"Isn't That Just like Tib?": Betsy and Tacy Confront the Other

Maud Hart Lovelace's ten Betsy-Tacy books follow the best friends Betsy and Tacy from first grade to marriage, with the first four books aimed at young readers and the latter six--the "high school" series-- for young adults. Although these books are known as the Betsy-Tacy books, and focus on the ideally compatible friendship between the two girls in the title, the duo's friend Tib plays a major role in the series, from the two earliest books: Betsy-Tacy and Betsy-Tacy and Tib. Tib remains a devoted and beloved friend of both girls, yet something about her that they can never articulate keeps her from entering into the mutual understanding that Betsy and Tacy share. This paper will consider Tib's otherness in light of her immigrant German-ness both in the context of the turn of the 20th century when the books are set, as well as that of the 1940s, when these books were first published.

Throughout the first book Tib does not appear until the end, but her house plays a vibrant role in the imagination of Betsy and Tacy, representing everything appealing, yet foreign and currently off-limits, a place which they will be allowed to enjoy on their own once they are grown up. When they meet Tib she is standing on her head; her otherness proceeds from this initial encounter. They gaze reverently at her pretty clothes and imagine that her home is a castle with her stylish, blond Aunt Dolly as its queen. Although they form an immediate friendship with Tib, the bond is grounded in mutual fascination. Tib admires, but remains consistently baffled by Betsy's active imagination and penchant for storytelling. Tacy, the bosom friend and alter ego, knows instinctively when Betsy has crossed the line between imagination and the material world. Tib is never quite sure. Despite their affection for her, Betsy and Tacy exchange looks throughout the series, articulating their frustration with Tib's inability to participate in their symbiosis: "Isn't that just like Tib?"

Tib remains associated with the otherness of that mythical city Milwaukee in the high school stories, as she returns there with her family who have immigrated from Germany. When Betsy visits her at Christmas in Betsy in Spite of Herself, Maud emphasizes the foreignness of Tib's life in Milwaukee. Tib's relatives speak German, retain German social customs, and toast the Kaiser at Christmas dinner. Milwaukee itself, very much an immigrant city in Maud's description, lives up to the oriental otherness with which the girls invested it years before. I want to explore a connection between Tib's "otherness"--that is, the practicality which prevents her from truly connecting with the kindred spirits that are Betsy-Tacy--and her German ethnicity. I want to suggest that while Tib's otherness is both cherished and idealized by her friends, still it keeps her from joining the seamless unity of their friendship.

Also important to this discussion, is the treatment of World War I in Betsy's Wedding where Tib vehemently asserts her American patriotism, calling the Kaiser a "lausbuben" while her brother runs off to enlist, eager to prove his loyalty to the United States. Despite the charm of Tib's family's European manners and customs, German nationalism in these stories would have been unthinkable and intolerable during the war years of the early 1940s. Ethnicity in the United States can be fetishized, cherished, even cultivated, but nationalism proves another story altogether. Nationalism gets defined against an Other, according to Julia Kristeva; similarly Betsy and Tacy bond with each other in their acceptance of Tib. They appreciate the mutuality of their own friendship when they look at each other and communicate nonverbally, "Isn't that just like Tib?"

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