Plot
MacDonald begins her book with a summary description of her childhood and family. Her father was an engineer, and moved frequently with his family throughout the West. Her mother's theory that a wife must support her husband in his career comes into play when the author marries a friend of her brother ("Bob") who soon admits that his dream is to leave his current office job and start a chicken ranch. Knowing nothing about ranching, but eager to support her husband, the author encourages the dream but is unprepared for the primitive conditions that exist on the ranch he purchases.
From this "set up" the book turns to anecdotal stories that rely upon the proverbial "fish out of water" tales that pit MacDonald against her situation and her surroundings, such as the struggle to keep up with the need for water, which needs to be hand carried from a pond to the house until a tank is installed or keeping a fire going in "Stove" or the constant care that chicks need. At one point a guest expresses envy of MacDonald and her husband, as she thinks they live a life full of fresh air and beautiful scenery, which is then followed by MacDonald pointing out that while the guest had lounged in bed that morning, she and her husband had been up before sunrise working for several hours, and then again the couple had stayed up long into the night after the guest had gone to bed.
Read more about this topic: The Egg And I
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
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—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)