42 pages • 1 hour read
Richard PeckFair Weather
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Country Ways Versus City Ways
Fair Weather is built around a structural and linguistic juxtaposition of town and country, making this the novel’s central theme. The novel explores the pros and cons of each lifestyle as part of the coming-of-age narrative, especially to illustrate the young characters’ navigation of incipient adulthood, moral and social judgments, and the changes of time in history.
The novel’s first four chapters, set on and around the Beckett farm, show both the limitations and the benefits of country life. On the one hand, everyone in the family, even Granddad and seven-year-old Buster, pulls together to keep the farm going. Though Rosie, writing from an undisclosed point in the future, knows the family was poor, she adds, “Poor but proud” (1). On the other hand, the children have never taken a train ride or traveled far from home, and high school only lasts for two years. They speak in quaint country sayings, often using colorful similes, as when Buster “ooze[s] away like a barn cat” (9). Strong-willed Lottie has managed to grow up and come into her own in this setting. Rosie, who is spunky when she is on her home turf and timid away from home, is far less assured. As a main character, she will be challenged to the utmost by city life—and forced to change. Richard Peck signals Rosie’s forthcoming change throughout with frequent reminders that she is writing from a point in the future.
City life is a shock for all the Becketts, but especially Rosie, whose spunkiness goes into hiding for several chapters. The fair is so overwhelming that at first, she can only describe it in generalities: the “human tidal wave” that swept them along and the way the “whole sky was on fire” (62). She repeatedly wishes she had never left home, especially after she tries to introduce her aunt to the leading lady of Chicago society. This is the point at which she decides she “wasn’t ready for the world” (96). Rosie’s challenge up to this point has been that she has no role models to show her how a young lady should behave in the city. Lottie has withdrawn into secrecy; Mama is at home; Euterpe is perpetually frightened and constantly seeks acceptance into society while never taking action to gain it. When she, Lottie, and Euterpe sit in Buffalo Bill’s box seats near Lillian Russell, Rosie has “learned [the] hard lesson” (115) that you don’t speak to people to whom you have not been introduced. This is another of the novel’s subversive messages, however: Society decorum may state that ladies must be introduced but, when Lillian Russell and Euterpe engage with each other informally, it is the catalyst for social acceptance for Euterpe. The novel shows that a happy medium between country and city ways can be reached. Casting off her prejudices, Euterpe shows Rosie how to mediate between strict city mores and human kindness as she speaks warmly to Lillian Russell and shakes the actress’s hand. Rosie reflects that this is how “things could be between two ladies of real refinement” (120). Rosie brings this new knowledge into the fancy evening at the Danforth Evanses, where she carries herself with dignity.
The Advantages of Family Love and Friendship Compared With Wealth Alone
This theme underpins the novel’s exploration of varying attitudes and approaches to life as a model for young people in building a happy future. Consistently, the novel emphasizes that family support and security are more important than the pursuit of wealth and status, even when that family may be humble or unsophisticated. The novel establishes a happy family context in the opening chapters that it then deploys as a moral and structural force, following the family’s transplantation to Chicago. The effect the family members have on each other as agents of growth and change is far more powerful than anything Euterpe’s money can buy.
Euterpe is a key moral example in this theme. She is desperately lonely before the family comes to stay with her. Despite marrying into wealth, she has been unable to buy her way into Chicago society because of the stigma of marrying her employer who, the story suggests, divorced his first wife in order to marry Euterpe. Although Euterpe is shown to be a victim of the judgment and elitism of Chicago’s highest echelons, the novel also shows that she is a victim of her own unrealistic social aspirations. These lead her into ridiculous social pretensions and unkind judgments of others, focused around the socially controversial figure of Lillian Russell. They also limit her ability to enjoy life’s pleasures. Euterpe’s family shows her that love and kindness are more important than social status and snobbery. It is significant as a lesson against judgment that it is Granddad—the most unrefined of her family—who introduces Euterpe to his key social connections during the Wild West show.
Granddad’s unfettered enthusiasms and unexpected connections also create change in the other family members. He introduces them to Buffalo Bill, creating in Buster an enduring love for Western lore that he will transform into a future career. By convincing Euterpe that she is no longer in mourning and must attend the ball at the Danforth Evanses, Granddad facilitates the entrance into Chicago society that his daughter has been unable to accomplish through wealth alone.
The young characters also play an important part in this theme. Lottie succeeds in getting Euterpe out of her widow’s weeds and into Chicago society over the course of the week-long visit. When Lottie grips her aunt’s elbow in Chapter 6 and seems to be “taking charge,” this signals the beginning of change in her aunt’s life. Euterpe has treated the children with condescension because of their education in a one-room schoolhouse, but Lottie is shown to be a complex, intelligent character despite her lack of formal schooling. She skillfully negotiates with her aunt, as when she tells her that the scandalous belly dancing is simply Salome’s dance from the Bible. She also withholds information about Everette’s identity until she can use it to her own advantage—and Euterpe’s. Lottie and Euterpe both benefit from one another’s characters and situations but, the novel shows, they do so as a result of their reciprocal support and generosity rather than the traded favors of society ladies.
This natural familial reciprocity underscores the novel’s whole structure. In providing the invitation to the Becketts to visit the fair, Euterpe makes a step that, the novel emphasizes, is out-of-character. Although she frames this as condescension, the young characters soon recognize her motivation as loneliness and—crucially—treat this with compassion. Euterpe’s initial invitation not only leads to her own happiness but gives Buster and Rosie a glimpse into a future they could never have imagined on the farm, and it facilitates Lottie’s marriage. The book’s conclusion confirms that her inclusion and support of them in Chicago changes the course of their lives forever. Euterpe also shows Rosie by example that a city is nothing to be afraid of and, ultimately, that both dignity and kindness are required if one is to lead a fulfilled life, even when this requires courage.
Female Power and Social Structures in the 1890s
The novel explores the complex issues around women’s status and agency at the time of the Chicago fair, an important part of its historical setting. For his young readership, Peck emphasizes the differences between women and girls’ experiences in 1890 compared to the present day, such as the lack of voting rights and the lecture on women’s suffrage which the female characters attend. More than simply factual recognition, however, this theme is fully developed as a means to explore the experiences of the female protagonist, especially as she must learn to navigate the difficult rules of adult female society.
The novel explores the tension around female freedom and control. “In the social world it is not the men who matter,” says Aunt Euterpe (114), and Fair Weather makes this point repeatedly. It’s ironic message is both comic and poignant. Women rule the social order for better or, as often seen in the novel, for worse. Personified by Mrs. Palmer, female social leaders act as gatekeepers for other women, preserving an elitist and rigid structure that tightly controls the freedom and choices of women. Women such as Euterpe and Lillian Russell are ostracized because they are associated with “scandalous” behavior such as “marrying up,” divorce, and acting. Desperate to be included by Mrs. Palmer, Euterpe repeats these prejudices about others. It is clear when she meets Russell, however, that the two women like each other and recognize that each has been snubbed by society. When Russell tells Euterpe, “Men at their most warlike are less cruel than women” (116), she creates an unlikely bridge between the two and shows Rosie—and the reader—the dangers of prejudging a person.
In contract to this complex female world, Peck portrays boys as straightforward and socially inept, at least through the perspective of the female characters. When Rosie contemplates her sister’s deception late in the novel, she concludes, “Give me boys every time” (130) because she believes they are so much easier to read. Because men are afforded more social freedoms, the antics of both Granddad and Buster provide a juxtaposition to the more coded female world. This gendered discrepancy creates one of the story’s funniest moments, when Buster asks the real Russell if she is named for the old mare. But, the novel suggests, women can adopt some of these male freedoms for themselves. Indeed, the historical setting and emphasis of progress frame the story within the trajectory of female emancipation in the United States.
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By Richard Peck
