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
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Toys
Toys are important to the novel’s setting, primarily within child-centric spaces, and they function as a motif throughout the novel. In several instances, toys are represented as central to a child’s behavior problem. Hubert needs the Won’t-Pick-Up-Toys cure, and one of the symptoms of Dick’s selfishness is his refusal to let other children play with his toys. Dick’s cure shows that toys are made more fun when played with in company, however. After the other children have seen the “DON’T TOUCH” signs on his possessions, they refuse to play baseball with him, saying, “We can’t touch anything so let’s go home” (62). Toys, therefore, show the importance of friendship and community to childhood play.
Similarly, toys (and even the absence of toys) relate to the novel’s Creation of Everyday Magic theme. While all the neighborhood children frequent Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house, very few toys are described in that setting. Aside from the crown and other dress-up apparel mentioned, children at Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house are described as playing with household objects and elements of the setting, like digging for pirate treasure in the backyard, “camping” around the chandelier, and jumping over the upside-down door frames. Mrs. Prentiss is surprised to learn about Hubert’s interest in building a car from orange crates and tomato cans when he has two fancy toy cars from his grandfather. The novel suggests that it is not the toy itself that creates magic but the company and childlike imagination involved in playing with it. As a motif, toys are related both to children’s worlds, including their ailments, and to the transformation of the quotidian into the whimsical.
Animals
Animals are a motif in the novel. They relate to both Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s home setting and her cures. All animals mentioned in the novel belong to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The lack of pets in the other children’s homes but their presence at Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s differentiates the home settings from the children’s experience at the upside-down house. Her house itself is described as looking like a “small brown puppy lying on its back with its feet in the air” (11) due to its having been built upside down. Her dog and cat are also important to the setting of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house and its appeal to children. She keeps long lists of children who are interested in Wag’s puppies and Lightfoot’s kittens when they have litters, and the dog and cat appear in the children’s games. When Mary Lou is cleaning, she “even curled Lightfoot’s tail neatly around her legs and smoothed Wag’s fur” (15). In this capacity, animals help characterize Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s house as an enjoyable place for children to spend time.
Animals also play a role in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s cures as either motivation or empathy teachers. When Allen has been using the Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker dishes for a few days, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle calls to tell him it’s his (coveted and long-awaited) turn to exercise her pony, Spotty. His inability to ride the pony with his low energy levels is what motivates Allen to begin eating again. Penelope the Parrot is an especially important animal and the cure for Mary’s Answer-Backer issues. Penelope is an archive of rude things the children she has spent time with have said. She shows how bad behavior is contagious and a learned habit, even transmissible between children and animals. She also helps teach empathy. Like Anne and Joan needing to see their parents argue to understand how their behavior affects those around them, Mary is able to see how unpleasant it is to be around an Answer-Backer, leading her to change her ways.
Illness/Disease
The novel includes a great deal of language related to illness and disease. All of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s suggestions to parents are called “cures.” In the novel, disease functions as a symbol of the contagiousness but changeability of bad behavior. This symbol is represented through diction, most often within the conversations where parents call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for advice. The children’s behavior issues are described as illnesses, ailments, or diseases, and they are often contagious or catching. Further, the advice is in the form of cures and remedies. Bad behaviors are also compared directly to real diseases: “Selfishness and greediness are just diseases like measles and chickenpox and can be cured very easily” (55-56).
The use of illness and disease as a symbol is important for two main reasons. First, it presents behaviors as a problem that can be solved quickly with the right cure. The narrative structure of the novel is dependent on this mode of solving bad behavior because each chapter focuses on a relatively short amount of time in which one behavior ailment is solved by a clearly defined cure. Second, illness/disease language is very important to the novel’s theme of Bad Behavior Doesn’t Negate Intrinsic Goodness. The representation of negative behaviors as diseases rather than personality traits separates them from children’s real character. The novel presents children as innately good regardless of the severity of their “diseases.”
