Book: On Growing Up Tough
Author: Taylor Caldwell
Year: 1971
Publisher: A Fawcett Crest Book
When writing a novel there is always room for the author’s own opinion especially when the book consists of reflections of their own childhood. But when opinion goes to the point of judgemental and arrogant, it can be a huge turn off for the reader.
You don’t come across a lot of successful writers who are ultra-conservative in their personal beliefs. Many play the role of neutral or lean on the curve of open-mindedness. Taylor Caldwell has little concern for your opinion and she expects you to adhere to her own.
What I believed to be a memoir of the author’s early years turned out to be an opinionated series of hodgepodge chapters pieced together to form incoherent thoughts. After a little research, I realized that the chapters were a series of articles published by Caldwell in the magazine American Opinion. It was lovely that the reader is completely unaware of this before diving into this 160-page novel. What was assumed to be a quick read became a nightly burden to finish.
The front cover is deceiving and definitely follows the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” And don’t because this book has a young woman holding her baby next to her assumed to be husband. In the background is a wooded area and cloth tent. So maybe we will be diving into a pioneering adventure. Well yes you do, but only for a chapter (and probably the most interesting of all the chapters).
She begins her book in England at a young age. She grew up with strict, middle-class parents who taught her tough love from the start. Her life even as a four-year-old is filled with chores and duties. She attends school and begins to receive an English education. Without much explanation, the family uproots to America.
Though the first few chapters seem to follow the pattern of a typical memoir of her early life, I am suspicious right from the start. The first chapter is titled Mrs. Buttons and speaks of her aunt who snips the buttons off coats she is donating to poor. She explains this as a typical liberal way to donate. Meaning that her aunt has never met the poor and assumes that they could surely afford to buy their own buttons.
Now Mrs. Buttons seems like an awful woman who donates on the notion that it is the right thing to do, but doesn’t actually want to deal with these unfortunate people. But please Ms. Caldwell can you explain to me how this has anything to do with liberal views? Your argument is weak and you describe that this was one of the incidents in your childhood that turned you into a dedicated conservative? It just doesn’t make much sense to me.
As a child she comes across as a little deviant. In one example, she fakes a heart condition and a serious fever to go home early from school in a chapter titled The Child-Lovers. Caldwell basically refers to child-lovers as people who don’t follow the traditional views of child raising, education, and discipline and who see children as innocent angels who need to be coddled. She wrote this book in 1971 and died in 1985. In the 1970s teachers were still disciplining children with the strap. One could only imagine how she would feel about teaching methods in the 21st century.
Caldwell believed that all children were as devious as she was and that they still are today. She writes:
“Children have not changed. And they are still wickedly clever. They fervently agree with new doctrine that they are innocent flowers, pure and uncorrupted and piteous, the prey of heartless adults…Discipline is now unknown…The schools are in total chaos (Caldwell, 62).”
She also has strong opinions on children working at a young age. She believes at the age of ten they should be doing work for money for their neighbours. By puberty, they should know that they are no longer children and as young adults they should be working after school to take up all their free time.
She makes the point that this is how she raised her own children. Can this even be called a childhood? Responsibilities are one thing. A part-time job in high school seems acceptable. But a person works their entire adult life and one could develop resentment towards such a parent of this nature. Not to mention, with a world full of creeps, who wants to ship their ten-year-old over to their suspicious neighbour's to do housework.
She also speaks on the roles of men and women and how it is currently ruining American life. These are excerpts from her chapter titled Women’s Lib. She writes:
I told my daughters: Marry men who will not permit you to work after marriage. Marry strong men who will take care of you and cherish you, and not tell you their business, and will refuse your help. I had told them from the very beginning that unless woman is powerfully (and by birth) motivated to the arts and the sciences and the professions, and is deeply gifted and cannot be denied, she should refrain from going out into the market places with mediocre abilities…She must then keep to her resolution: Never again to earn money outside her house. Never again to be a ` partner, shoulder to shoulder with her man.` Never again to be independent.
I have accomplished the one success of my life: I have brought up daughters who have manly and cherishing husbands, who have never wanted to earn money outside their pleasant homes, who have concentrated on the sole and natural business of women. To be good wives and prudent mothers, soothers of the masculine brow, good cooks, pleasant companions, and truly feminine. I wish I`d had a mother just like me (111).
… It`s up to you, in behalf of future generations, to lull them back and to again become superior. Who wants Equality with men? No woman in her right mind. Remember this: The strongest sign of decay of a nation is the feminization of men and the masculinization of women (116).
… The decay and ruin of a nation always has lain in the hands of its women (117).
Does this not seem bizarre to you? At the very least hypocritical coming from a woman who spent much of her life working. I am not referring to her work as a writer either. She also talks about when she worked hard in the factories just to make rent and to put food on the table. Even though writing might not be as strenuous as nine to five jobs, it still consumes a lot of personal time to write books. Time she is suggesting that should be dedicated to her husband’s dinner preparations.
Some of her other chapters include attacking women’s rights, mocking healthcare ethics, and criticizing any government programs. It is not about whether or not Caldwell should have an opinion on these topics, but as the examples show she takes these opinions too far and they are extremely narrow-minded. The reader begins to loose respect for her jaded views of the world and her critical judgments.
