44 pages • 1 hour read
Betty MacDonaldMrs. Piggle Wiggle
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Themes
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BetaThemes
Bad Behavior Doesn’t Negate Intrinsic Goodness
One of the novel’s most pervasive themes is that bad behaviors don’t negate children’s intrinsic goodness. Rather than children being portrayed as either bad or good, they are described as innately good, with their negative behaviors represented as habits or ailments rather than character traits. Both in narration and in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s speech, children’s good qualities are consistently mentioned alongside or in addition to the bad behaviors they are exhibiting. For example, Hubert was “moderately generous about letting other children play with [his toys], but he never put his things away” (24). The passage shows a positive character trait (generosity) alongside a negative behavior (failure to pick up toys). Similarly, every time Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle speaks to a concerned mother, she mentions one of their child’s positive qualities even as she focuses on relaying the cure to the problem at hand. When Dick Thompson’s mother calls, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle tells her that “although he is a dear little boy and the most well-mannered child who comes to visit me, never once forgetting to say Thank you and Please, he is very selfish” (55). Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s focus on children’s good qualities emphasizes that bad behavior doesn’t undo, but operates alongside, a child’s positive personality traits or intrinsic goodness. In addition to children’s character, these affirmations are also soothing to parents who are often self-conscious about their child’s behavioral issues.
The idea of bad behavior as a habit or illness is also central to the novel’s representation of this theme. Rather than being described as character traits or aspects of personality, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is emphatic about the fact that bad behaviors are contagious ailments that develop like habits and spread among children. MacDonald uses word choice reflective of illness throughout the novel to represent behaviors as “diseases” like “Answerbackism or Won’t-Put-Away-Toys-itis” (56). All of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s recommendations are termed as “cures” rather than parenting techniques or discipline strategies. Similarly, behaviors are represented as ailments because of the focus on contagion. Once Patsy starts refusing to take baths, her mother begins calling friends to find out “if it was catching” (69). Similarly, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle describes Anne and Joan’s Fighter-Quarreleritis as a highly contagious condition and a habit. Both representations of habit and illness distance bad behavior from intrinsic character. Overall, the novel emphasizes that negative behaviors are distinct from the child’s good qualities and innate character, instead representing them as ailments that can be cured.
The Creation of Everyday Magic
While Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is set in reality, its tone is consistently whimsical. One of the most important lessons Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle teaches her children friends, both through their interactions and her cures, is how to create everyday magic. MacDonald frequently uses detailed descriptions to increase the novel’s whimsical tone. This type of detail often reflects a childlike, imaginative spirit. For example, before Hubert becomes upset at becoming trapped in his room, he tells his mother, “I’ve got a bear pen made out of bureau drawers and my bed’s the mother bear’s house and my train runs under my bed thirteen times now” (34). This passage is a good example of the novel’s whimsy because it shows the focus on detail in producing it—that the train goes under the bed 13 times—as well as on the power of a childlike imagination in creating magic through play.
The novel emphasizes the idea that attitude is what makes things magical, rather than situations or material possessions. Speaking with Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Mrs. Prentiss is surprised to learn that Hubert, who has “two little automobiles with rubber tires, real horns, leather seats big enough for two boys and lights that turned on with a switch (28), is building a car in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s backyard “out of orange crates and empty tomato cans” (28). This passage suggests that the fun of play is not based on the price or quality of the toys but on company and attitude.
Attitude is particularly important in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s approach to making household tasks that would otherwise be banal into magical experiences. Rather than telling children to introduce fun and games into their household chairs, she models the behavior for them. She pretends to be a princess captured by a wicked witch when she is showing Mary Lou how she makes doing the dishes fun, going up the stairs and coming back as “a terrible old witch with a long black dress, a tall black hat and a big gnarly black cane” (15). Her influence on the children is evident because when Hubert finally does begin to clean up his toys, he “played little games, pretending that he was racing someone to see who could find the most parts of a game the quickest” (36). Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s childlike spirit infuses whimsy into her approach to household tasks as well as play and is clearly influential on the children in the novel. MacDonald emphasizes that imagination and a childlike spirit are what transform the everyday or the banal into the whimsical and magical.
Role of Community in Parenting
The novel emphasizes the importance of community in parenting. Two main aspects of this theme are Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s role in the neighborhood children’s lives and in mothers’ impulse to call their friends for advice when their children exhibit problematic behavior. The neighborhood children all spend time at Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house, as “every child in town is a friend of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s but she knows very few of their parents” (12). Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s friendship with the children is unique as it is framed as true friendship rather than being a formal childcare setting or favor to the parents. She knows the children well, enjoys playing with them, and treats them with respect. For example, the narrator observes that “one day I saw her digging in her garden wearing the jewelled crown and with hair billowing down her back. She waved gaily and said, ‘I promised Betsy [one of her children's friends] that I would not touch this hair until she came home from school” (10). This passage shows that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cares more about a promise made to a child friend than how she appears in public or to other adults. The representation of the novel’s neighborhood is aligned with a 1940s setting of small-town America in which children can safely go around their neighborhood unattended. Characters reappear throughout the novel (e.g., Bobby, Larry, and Susan attend Patsy’s birthday party, at which Hubert is also mentioned), suggesting that the community is relatively small and intimate. MacDonald thus represents an ideal of a collaborative “village-based” approach to raising children.
The representation of advice-seeking phone calls is the novel’s other main representation of this theme. The first impulse of the mothers in each chapter after their child begins displaying a negative behavior is to call other parents in the neighborhood for advice. This reflects the novel’s 1940s setting as well since word-of-mouth was the most effective mode of collecting advice before the advent of technologies that would make information-gathering quicker and less personal. While mothers’ desire to seek advice from other mothers appears in each chapter, the responses they receive are never particularly helpful. A string of unhelpful calls is what leads each mother to her conversation with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. MacDonald represents these phone calls satirically and in a humorous tone throughout the novel. For example, when Mrs. Prentiss calls Mrs. Bags for advice about Hubert’s failure to pick up his toys, she is told it is too “late in life” since “we started Ermintrude picking up her toys when she was six months old. [...] Now, she is so neat that she becomes hysterical if she sees a crumb on the floor” (26). The advice received often represents a hyperbolic approach to parenting and is a source of annoyance rather than help. In addition to contributing to the novel’s humorous tone, these calls suggest that while necessary to parenting, the process of seeking community can also be irksome. Overall, the novel provides a well-rounded representation of the importance of community in raising children.
