Bent Twig

The twig of this novel resists the bending of her early years with every rebellious fiber of her young, independent nature. Sylvia is born into the family of Professor Marshall, popular pedant at the midwest state university in La Chance. Her mother, a Vermonter, sets the tone of life in the home, and stands in sharp contrast to luxury-loving Aunt Victoria, whose infrequent visits light up Sylvia's early surroundings like a brilliant meteor. Victoria's life, divided between a mansion in Lydford, Vermont and an apartment in Paris, appears to the immature Sylvia as Capua to a Carthaginian. Her attempts to evade moral questions concerning the sources on which such luxury rests, while she enjoys the aesthetic pleasures available only to the idle rich, lend a very human aspect to a serious economic and social problem. The Bent Twig is the first of Dorothy Canfield's novels to give fictional form to the Montessori method and to reflect in a novel the insights into education and human development that she received in Rome while visiting Maria Montessori. The home in which Sylvia Marshall grew up is a Montessori home, where everyone takes part in home tasks, and the children learn by being included in adult activities. How very new these ideas were in middle America is shown by the contrast between the Marshall home and the rest of the community. Though published eighty years ago, the novel's concern with race relations, substance abuse, the environment, distribution of wealth, and the welfare of children still speaks to us over the years. There is a good deal of a good housekeeper's interest in domestic affairs that will not interest a good many of your readers, especially those whoare going to form public opinion; for the majority of them, being men, are presumably not interested in such affairs. -- Henry Holt