in October 1907 by the failed United Copper stock corner and runs on New York trust companies, the panic was contained only after J. P. Morgan’s orchestrated rescue; it led to the Aldrich–Vreeland Act (1908) and, ultimately, the Federal Reserve Act (1913). Even families far from Wall Street felt tighter credit, diminished incomes, and a culture of thrift. The Careys’ budget constraints, careful accounting, and willingness to relocate to a cheaper house reflect how such volatility pressed respectable households to practice disciplined economy and postpone comforts.
The rise of New England resort culture (1880–1910) and the railroads that fed it shape the novel’s setting of a summer residence owned by an urban family. The Maine Central Railroad and the Boston & Maine Railroad funneled Bostonians and New Yorkers to coastal towns like Bar Harbor, Kennebunkport, and Ogunquit; “cottage” colonies multiplied, and seasonal landlords leased painted houses to summer people. This economy heightened encounters between wealthy vacationers and year‑round residents. Mother Carey’s Chickens mirrors these dynamics through the family’s tenancy of a gentleman’s summer house and their negotiations across class lines, emphasizing good stewardship, mutual obligation, and the moral claims of use over idle display.
Women’s civic activism in the Progressive Era provides another living context. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs, founded in 1890, grew to more than a million members by 1906, promoting public health, school reforms, and “civic housekeeping.” Massachusetts suffragists campaigned vigorously in the 1910s, though a statewide referendum failed on November 2, 1915. Reformers like Jane Addams articulated the ethics of domestic skill applied to public welfare. The Carey mother’s leadership—organizing, educating children in service, and improving shared spaces—reflects this ideology. The daughters’ community‑minded initiatives echo clubwomen’s emphasis on practical uplift, situating domestic virtue as a lever for broader social good without overtly partisan rhetoric.
Child welfare and youth reform crest in the book’s timeframe. President Theodore Roosevelt convened the White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children in 1909, urging foster homes over orphanages and catalyzing mothers’ pension laws, first statewide in Illinois in 1911 and spreading by 1913. Youth organizations—Boy Scouts of America (1910), Camp Fire Girls (1910), and Girl Scouts of the USA (1912)—promoted character, skill, and service. Kate Douglas Wiggin’s own background as a kindergarten pioneer in San Francisco (Silver Street Free Kindergarten, 1878) informs the novel’s portrayal of children’s self‑government, chores, and moral education, presenting the home as a training ground aligned with national child‑saving priorities.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the precariousness of genteel families dependent on a single male income and the inequities of a society that prized domestic virtue yet offered scant structural support to widowed mothers. It contrasts idle wealth in seasonal properties with the ethical labor of those who maintain and inhabit them, challenging conspicuous consumption and absentee stewardship. By elevating household management to civic importance, it questions gendered devaluation of domestic work while endorsing Progressive claims for women’s public influence. The narrative thereby critiques class distance, urges reciprocity between owners and tenants, and anticipates early welfare measures aimed at stabilizing families in adversity.
