Meet Felicity

Author: Valerie Tripp

In my quest to meet all the American Girls, I read Meet Felicity this week and I would like to share my thoughts.

Addressing history

When rereading the Felicity series many millennials are shocked to realize that Felicity’s grandfather owns a plantation and would logically be a slave holder. What shocks me is the number of readers who seam to miss that Felicity’s father is a slave owner… do you think Marcus is paid? The Looking Back section even refers to him as a slave!

It is a common modern criticism that Felicity cares more about the freedom of an animal than the human beings around her. I have a few things to say on this:

1. She’s a child, it is developmentally normal for a child to emphasize with an animal before they learn to emphasize with humans.
2. She lives in a society where slavery is the norm. It was never the job of a nine year old to fix that.

I do wish the series had addressed the very real issue that many patriots, like Mr. Marriman, wanted freedom for themselves but not their slaves. Although maybe the series did address it…

Penny as metaphor

Okay, I admit this is out there, but I like Felicity and I am going to use my literature theory powers to defend her!

What if Penny is a metaphor? What if this book is using Penny as a metaphor for slavery. Stay with me! The crime of slavery is in robbing another human being of their autonomy, in treating another human like a beast of burden… like Penny the horse.

After all if Penny is such an impressive horse that everyone who looks at her can tell she’s a quality horse, and Jiggy can’t use her as a work horse, wouldn’t he just sell her for drinking money? It doesn’t make sence, unless Penny is a metaphor.

If you imagine Penny as a metaphor for slavery, if you imagine Penny as a enslaved girl not much older than Felicity. Imagine that she is being beaten and starved because she won’t let an old white man ‘ride her’… this book suddenly becomes the girl version of Huckleberry Finn.

Do I believe this is the intention? No, but this is the fun of literature, reading WAY to far into the subtext!

Felicity and her family

Felicity actually has a character arc! She is established as impatient, and yet she has to be patient with the horse Penny. I think this is the first time we’ve had character growth with an American Girl.

Felicity’s parents and siblings are very minor characters in this book, so it’s hard to tell how the Merriman family dynamics  work. But there is one thing that is clear: Felicity is the eldest, and like many firstborn, she tends to just do whatever she wants and gets away with it. Including horse theft.

Next week: Meet Addy