The Whole Family by Twelve Authors

Title: The Whole Family

A collaboration novel written by 12 authors!

Editor: Elizabeth Jordan (American, 1865-1947)
Originally published: 1908
Page count: 313

Dates read: 11/1/2020-11/21/2020
2020 book goal progress: 27 out of 20
Month category: 

November - Thanksgiving / Family
Back to the Classics category: 

Classic About a Family


Read my other book reviews for my 2020 goal HERE.


Description on back of book:
One of the most fascinating experiments in American literature resulted in The Whole Family. The idea for this collaborative venture originated with William Dean Howells in 1906. Under the guidance of Elizabeth Jordan, who Howells hired as editor, each of the authors invited was to write a successive chapter in the story. Howells, who wrote the first chapter, envisioned the novel as a definitive depiction of American family life. But the original plan underwent a dramatic reversal with a controversial chapter two by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. From that point, the novel became a more involved story of family misunderstandings and rivalries.

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 5.7/10 - ⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 6
Atmosphere   - 5
Writing Style - 7
Plot                - 4
Intrigue          - 6
Logic             - 5
Enjoyment     - 7
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Overall Review:

There is a very loose and disorganized plot to this novel. That said, I was expecting it to be more of a series of short stories with little to no connection to each other, other than them all being in the same family. I was pleasantly surprised when the book actually turned out to be a semi-cohesive story.

Rant one: The first chapter, by William Dean Howells, threw me off right away because it was written in the first person by the neighbor who has a conversation with the father. He proceeds to have deep and knowledgeable thoughts about the whole family, even though he doesn't seem very close with any of them. Reading the neighbor's perspective was strange since I was expecting it to be from the perspective of the father himself. All the other chapters are written in the first person from the perspective of the person named in the chapter title.

Rant two: Henry James' chapter is 41 pages long, which is nearly twice as long as 25 page average of all the other chapters. Most of it is just whining about family members instead of moving the plot along. If he had summed up his 33 pages of whining into 10 pages and expanded his 8 pages of actual story into 10-12 pages, then the chapter might have been actually worth something.

Random thoughts: I wish I knew the actual ages of all the characters. Everyone seems to be against co-educational college and I don't understand why. It's an outrageous story with many Dicksonian coincidences.

Here are some quotes and specific thoughts of each chapter and the author who wrote them:

Chp 1. The Father (Cyrus Talbert)

by William Dean Howells (American, 1837-1920)

First sentence: "As soon as we heard the pleasant news - I suppose the news of an engagement ought always to be called pleasant - it was decided that I ought to speak first about it, and speak to the father."

Favorite quote: "A curious thing about it was, that though my arguments seemed to convince them, they didn't convince me. Ever notice, how when another person repeats what you've said, it sounds kind of weak and foolish?"

Mini-review: This chapter was hard to follow, sexist, and very bland. Nothing really happened and it did nothing to help jump-start the plot. The only thing we learn is that Peggy has been recently engaged and no one has met who she's engaged to yet. The father ends up being a minor character in the novel and he doesn't really come up again until the last chapter.

Chp 2. The Old-Maid Aunt (Aunt Elizabeth / Lily, sister of 'Father')

by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (American, 1852-1930)

First sentence: "I am relegated here in Eastridge to the position in which I suppose I properly belong, and I dare say it is for my best spiritual and temporal good. Here I am the old-maid aunt."

Favorite quote: "Since - well, never mind since what time - I have not cared an iota whether I was considered an old maid or not. The situation has seemed to me rather amusing, inasmuch as it has involved a secret willingness to be what everybody has considered me as very unwilling to be. I have regarded it as a sort of joke upon other people."

Mini-review: This was a very forward-thinking and feminist chapter that championed single women living satisfying lives. By 'old-maid,' they mean she's about mid-thirties and not married... which apparently is a travesty at this time in history. The old-maid ends up being a central character that everyone uses as a scapegoat. The 'contraversial' plot twist mentioned in the book description is that Harry Goward, who is engaged to Peggy, is actually more interested in the old-maid aunt.

Chp 3. The Grandmother (Evarts, mother of 'Mother')

by Mary Heaton Vorse (American, 1874-1966)

First sentence: "The position of an older woman in her daughter's house is often difficult."

Favorite quote: "I very seldom open my mouth to anyone in this house, for it is more than ever the fashion for people to disregard the advice of others, and the older I get the more I find it wise to save my breath to cool my porridge - there come times, however, when I feel it my duty to speak."

Mini-review: I appreciated this chapter and how forward-thinking and unprejudiced the grandmother was. It was refreshing to see a break from the stereotypical judgemental elderly character, though she still ragged on the maiden aunt. She sometimes wrote in paragraphs that were over a page long, which was annoying.

Chp 4. The Daughter-In-Law (Lorraine)

by Mary Stewart Cutting (American, 1879-1924)

First sentence: "I  have never identified myself with my husband's family, and Charles-Edward, who is the best sort ever, doesn't expect me to."

Favorite quote: "Maria makes little side digs at me because I haven't been pickling or preserving or cleaning. Once, Maria asked me at dinner what days I had for cleaning. And I said, as innocently as possible, that I hadn't any; that I perfectly loathed cleaning, and that we never cleaned at home! Of course it wasn't true, but we never talk about it, anyway. Charles-Edward said he nearly shrieked with joy to hear me come out like that."

Mini-review: I liked Lorraine's character. She had feminist views and kept her worldview from being affected by her in-laws. She was focused on her own interests and not keeping her house perfect and clean, which everyone seemed to expect.

Chp 5. The School-Girl (Alice)

by Elizabeth Jordan (American, 1865-1947)

First sentence: "Except for Billy, who is a boy and does not count, I am the youngest person in our family; and when I tell you that there are eleven of us - well, you can dimly imagine the kind of time I have."

Favorite quote: "Finally I crept out of the house without saying a word to her or letting her know I was there, and I leaned on the gate to think it over and try to imagine what a girl in a book would do."

Mini-review: She is about fifteen, but is written much younger to me, which was weird. She's a bit of a busybody but is one of the few people who actually likes the maid aunt. The cohesiveness of the plot begins to break down and get confusing.

Chp 6. The Son-In-Law (Tom Price)

by John Kendrick Bangs (American, 1862-1922)

First sentence: "On the whole, I am glad our family is no larger than it is.  It is a very excellent family as families go, but the infinite capacity of each individual in it for making trouble, and adding to complications already sufficiently complex, surpasses anything that has ever before come into my personal or professional experience."

Favorite quote: "We cannot always help ourselves in the matter of our relations. Some are born relatives, some achieve relatives, and others have relatives thrust upon them."

Mini-review: This was quite humorous and probably my favorite chapter. There's a part where he is talking about Adam and Eve and makes a comment that true gentlemen don't use women as a copout or scapegoat - and basically called Adam a coward in blaming Eve for his eating of the forbidden fruit. (That's a paraphrase of several paragraphs, otherwise, I would've done a direct quote.)

Chp 7. The Married Son (Charles-Edward)

by Henry James (American-British, 1843-1916)

First sentence: "It's evidently a great thing in life to have got hold of a convenient expression, and a sign of our inordinate habit of living by words."

Favorite quote: "When you paint a picture with a brush and pigments, that is on a single plane, it can stop at your gilt frame; but when you paint on with a pen and words, that is in all dimensions, how are you to stop?"

Mini-review: I have read Henry James before and did not like The Bostonians at all, but I tried to keep an open mind despite my negative bias. Nope. This was a horrible and quite sexist chapter. Every time he talks about his wife, it is in a very demeaning manner. The sentences are long and complicated and I had a hard time understanding anything.

Chp 8. The Married Daughter (Maria Price)

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (American, 1844-1911)

First sentence: "We start in life with the most preposterous of all human claims - that one should be understood. We get bravely over that after a while; but not until the idea has been knocked out of us by the hardest."

Favorite quote: "Perhaps if Fate ever broke him on her wheel it was at that moment. His destiny was still in his own hands."

Mini-review: This had lots of action, which was refreshing after getting through James' drudgery. There was a lot of clever wordplay and several Dicksonian coincidences.

Chp 9. The Mother (Ada)

by Edith Wyatt (American, 1873-1958)

First sentences are my favorite quote: "I am sure I shall surprise no mother of a large family when I say that this hour is the first one I have spent alone for thirty years. I count it, alone. For while I am driving back in the runabout along the six miles of leafy road between the hospital and Eastridge with mother beside me, she is sound asleep and she will sleep until we are home."

Mini-review: This was a confusing chapter with a very abrupt ending.

Chp 10. The School-Boy (Billy)

by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews (American, 1860-1936)

First sentence: "Rabbits. Automobile. (Painted red, with yellow lines.) Automatic reel. (The 3-dollar kind.) New stamp-book. (The puppy chewed my other.) Golly, I forgot. I suppose I mustn't use this, but it's my birthday next month, and I want 'steen things, and I thought I'd better make a list to pin on the dining-room door, where the family could take their pick on what to give me."

Favorite quote: "It wasn't exactly cross-examination, because he wasn't cross, yet he fired the questions at me like a cannon, and I answered quick, you bet."

Mini-review: This was an annoying and repetitive chapter. It was written more like a letter rather than a stream of thought as the other chapters are and it just felt strange. This was the only chapter where the author's gender did not match the character's gender.

Chp 11. Peggy (recently engaged middle daughter)

by Alice Brown (American, 1857-1948)

First sentence: "'Remember,' said Charles-Edward - he had run in for a minute on his way home from the office where he has been clearing out his desk, 'for good and all,' and he tells us - 'remember, next week will see us out of this land of the free and home of the talkative.'"

Favorite quote: "Things are mighty critical. It's as if everybody, the world and the flesh and the Whole Family, had been blundering round and setting their feet down as near as they could to a flower. But the flower isn't trampled yet. We'll build a fence round it."

Mini-review: I feel like she tried to tie up most of the loose ends from everyone else's chapters - but it just got even more confusing and jumbled than it already was. Since Peggy is the central figure in the whole novel, along with the maid aunt, her chapter and thoughts of what's going on should have been sooner in the story - or saved for the very last.

Chp 12. The Friend of the Family (unnamed)

by Henry Van Dyke (American, 1852-1933)

First sentence: "This was the telegram that Peter handed me as I came out of the coat-room at the Universe and stood under the lofty gilded ceiling of the great hall, trying to find myself at home again in the democratic simplicity of the United States."

Favorite quote: "Independence was a sacred tradition in the Talbert family; but interference was a fixed nervous habit, and complication was a chronic social state."

Mini-review: Despite several family friends already being introduced, this author decided to create a whole new character for the last chapter of the book. The 'friend' seems to be mainly a friend of Father and not of the whole family, which is annoying. The unnamed friend has traveled a lot, but he's extremely racist and ethnocentric. The ending is outrageous and abrupt. It's like Van Dyke had a way he wanted it to end and he just forced his way into making it work, even though it didn't really make sense with the rest of the story.

Closing review:

Some chapters were quite feminist, while others were pretty sexist. It was strange never really knowing what to expect from chapter to chapter. Overall, I would say the book is forward-thinking, it just also is a product of its time in history. I appreciate that out of 12 authors, only 4 of them were men. It's interesting to note that, though John Kendrick Bangs wrote my favorite chapter, the other 3 male-written chapters were by far my least favorites.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let two of the authors have the last words:

"I do not care so much what people believe, for I am not bigoted, as that they should believe something, and that with their whole hearts." 

-Grandmother, Chp 3. Grandmother by Mary Heaton Vorse

"Remember, it is the bruised herb that gives out the sweetest odor." 

-Aunt Elizabeth, Chp 11. Peggy by Alice Brown