Lanterna Rally

Author: Zona Gale

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9781499560404

An excerpt from Topics, Volume 1-2 [1920]: THE story of "Miss Lulu Bett" is a very real — sometimes pathetically real — sketch of the life of an ordinary middle western family, composed of Mr. and Mrs. Deacon, their two daughters, and Mother Bett and Sister Lulu, who are “making their home" with the Deacons. In return for her home, Lulu fills the role of family drudge; accepts the jibes and elephantine witticisms directed at her by her pompously humorous brother-in-law; pampers the child Monona; endures the superior airs of her married sister; and in general makes the family comfortable, not because of any love or gratitude which she feels for them, but rather from habit, colorless passivity, and failure to realize the possibility of a condition of affairs other than as they are. But into the story strolls stodgy Ninian Deacon, to whom years of travel in South America and the Islands have failed to impart more than a one-candle-power glamour; and Ninian is the instrument whom fate and Zona Gale select to rescue Lulu from the rut of passive acceptance of her lot. It is not a large story, and — it does not pretend to be. It does not force large emotions and grand passions upon people too small to contain them. Lulu Bett does not develop from the family drudge into the butterfly of the emancipated woman; but in very realistic fashion, she is shoved out of an old habit of living and thinking, by chance and trivial circumstance. She is not a pretty woman even though she may have her pretty moments; she is not even always pathetic in an appealing way — she is at times rather a sorry figure of the type that makes you feel rather pained and ashamed; but she is interesting because she is a real person in the process of developing a backbone. And the happy culmination of the story for Lulu, in spite of her goodness rather than because of it, is a satisfying ending. Aside from the interest in Lulu's story, the most notable feature of the book is the cool analysis of the motives for everyday actions; old Mrs. Bett's tantrums are indulged in at great personal inconvenience for the sheer bliss of making the rest of the family uncomfortable; Monona refuses the food offered her at meal time for the pleasure of being in the limelight. It is an interesting study in compelling motives, not flattering to the human race, but quite convincing. "Miss Lulu Bett" is a good story for those who like “that sort of thing", and even for those who don't.