Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge

First published: 1865; illustrated

Type of work: Moral tale

Themes: Coming-of-age, family, health and illness, and poverty

Time of work: The 1840’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Broek, Holland

Principal Characters:

• Hans Brinker, a young Dutch boy who works diligently to improve life for his impoverished family
• Gretel Brinker, his patient sister, who assists him and makes friends among the neighborhood children
• Raff Brinker, their ill father, who requires constant care so that he will not harm himself or others
• Dame (Meitje) Brinker, their hardworking mother, who has never lost hope of her husband’s recovery

The Story

Appropriately enough, this book with a double title is really two books in one. In the beginning the reader is introduced to Hans Brinker and his younger sister Gretel. They live in poverty in a small cottage along the banks of a canal near Broek, Holland. Their mother earns a small living spinning, raising vegetables, and weaving. The major portion of the family’s energy, however, is spent in caring for their husband and father, Raff Brinker. He fell from the dikes during a storm ten years before, and has nothing of his former self left. His illness has earned the Brinker’s home the nickname “Idiot’s Cottage.”

Raff Brinker took secrets with him when he fell. Only he knows the significance of the valuable watch he entrusted to his wife the night before he fell, with instructions not to part with it until he had a chance to tell her its story. So complete is Dame Brinker’s trust in her husband that she has held onto the watch through the ten long years of her family’s poverty.

The Brinker children are the brunt of neighborhood taunts and jokes. So poor are they that they cannot even afford proper skates, and so have fashioned wooden runners for themselves that often stick on the ice and trip them. Yet it is Hans’s skill with carving wood that allows him to begin to transform his family’s life. A kindly neighborhood girl asks him to carve for her a necklace, and with the money he earns he buys for himself and his sister a pair of proper skates.

Skating toward Amsterdam one day, he meets the famed surgeon Dr. Boekman. Notoriously cantankerous, the doctor smiles down on Hans when the boy asks him to examine his father. He agrees to visit the Brinker cottage.

The story moves then to a cast of characters from the Brinker neighborhood. Six boys go on a skating holiday, and their trip provides the reader with an overview of Dutch history and culture. They skate more than forty miles, through Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Leyden on their way to The Hague; along the way they have many adventures. When they arrive at The Hague, they visit the sister of one of them, who lives in a large house with her wealthy merchant husband. The more than adequate comforts of this home provide a contrast to the bleak poverty of the Brinker family.

After the boys return to Broek, the story returns to Hans and his family. Dr. Boekman comes to their cottage and operates on Raff in an attempt to restore him to his senses. When Raff Brinker can finally speak, the story of the mysterious watch emerges. The initials engraved on the watch are those of Dr. Boekman’s long-lost son, who had disappeared ten years earlier after concluding that he had caused the death of one of his father’s patients. In the end, Dr. Boekman and his son are reunited. Hans becomes Boekman’s new trainee in surgery, after Boekman recognizes the boy’s reverence for medicine and its ability to change lives. Hans has now been given the opportunity to transform his own life and in turn those of many others.

Context

Mary Mapes Dodge did not visit The Netherlands until after the publication of Hans Brinker. Her detailed tale of Dutch life was so accurate, however, that she discovered the book to be the most faithful portrait of their country and culture known to the Dutch. From the start she had wanted to write a book that would combine geography, history, and culture lessons with a tale of domestic life. As a young widow she distracted herself by reading aloud, and making up stories for her two young sons. The traditional Dutch sport of ice skating had only recently become popular in the United States, and this fueled their interest in their mother’s night-by-night installments of the story of a young boy and his family in Holland.

First published as a newspaper serial, Hans Brinker was one of the first novels of family life written for young people. It enjoyed immense popularity, going through more than one hundred editions in its first thirty years. It was translated into many languages and received the Montyon Prize of the French Academy in 1869.

Mary Mapes Dodge was one of the first important women writers and editors in the United States. Hans Brinker established her reputation; more than a century after its publication it continues to be widely read. Its detailed descriptions of an unusual country and its affectionate tone have allowed it to remain instructive and beloved to succeeding generations of readers.