Deep Rereads: A Wrinkle in Time chapter 1: Mrs. Whatsit

in #books6 years ago (edited)

It was a dark and stormy night.

I think it’s always a dark and stormy night at the Murry’s. L’Engle seems to delight in dramatic weather, and I can’t really imagine their old house on a bright and sunny day. I’m not sure what Meg’s attic would be like, with sun seeping through and nothing to scare her. I don’t think it ever happens; the Murrys live in a universe where, if you live in a creaky attic, there will always be a thunderstorm to drive you downstairs and into the arms of adventure.


A Wrinkle in Time cover used under Fair Use: Criticism

Or at least Charles Wallace making you cocoa, which is pretty much the same thing.

But before that, we get Meg falling behind in school, Charles Wallace being teased, and Sandy and Dennys being painfully gender-normative. From the very first moment they appear, in an exposition flashback, they’re dislikable. Their older sister shouldn’t fight the people looking down on Charles Wallace, they should, presumably because they’re boys. This isn’t going to change, and it’s an interesting choice, to set up the main characters’ siblings not as helpers, not as villains, but as nominal allies who don’t really have a clue. How to write a happy family without having it be too perfect.

Then there’s quite a bit of Meg being scared and put upon - by hurricanes, tramps, her perception of her own ugliness, and walking into things scattered around the attic. This feels too much, to me. I’ve been thinking, coming into this reread, about why, though I enjoy Meg as a character, I don’t think I’d like her very much as an actual person. And I think the first impressions from this chapter may have a lot to do with that. She’s set up as a huge underdog in the way she thinks of herself, and yet she’s immediately capable and practical, she’s from a smart and influential family, and while her perception is that everyone in town is always thinking negatively about her, or Charles Wallace, or her father in one way or another, that’s unlikely to be true. Her sad-sack attitude at the beginning is just too over the top.

But then we get to the cocoa, and the character who makes these books for me, Charles Wallace. Of all the strong images in the books, this is the one that strikes me as the most fundamental: Charles Wallace sitting in the kitchen in the middle of the night, in the dregs of a hurricane, making cocoa for his sister and his mother before they even think to come downstairs, and sandwiches after they do. This is where the three of them are most themselves. Meg opens up her insecurities and Mrs. Murry lets them roll off her like water, when confronting them would not be believed. Charles Wallace perceives things in ways that no one else does, and his mother is unflappable. Mrs. Murry is something of the ultimate Zen parent, a role model in dealing with younger people.

And then Mrs. Whatsit arrives, bundled to the teeth, with water in her boots. Meg makes her a tuna salad sandwich, and put celery in it, which is probably another reason I can’t like her as much as I feel like I should. She never thanked Charles Wallace for the cocoa, and she puts celery in the tuna salad. Well.

Anyway, those boots are a wonderfully temporal detail to introduce a character who will turn out to be almost wholly spiritual. We’ll see Mrs. Who’s glasses in the next chapter, which serve the same purpose, to anchor these alien, powerful beings to the mundane world the Murrys all were somewhat disappointed to be living in.

There is such a thing as a tesseract.

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Wonderful way to present one of the most amazing books ever written for children (and now we know there are people who did not know it was a book).
That saddens me in a while; not so much because of the fact that some people are not reading what we have read, but because we are so fascinated about and involved in the book world, we forget about more powerful media doing the work of attracting people, especially young people, to stories.
I listened to the novel on tape years ago, read by L'engle herself (i am not that old, we just were a bit behind with technology). It was a wonderful experience.
She tells how nobody wanted to publish it because it was too complex for children and she tells how her own children were actually her Guinea pigs. She would read to them chapters as she wrote them and they not only understood the story, but loved it and asked for more.
So much for adults/editors knowing better.

Awesome! You completely inspired me to read this! :)

Great! I'm planning to go through it chapter by chapter, but it won't be every day because I didn't bring the book with me on holiday, just the two chapters I had written up already.

To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

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😂😂 wow brother...I didn't really know this was a book..☺️☺️

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