Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

If you went to school in the 50s or 60s, you probably have such fond memories of *Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm* that you think of it as being *of* that time, even though it was actually published in 1903.

Kids of the 70s and later may only know the book through the trickle-down of pop culture—remember when Spike called Buffy Rebecca of Sunnyhell Farm?—Which is too bad, since to seek out the primary source is to discover a wonderful, vibrant novel that's rich with literary references and subtly but deftly political in a way that still resonates 100 years later.

And actually, it's a lot funnier than secondhand *Buffy* banter, too. No Pollyanna Cowgirl she, Rebecca is a dark-haired, irrepressible little creature and a budding poet to boot. At ten or eleven (whichever it is, she has "an air of being small for her age" but possesses huge, dancing eyes "like faith") she's been sent from her family farm to live in the town of Riverboro, Maine with her unmarried aunts Jane and Miranda, two starchy New England ladies who aren't used to boisterous kid energy. The first of Rebecca's melodramatic poems appears in a letter home to her mother:

This house is dark and dull and dreer
No light doth shine from far or near
Its like the tomb.

And those of us who live herein
Are most as dead as serrafim
Though not as good.

With its access to education and freedom from the responsibility of a passel of younger siblings, Rebecca's stay at "the brick house" is to be the making of her. But like the boy heroes of Mark Twain's novels (he was a friend of the author's, and one of her many literary admirers), Rebecca is rebellious--almost helplessly so--the Dorothy Parker of her one-room schoolhouse. Asked to write a composition on the dismal theme of "Joy and Duty," she produced two memorable lines of verse: "When joy and duty come to clash/ Let duty go to smash."

The kid charms the pants off everybody (except, seemingly, for old Miranda, who "had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.") Adam Ladd, a man of around 30 who grew up barefoot in Riverboro before making his fortune in the railroad, takes such a shine to Rebecca that he becomes her benefactor, assisting in raising her with the hope of one day marrying her. Sounds kind of creepy to modern readers, but as the book's editor, Susan K. Harris, writes in a new introduction, it was a literary convention of the time.

Although it's considered a children's classic, Harris writes that in its early days, before such concepts as "niche marketing" took hold on the publishing industry, *Rebecca* was read by adults and lauded by critics. Likewise, Harris' academic introduction and detailed footnotes make this edition suitable for grown-ups, but the story itself remains a delightful discovery of American culture for young readers. Rebecca's consciousness is a uniquely Yankee blend of Bible study, lines from Longfellow, visiting missionaries' exotic stories of the "heathen nations," the blooming natural beauty of Maine in the summer, and old-school Protestant propriety. Her school friends' terrific names--there's a Minnie Smellie, a Huldah Meserve and a "Seesaw" Simpson--make the book feel like Dickens on rocky New England soil.

Rebecca comes of age at precisely the moment in history when there may have been something more than cooking, sewing, and child rearing in her future—but just maybe. "I confess I want Rebecca to have a career," says Miss Maxwell, the English teacher at Rebecca's secondary school. "I don't," responds Mr. Ladd cheerfully. Miss Maxwell accepts his remark in good humor—every scene in the book that's a reflection of society is drawn with an exquisitely subtle hand—but the implication is unignorable.

We leave Rebecca at 17, not having chosen between marriage and career, but looking with hope toward adulthood. A century later, when everything from book publishing to church going has changed irrevocably, the decisions facing young women aren't much easier to navigate. More poignantly, people haven't changed at all. They're as as tough and sad, as simple and complex, and as capable of sweetness and humor as the characters in this timeless book.