Response to Betsey Brown

I REALLY ENJOYED READING BETSEY BROWN!!! After reading Huck Finn I thought we would read another novel with another “weird dialect”. For me Betsey was familiar because my grandparents (whom I was with a lot as a child) were from down south so I could really relate. For that matter my grandmother was a lot like Vida, she always preached to us about how things were when she was younger and scolded us when we did things “our way”. I enjoyed how the book was a “coming of age” book I viewed that way because in a sense every member of the Brown family grew up in some way. In the beginning of the novel Charlie was getting in trouble by the police and playing jokes on his cousins then at the end he is helping clean up and making sure the other kids are doing their part around the house. All the kids grew up because in the beginning they were messing up the house then at the end they are cleaning up. I enjoyed Betsey’s character because she was a young girl and she was naïve. She viewed the world the way a child should, innocently. She was just a little girl trying to figure out the world the best way she knew how. Another key character to me was Carrie. She came and turned the Brown house around. She really got the children together while Jane was gone. But I could not understand why or how it took a stranger to get Jane’s house in order. I mean a mother should be able to control her own children. I did not like Jane’s character she was so weak and she overexaracted EVERYTHING! All she thought about was “getting some loving in the afternoon”.