Themes
Susan Coolidge shared her publisher, Roberts Brothers, with Louisa May Alcott, and What Katy Did helped satisfy the demand for naturalistic novels about girlhood that followed the 1868 success of Little Women. Like Alcott, Coolidge heightened the realism of her novel by drawing on her own childhood memories.
What Katy Did also illustrates social shifts. First the novel depicts the treatment of fun in the 19th century. After her accident, young Katy is given lots of love and care however, she is sad confined to an upstairs room and, although she has a wheelchair, she never goes further than her bedroom window. The possibility that she could leave her room is barely considered and no-one thinks of moving her to the ground floor. She copes by making herself and her room so pleasant that everyone comes to her. Early on, she goes out in a carriage, but finds the experience so painful that she never tries it again. Thereafter, she lives in her bedroom, makes the best of things and waits, hoping to outgrow her injury. There is no physical therapy instead Katy is warned to avoid too much movement lest she "set herself back". Cousin Helen manages to travel a little, and even goes for a Hydrotherapy Water Cure at one point however it is made clear that she has no hope of ever walking again.
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Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
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“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
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