44 pages • 1 hour read
Betty MacDonaldMrs. Piggle Wiggle
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Herself”
The first chapter begins with a description of the title character, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. She lives in an upside-down house with her dog, Wag, and her cat, Lightfoot. She doesn’t have any family and says that she was formerly married to a pirate who buried all his treasure in the backyard and then died. She is friends with the children in town, who enjoy braiding her long hair, playing in her strange house, and digging for treasure in the backyard.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle had initially been lonely in the town until the day she saw a young girl crying and invited her in for tea. Eight-year-old Mary Lou Robertson had run away from home because she hated to wash dishes. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle tells Mary Lou she is surprised to hear that because she loves to wash dishes and always pretends she is a princess waiting for a wicked witch to come home and inspect the kitchen. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle then tells Mary Lou to hurry, addressing her as Princess, and they begin cleaning the tea things. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle leaves the room, then returns dressed as an old witch to inspect the kitchen. After, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle asks Mary Lou if she now understands why she enjoys washing dishes.
Mary Lou returns home and tells her parents about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (after washing all the dinner dishes). Mary Lou and her friend Kitty Wheeling go to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house the next day. Kitty tells Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle that she hates to make beds. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle again suggests a game in which they must make the bed before the Cruel Queen comes to inspect their work. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle dresses as the Cruel Queen and checks the success of Mary Lou and Kitty’s bed-making.
Mary Lou and Kitty tell more friends about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and soon, “every child in town had been or was going to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house” (21). Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle receives a call from a mother seeking advice on her daughter not wanting to take a bath, leading to her habit of providing cures for neighborhood children’s behavior problems. The chapter concludes with a list of several of her cures, which are the chapters of the rest of the book.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Won’t-Pick-Up-Toys Cure”
Hubert Prentiss has an abundance of nice toys, which his grandfather sends him frequently. While he is “moderately generous about letting other children play with them” (24), Hubert never picks up his toys. His mother spends an inordinate amount of time cleaning Hubert’s room. One day, after several other children come over to play, Mrs. Prentiss finds Hubert’s room in a disastrously messy state. She calls several other mothers, who are unhelpful. Finally, Mrs. Grapple recommends that Mrs. Prentiss call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. She does, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle suggests her “old-fashioned Won’t-Pick-Up-Toys cure” (28). She tells Mrs. Prentiss to stop picking up Hubert’s toys and call when Hubert gets trapped in his room. Hubert becomes increasingly tired, emerging from his room later and later over the next week, with toys stuck to his clothes and in his hair. On the seventh day, he doesn’t come out of his room, and Mrs. Prentiss calls Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. She asks how she’ll feed Hubert, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle tells Mrs. Prentiss to pass some food and water up to him through his window on the rake.
Mrs. Prentiss does but becomes concerned when Hubert says he doesn’t want to come out because he’s having fun with all his toys. She calls Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who tells her to wait and that Hubert will want to come out soon. Hubert hears music. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and the neighborhood children parade by and tell him they plan to march through town and then go to the circus. Hubert is upset, realizing he is trapped in his room and can’t get out. A note from Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is passed up on the rake, saying Hubert can only get out by cleaning his room but that they will wait for him if he hurries. Hubert cleans his room, and when he hears the music, he runs down to join the other children.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The first chapter of the novel characterizes Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and how her friendship with the neighborhood children originated. Although she is the eponymous and central figure of the novel, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle herself appears at length only in the first chapter. Thereafter, she is present primarily in phone calls with the worried mothers who call her for advice, a nod to the Role of Community in Parenting, and in small moments when she appears (like in the parade with the circus that inspires Hubert to clean his room). The first chapter’s vividness and specificity characterize Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle in such detail that her later appearances are similarly vivid, even though brief. In addition to characterizing Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the chapter includes the story of her meeting with Mary Lou, which started her overall relationship with the neighborhood children. In addition to introducing the concept of intergenerational friendship to the novel, it shows that she approaches her relationships with children with curiosity and empathy rather than condescension and instruction. She expresses wonder at the fact that Mary Lou doesn’t like to wash dishes and explains the games she likes to play to make dishwashing fun. Rather than being pedantic or telling Mary Lou what to do, she leads by example.
This section of the novel introduces its theme of The Creation of Everyday Magic. One of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s defining character traits is her ability to make mundane things whimsical. Her upside-down house, for example, is an example of something practical (a house for shelter) made magical by her childlike curiosity. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle wondered as a child what it would be like to live in an upside-down house and decided to make that part of her adult reality. While it is still grounded in the real world—for example, the fact that “the bathroom, the kitchen and the staircase are right side up” (11)—the construction of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house inspires an experience of magic for the children who visit her. The chandelier on the floor is innately whimsical because it defies expectations but is made magical by the children’s experience of pretending it is a campfire.
In addition to childlike spirit making things and experiences magical, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle infuses magic into household tasks that would otherwise seem mundane. For example, she teaches Kitty and Mary Lou to enjoy making beds by playing the role of a Cruel Queen who is going to inspect them for lumps. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle tells them that “the secret is to throw the covers way back. You simply cannot smooth up a bed because if you do, there might be a wrinkle down by the foot, and of course, the Cruel Queen will find it and then DOWN INTO THE DUNGEON” (18). This passage is an important example of the novel’s blend of the quotidian and the whimsical. It includes both a real, practical piece of advice that would be helpful in making a bed effectively and an emphatic example of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle pretending to be the Cruel Queen.
In Chapter 2, when Hubert finally picks up his toys, he “played little games pretending that he was racing someone to see if he could find the most parts of a game the quickest” (35-36). Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle doesn’t instruct him to do so in her note. Therefore, this passage implies that he has gotten this idea from spending time with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, rather than being told directly to do so. Overall, this first section of the novel introduces The Creation of Everyday Magic theme by emphasizing the role of imagination in transforming settings, items, and tasks from banal to magical.
After the first chapter, each subsequent chapter focuses on one child and the “cure” to their childhood ailment. Narratively, each chapter follows the same pattern: introduction to the problem, calling for help, implementation of the cure, and resolution. For example, Chapter 2 first introduces Hubert by describing the number of toys in his room and his failure to put them away. The breaking point for Mrs. Prentiss is the state of his room after other children have come over to play. After that, she begins calling other mothers in the neighborhood before eventually asking Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for advice. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s cures throughout the novel focus on natural consequences and the production of empathy. For Hubert, the cure is for Mrs. Prentiss to stop cleaning Hubert’s room, leading him to eventually understand the consequence of failing to put toys away (entrapment in his room). Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle prompts the chapter’s resolution by creating a situation that will make Hubert want to leave his room—the circus parade—so that he will need to clean up to escape. Creating expectations for the pattern each chapter will follow enables focus on the specific ailment and child at hand rather than the progression through various unpredictable plot elements.
