Discussion Report, Group __________________ Reporter:__________________________

Others participating:
 
 
 
 
 

1. Katy is represented as a power within her small world of school and home, both before and after she is injured. What are the limitations and sources of her power? What does the book tell girls about becoming women?
2. Discuss the models of adult femininity presented in this book. Include at least five different women.
3. What do we learn from this book about the activities and interests of middle-class New England children in the last part of the nineteenth century?
4. Illness and death play a role in this book. Compare the use of illness and/or death in the other books we have read.
5. Do you think fathers typically read this and the other books we have read so far? Is there a message for or at least about fathering in the "golden age" books we have encountered? We have here also another absent or dead mother. Why would the presence of a mother interfere with the development of these stories?
6. Discuss the beginning and ending of this book, in comparison with the others we have read.  Adult novels can end with marriage, death, a goal achieved, a mystery solved (question answered), a return to the beginning, perhaps with a key alteration in the situation, or a sense that there is no ending. (Perhaps you can think of other possibilities.)  Do children's books have all these options?