Betty MacDonald (1) (1908–1958)

I don't know how someone can find humor in having tuberculosis, but then again, I'm not Betty MacDonald. She can find the funny in just about everything. This serious illness has come late to Betty. She is almost thirty, already married and divorced and a mother to two small children. Everything about tuberculosis is a mystery to her. The Pine's list of treatments includes a long list of rules for new patients: no reading, no writing, no talking, no singing, no laughing, no plants, no show more flowers, no outside medications, no talking to other patients' visitors, no personal clothes, and most damning of all, no hot water bottles. The goal is rest, rest, rest. When Betty first arrives at the sanitarium she doesn't know if being cold all the time is a sign her disease is worse than others. Then she realizes it is cold all the time...for everyone. There is a great deal made of analyzing one's sputum - determine color and measuring exactly how much is expelled. Betty wishes she had a more ladylike disease such as a brain tumor or a hot climate disease like jungle rot.
Despite the rules, the constant cold, and the overbearing Charge nurse, Betty makes friends and finds something to laugh at the entire time. How she leaves The Pines was a bit of a surprise to me but I'll leave that for you to read. show less

Betty MacDonald is by all accounts just a housewife. A housewife with a wicked sense of humor and the ability to transfer that humor to paper. In The Egg and I she tells of the time in her life when soon after getting married she follows her new husband from Butte Montana to the Olympia mountains to start up, of all things, an egg farm. From a young age her mother had always drilled it into her head to support her husband's chosen vocation and while chickens and their subsequent eggs weren't show more Betty's thing she dutifully packs her bags and with great determination tries to become a chicken-farming, egg-picking, hard-working housewife. Hilarity ensues. show less

In the 1930s, author Betty MacDonald spent nine months in a Seattle sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis. In this memoir, she recalls her treatment at The Pines, her fellow patients, and the doctors, nurses, and other staff who cared for the patients.

I found parts of the book laugh-out-loud funny. I particularly loved Betty’s first roommate Kimi, a Japanese American teenager whose combination of wisdom and wit triggered most of my laughter. I found other parts of the book disturbing. show more The Pines was a public sanatorium for those who could not afford private treatment. The patients were constantly reminded of this, and the threat of discharge was used as a means of behavior control.

Besides my love for MacDonald’s writing, I also wanted to read her memoir because I had a great uncle who died from tuberculosis in the 1930s after spending time in a sanatorium. MacDonald’s detailed account of sanatorium life gives me an idea of what my uncle might have experienced during his own illness and ultimately unsuccessful treatment. show less

And then winter settled down and I realized that defeat, like morale, is a lot of little things.

Betty MacDonald remembers the first two years of her marriage, in which she and her husband create and run a chicken ranch located in the wilds of Washington state. Originally published in 1945, the writing style reminded me of Jean Webster (who wrote Daddy-Long-Legs), with its mix of charm and dry wit. MacDonald finds the humor in any situation and is as willing to poke fun at herself as she is show more at the people around her. She has to fight to adjust to rural living and to the hardships and constant work involved, but she's game.

There is one aspect that mars this outrageously delightful memoir; MacDonald mixes in a large helping of racism aimed at the local Native Americans, which culminates in her being glad that their land was being taken from them. Even her husband asks her to take it down a notch, and given that the flaws she sees in them are exactly the same flaws she sees in many of the men around her, it's surprising that she never notices that she only sees white people as individually flawed. I'd like to give her the benefit of simply being a product of her own time, but as her own husband asks her to take it down a notch, it seems she was bigoted even by the standards of her time.

I loved this book until I didn't. I can see why it's been allowed to sink into obscurity and at the same time I'm sorry about that -- it's such a vivid, insightfully rendered picture of a specific time and place. show less