Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer

First published: 1936; illustrated

Type of work: Domestic realism

Themes: Coming-of-age, death, education, and friendship

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: New York City

Principal Characters:

• Lucinda Wyman, a ten-year-old girl who delights in exploring New York City on roller skates
• Aunt Emily, a demanding, arrogant woman who claims to know what is best for Lucinda
• Uncle Earle, her husband, a sensitive man who helps Lucinda and introduces her to fine literature
• Miss Peters, Lucinda’s temporary guardian, who understands a child’s need to be free
• Miss Nettie, her sister, a kind and compassionate woman
• Tony Coppino, a close friend of Lucinda
• Serge Browdowski, an aspiring musician
• Caroline Browdowski, his daughter, nicknamed Trinket
• Mrs. Isaac Grose, a lonely woman whom Lucinda calls Princess Zayda
• Mr. Gilligan, a hansom cab driver
• Patrolman M’Gonegal, a police officer
• Hugh Marshall, alias
• Mr. Night Owl, a newspaper reporter

The Story

Many children never have the opportunity to live away from their parents for an extended period of time in an affectionate, caring, and permissive environment. In Roller Skates, however, the protagonist, Lucinda Wyman, whose parents are in Europe, spends her tenth year skating along the streets of New York City near the home of her temporary guardians, Miss Peters and Miss Nettie. There, she takes advantage of her emancipation from the solicitude of French governesses to establish friendships with the socially and culturally diverse people she encounters. She endears herself first to a hansom cab driver and subsequently to a newspaper reporter, a fruit vendor, a policeman, a musician, a rag man, a lonely immigrant, and an actor and actress. Her many adult acquaintances treat Lucinda as a friend instead of as a child, empowering her to continue to develop into the valuable person she has already started to become.

Lucinda’s Aunt Emily, however, makes it a point to interfere with her niece’s new independent life-style, ensuring that Lucinda’s requisite Saturday afternoon visits to her aunt’s home are never uneventful. The young girl regularly manages to offend the rigid woman by refusing to enjoy sewing and by engaging in unbecoming activities such as skating furiously through the park or imprudently imitating the posture and walk of society’s finest ladies. Lucinda’s refuge from her aunt’s passion for “System, Duty, and Discipline” is her Uncle Earle, a gentle and understanding man who finds refuge in a well-stocked library. After Uncle Earle reads Shakespeare aloud to Lucinda, she falls immediately in love with the bard, planning and ultimately producing a miniaturized version of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest for many appreciative adults and children.

Lucinda, already a self-confident child who believes in her own integrity, realizes that like many adults, she can claim her own sense of authority in the world. When a gang of troublesome youths makes sport of ruining Tony Coppino’s fruit stand, Lucinda plots with Patrolman M’Gonegal to ensure that justice will prevail. When she receives an abundance of invitations for Thanksgiving dinner parties, Lucinda diplomatically takes steps to appease all of her friends and relatives and judiciously avoids hurting anyone’s feelings. When she learns that the Browdowski family is desperately poor, she plans a special party so that their daughter, four-year-old Trinket, can enjoy the magic of Christmas. When Trinket falls ill, it is Lucinda who arranges for Dr. Hitchcock to treat the young child.

Lucinda eventually discovers, though, that the world is a complex and confusing place and that even effective or influential adults do not always have complete mastery over fate. Lucinda’s friendship with the mysterious Mrs. Isaac Grose, affectionately known as Princess Zayda, ends when the young girl makes a gruesome discovery, one that makes this independent child long for her mother’s comforting presence: The princess has been murdered with a jeweled dagger in her back.

Not long after Princess Zayda dies, Lucinda has another experience with death, this time less grisly. When the Browdowskis allow her to help care for Trinket during the young girl’s illness, Lucinda prods the small child to eat, convinces her to take her medicine, and entertains her with songs and stories. In spite of her own devoted nursing and the attentive care of Dr. Hitchcock, however, Lucinda finds that sometimes even the most persevering people and the most diligent efforts cannot claim authority over death.

While recovering from the loss of Trinket, Lucinda receives notice that her parents are due back in New York. Wistful about the approaching end to her unrestricted days, missing Princess Zayda and Trinket, and irrationally jealous of children still unfamiliar with the complexities of adulthood, Lucinda clings to her waning childhood as fervently as she initially embraced her year of freedom.

Context

Roller Skates, the Newbery Award winner in 1937, reflects Sawyer’s belief that adults should not coddle or overprotect children, that they should provide young people with opportunities to experience real life and to prove themselves capable of making responsible, intelligent decisions. The novel’s central character exemplifies this philosophy, suggesting that even when young people make inappropriate decisions—as when Lucinda meets secretly with Princess Zayda or when her independent nature compels her to act defiantly around Aunt Emily—they can face the most traumatic result with courage and competence if they are encouraged to believe that they can, if they feel confident about themselves, and if understanding adults have prepared them to meet and accept all that life has to offer.

In addition to suggesting that children’s lives could be enriched were they less structured, Roller Skates promotes the value of literary enrichment. The novel abounds with allusions to other literary works that introduce young readers to creative efforts, such as George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913), Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” (1881), John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (c. 1611). Lucinda herself is remarkably well-read at the age of ten, and she makes frequent and direct allusions to many other literary classics. Sawyer’s careful and conscious use of literary allusion in this novel suggests the joys of being well-read, of making connections, of drawing parallels, and of noting similarities in diverse and unrelated literary works. Sawyer’s enthusiasm for all of literature—not simply for “children’s” literature—is appealing and contagious. It serves to remind people of all ages that young readers must not be denied the pleasure and challenge of exploring their cultural heritage by way of literary masterpieces which appear most frequently in the adult section of libraries.