Lyddie

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Lyddie is a 1991 novel by Katherine Paterson.

The novel is about the title character, Lyddie, and her coming-of-age in the early 1800s. It starts with a bear entering her family's house and exiting with a porridge pot over its head. Their mother and their younger sisters, Rachel and baby Agnes, leave because the mother believe that the Day of Judgment is coming.

Lyddie and her brother Charles remain in their house for a year harvesting maple syrup. When that year is up, their mother writes that she had hired Charles to work in baker's mill and Lyddie to Ms. Cutler to be a maid.

After a year at working at Cutler's Tavern, she decides to go home to hide the twenty-five dollars she made from selling their cow while Mistress Cutler is visiting Boston. When she arrives home, a runaway slave named Ezekial Abernathy is staying in her home until spring sets in. Lyddie gives the twenty-five dollars to Ezekial to help with his journey.

When Lyddie comes back to the tavern, Mistress Cutler is back and she is angry, deciding to fire Lyddie. Lyddie heads to Lowell, Massachusetts, to work in the mill there to earn money and pay off her family's debt to return to her farm. After the long journey to Lowell, the driver takes her to his sister, Mrs. Bedlow, who runs a boardinghouse for Concord Corporation. She gets a one year contract to work in the mill and an inoculation. A few days later, she begins work.

Diana, a longtime worker who is considered radical, helps Lyddie learn how to run the looms. The working conditions are unhealthy with all of the windows in the factory nailed shut, the danger of flying shuttles and the "Kiss of Death" as Diana puts it, which is when the girls must suck a new thread through a shuttle and risk it entering their windpipes. Mr. Marsden, the overseer, only adds to the troubles by flirting with Lyddie.

After work, her roommate Betsy reads Oliver Twist to her. Lyddie uses the book to teach herself how to read, eventually buying a copy for herself.

Betsy announces that as soon as she earned enough money to go to Oberlin college, which accepts women as students, she will sign the petition calling for a shorter work day from thirteen hours to ten. She also develops tuberculosis. Eventually she does and Lyddie frets that her roommate will lose her job.

A letter arrives for Lyddie, from her mother informing that her little sister, Agnes, died. Reluctantly Lyddie sents money to her mother, reflecting how it was easier to give the twenty-five dollars to Ezekiel.

Lyddie is soon adept at working the looms, so she is given more. As she rises, her fellow workers sink in health and endurance. Prudence Allen leaves the mill due to her bad cough. Amelia goes home for a visit and never comes back. Betsy's cough gets worse and worse, and is soon sent to the hospital. By the time her uncle comes to pick her up, she is out of money and her dreams of going to college have yet to be realized.

Many girls began to leave the mill and Irish immigrants take their places. Mr. Marsden, the overseer, informs Lyddie that she will help a new girl.

Brigid, like Lyddie, works at the looms clumsily at first, but she takes more time to catch on. When Lyddie loses patience with her, Diana takes over. One day, Luke Stevens, her old neighbor, delivers her a parcel. It was from Ezekial, telling her that he and his family are now safe in Canada and thanking her for the money. With it came fifty dollars as repayment. She rushed to the bank to deposit the money in her account. She wrote to her mother to ask her the sun they owed the landlord.

One day her uncle comes with Rachel. He came to tell her that they put her mother in the asylum and were selling Lyddie's farm to pay for the medical bills. He also brought Rachel to her. He departed, leaving Rachel in Lyddie's care. She wouldn't say a word, and ate like she hasn't eaten in days. One day, Lyddie left work with a high fever. She couldn't go to work for several weeks, and Diana, Brigid, and Rachel were always there for her. Slowly, she got better and returned to work. Rachel got a job doffing at the mill, but she got a bad cough as Prudence and Betsy did. When her younger brother Charlie came, he took her with him. Lyddie didn't want her to leave, but if she didn't, she would die, and with Charlie's new family, she would be properly cared for. Lyddie wanted to sign the ten hour day petition, but when she went to the meeting to sign it, it had been already sent to THE the company. Diana broke the news to Lyddie that she was pregnant and left the mill. Lyddie later catches Mr. Marsden "alone" in the weaving room with brigid. Slamming a full bucket of water on the overseer's head, Lyddie takes Brigids's hand and runs away. The next day, lyddie is sent to the agent Grave's office, and gets fired for "Moral Turpitude". After discovering the definition of the phrase in a dictionary she bought after getting fired, Lyddie is furious. This compells her to give brigid a copy of Oliver Twist and then writing a letter stating Brigid should not get fired by Mr. Marsden or lyddie will reveal the events going on "After Hours" in the workplace that Lyddie gives Directly to Mr. Marsden. At the end of the book, Lyddie goes home and eventually decides to head west to Ohio to enroll in a college for girls.