Fair Weather

“I could be a little bit spunky if I had occasion to.”

At the novel’s start, Rosie’s personality is somewhat unfixed. She mentions having gotten into schoolyard scraps, but she is also timid at times. As the main character of a novel for young people, she can be expected to grow and change. In Rosie, Richard Peck deliberately creates a character who will be tested and transformed by the bustling World’s Columbian Exposition.

“We couldn’t imagine such a place, though there was a steel engraving of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 hanging in the schoolhouse.”

Chicago is a symbol of American optimism and aspiration in the novel. By 1893, much of the city had been built back up again since the Great Chicago Fire burned through a third of the city. The rebuilding led to some of the city’s new architectural marvels, a great source of pride for its citizens.

“Their vision is limited to the four walls of a one-room country schoolhouse.”

Mama bridles at this sentence in Aunt Euterpe’s letter inviting the Beckett children to see the world’s fair, since she and her sister attended the same schoolhouse. However, Euterpe is correct. The children are not very interested in education at the start of the novel, and the fair and the events of their week in Chicago will be life-changing.

“That thing will take you so high, you can see the curve of the earth.”

The image of the towering Ferris wheel encapsulates the progress of the 1893 World’s Fair, which in the novel symbolizes progress and education. The idea of the fair expanding the worldview of the Beckett children, who have never traveled far from their rural home, is woven throughout the book.

“Mama’s getting crankier than the handle on a churn.”

Forthright, colorful country sayings like this one, spoken by Lottie, help to heighten the novel’s theme of Country Ways Versus City Ways. They also provide a contrast to Aunt Euterpe’s pompous language, which is often spoken in whispers and murmurs.

“You go on to Chicago and see the fair, then come back and tell me all about it.”

Mama pretends that she is too busy on the farm to go to Chicago with her children when, in reality, she is afraid to go to the city, which she believes is full of “criminals.” Her decision to send her children on without her provides a plot twist, presenting Granddad with the opportunity to secretly steal her ticket and go to the fair himself.

“He was asleep at the top of his lungs.”

Peck occasionally employs the literary device called paraprosdokian, a figure of speech in which a sentence or a phrase begins one way and then leads to a surprise ending, for humor. The unusual juxtaposition of sleep and an image usually associated with shouting shows just how loudly Granddad snores.

“White electricity had lit the world and erased the stars.”

The Becketts, like much of rural America in 1890, have never seen electricity prior to their trip to the world’s fair. Thomas Edison’s Electric Light Company had only been operating since 1878. To Rosie, the bright lights that illuminated the fair at night give the startling effect of perpetual daytime. In this Peck draws on eye-witness accounts of the fair.

“Heck-a-tee, Edison. What have you done?”

Even Granddad, who has traveled more widely than his grandchildren, is astonished at the effect of the electric lighting at the fair. It invokes one of the two curses that his daughter allows him to use, “Heck-a-tee,” his other being “Helaca-toot.”

“It was too much world for me all at once.”

Rosie’s emotional growth in the course of the week she spends at the fair is often expressed in terms of the world. Here, she is overwhelmed by her first glimpse of the pavilions at night. By the end of the story the fair will convince her that she has a “world more to learn” (134).

“Aunt Euterpe quaked.”

Peck often sets off a one-sentence paragraph to describe a character’s reaction with a vivid descriptive verb. Here, Euterpe “quakes.” A few sentences later, she “lurches.” Later in the chapter she “crumples.” The verbs are humorous separately; as they start to mount, the humor is heightened and her character develops depth.

“It looked like Lottie was taking charge.”

Lottie knows exactly how to manage her aunt. She soothes her nerves and talks her into doing things she doesn’t want to do by saying things like, “If the Midway isn’t for decent people, you won’t see anybody you know” (65). When Euterpe is scandalized by the sight of scantily dressed girls dancing, Lottie tells her that it is a dance portrayed in the Bible. Her interaction with Euterpe supports the theme of The Advantage of Family Love and Friendship Compared With Wealth Alone.

“I’d had to come to this city jammed with people to see a soul as lonely as hers. It stirred my heart. And Lottie’s too.”

Having wondered why Euterpe extended the invitation for the Becketts to stay with her and see the fair, Rosie now understands it is because she is lonely and had nobody else with whom to enjoy it. While her sympathy is well-meant, it leads Rosie to her embarrass her aunt in front of the society queen, Bertha Palmer, whom Euterpe most wants to impress.

“‘You leave Flanagan to me,’ Granddad said in a final way.”

Euterpe, coming from the same rural background as her sister, is afraid of all her servants. The children have managed to scare off Aunt Euterpe’s cook and maid. Granddad, however, takes charge of her driver, Flanagan, by befriending him. They sing bawdy songs together as they roll through an elegant part of the city. This is an example of Granddad’s ability to solve social problems but is also indicative of male freedoms at the time.

“It showed what women could do. They could paint and explore and discover. We could.”

Rosie is beginning to not only learn more about the world from the fair but to feel as if she, too, might do more with her life than she could have imagined before. With the character’s use of “We” could, Peck shows that she is able to imagine herself in the company of women of achievement.

“Oh, how I wanted to light out for home right then, and never leave again. I wasn’t ready for the world, and I couldn’t figure out how it worked.”

This is Rosie’s thought after she embarrasses her aunt in front of Mrs. Palmer and her prominent friends. The gaffe will, however, help her aunt to find common ground with the famous actress Lillian Russell. In addition, Lottie’s secret connection to a university dean will redeem all the Becketts in Euterpe’s eyes.

“Tea followed.”

The three postcards that Rosie sends to her parents are so understated that they are comical. She clearly doesn’t want her parents to know of the outrageous adventures the children have been having in Chicago and summarizes them primly. “Tea followed” is her terse summary of the scene she has made with Mrs. Palmer, which so embarrasses Aunt Euterpe that she considers moving to another city.

“Aunt Euterpe seemed as bewildered as she often was in our company.”

This is another example of Peck’s use of paraprosdokian. The first part of the sentence, “Aunt Euterpe seemed as bewildered as,” sets up the expectation of a simile. Instead, the author describes the character’s complete inability to understand her boisterous relatives.

“In the social world it is not the men who matter.”

Euterpe puts into words one of the novel’s themes: Female Power and Social Structures in the 1890s. She has just met the two most powerful men in Chicago, its mayor and the governor of Illinois, but she knows they can’t help her social standing. It is the women who wield this power, even though they can’t vote.

“Men at their most warlike are less cruel than women.”

The female control of society has an ugly side, as Aunt Euterpe and Lillian Russell know. Both are wealthy, yet they are snubbed by society—Euterpe for having married her much-older employer, and Russell for wearing make-up and having had three husbands. They bond over this fact, providing for Rosie a valuable lesson in how to conduct oneself with both dignity and kindness.

“The members of my sex can be very sly.”

As much as Rosie has grown emotionally in her week at the fair, she is not very feminine or enamored of feminine ways. She attributes the way in which Lottie has played into Mama’s plan to get her away from Everett by sending her to his hometown to a “slyness” that is unique to women.

“If I could show you anything, I would show you that.”

Rosie’s narration is peppered by conversational phrases. For instance, she often introduces an observation with the word “Oh.” This, however, is the only time she addresses the reader directly as “you.” She is describing the power of watching the white lights turn on as she rises above the fairground in the Ferris wheel. It contributes to the sense that the story is being told orally, for an audience.

“There was the future unfurling below us as we rose higher and higher into the bright night.”

The 1893 World’s Fair showcased the future, with its bright electric lights, a model kitchen with hot and cold running water, and other marvels that would become common in the coming 20th century. Rosie acknowledges this, but she is also referring to her own future and those of her siblings. The fair changes all of them.