The Friendly Persuasion is an American novel published in 1945 by Jessamyn West. It was adapted as the Oscar-nominated motion picture Friendly Persuasion in 1956. The book consists of 14 vignettes about a Quaker farming family, the Birdwells, living near the town of Vernon in southern Indiana along "the banks of the Muscatatuck, where once the woods stretched, dark row on row."West (1945), p. 3 The Birdwells' farm, Maple Grove Nursery, was handed down to them by pioneering forebears who came west nearly fifty years before the time period depicted at the outset of the novel.
West published the vignettes between 1940 and 1945 as individual stories in Prairie Schooner, Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, The Atlantic Monthly, Ladies' Home Journal, New Mexico Quarterly, and Harper's Magazine. She then had them reprinted for The Friendly Persuasion in more or less chronological order covering a forty-year span of the Birdwell family in the latter half of the 19th Century.In the opening chapter, Jess and Quigley debate the merits of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, making the year 1858. Jess is approximately 40 at the time, and so the last chapter likely takes place in 1898.
West gained the background material for the stories while recuperating at home from a nearly fatal bout with tuberculosis in the early 1930s. Having gone home to die, she improbably recovered. During her convalescence, her mother, Grace Milhous West, shared with her many childhood memories of growing up as a Quaker girl in southern Indiana, and particularly of grandparents Joshua and Elizabeth Milhous, who became the models for the Birdwells. At the time of her illness, West had quit teaching to write, initially without success. The enforced inactivity of her recovery resulted in a prolific output of short stories. In 1969, she published a companion novel, Except for Me and Thee, whose stories filled in the history of the Birdwells, including how they courted, married, and moved to Indiana.
Characters Birdwell household Jess – Husband and father, Jess is a nurseryman originally from Germantown, Pennsylvania. He is a "birthright Quaker" whose Irish family have been of the faith for 200 years. While "Quaker through and through,"West (1945), p. 15 the large, sturdy red-haired Jess has a love of music and fast horses. Completely devoted to his wife, he nevertheless asserts his authority as head of the household when she demands rather than asks for adherence to her views.West modeled Jess on her great-grandfather Joshua Vickers Milhouse and named him after her grandfather Jesse Griffith Milhous. (Farmer, p. 22) Eliza – The mother of seven (one of whom died young), Eliza is the strong-willed Quaker minister of the Grove Meeting House who has on the whole been sheltered from the harsher realities of life. "Work-brickel and good-looking as female preachers are apt to be," she is small, dark haired with soft black eyes and runs her household with a firm but gentle touch.Eliza's personality was based on West's recollections of her own maternal grandmother Mary Frances McManaman. (Farmer, p. 23) Joshua (Josh) – The eldest Birdwell child, Josh is fastidious, conscientious and earnest. He has his mother's small slender stature, fine dark hair parted down the middle, and her black eyes "flecked with green." A young adolescent at the novel's outset, he worries that the contentment and peace that he observes in his parents is not the normal fruit of becoming an adult. Laban (Labe) – Three years younger than Josh, Labe is a husky, unkempt, but good-natured boy with blond curly hair and a love for the outdoors. A natural athlete, he is the antithesis of Josh, "just plain dirty and messy and everybody loved him."West (1945), p. 21 Labe conscientiously avoids all forms of violence because he sees in himself a love of it. Martha Truth (Mattie) – The older and for many years only Birdwell daughter, Mattie shares her father's love of music and while an adolescent, a girl's romanticism, rebelliousness against her parents, and intense, mercurial emotions. Josh sees his sister as an inveterate drama queen. West created Mattie with her own mother in mind, imagining what she was like as a youth. Little Jess – Freckled, red-haired, and all boy, Little Jess imagines himself an explorer of exotic locales as he plays. Jane – The youngest Birdwell daughter, she is fifteen in the vignette in which she plays a role, when Jess is 62. Both Jane and her brother Stephen appear only in the second half of the narrative, and apparently are later life children born well after Josh, Labe, and Mattie. Jane is marked by gray eyes and an adolescent's sensitivity about her looks. Stephen (Steve) – Stephen Birdwell has only one vignette in which he is a major character. He is his mother's youngest child and clear favorite, even-tempered and contented with his life. Elspeth Bent – Jess and Eliza's young granddaughter, Elspeth is Mattie's child from her marriage to Gard Bent. Stephen is very fond of Elspeth, calling her "Aunt Jetty." Enoch – The Birdwell's hired man during all or most of their married life in Indiana, Enoch is green-eyed and blond-haired. He is an expert on horse flesh and his own interpretation of the Bible, but was hired as much for his conversational abilities as his work. Emanuela – The family's hired woman, very dark-skinned and mannish,West hints that Emanuela is possibly of mixed racial blood and may have come to the Birdwells just before or during the Civil War. Emanuela has been in service with the Birdwells for 20 years when she makes her first appearance in the novel. Like many non-Birdwell characters, Emanuela is odd, speaking only in rhyme and therefore only speaking when she can think one. Other characters Gardiner Bent (Gard) – Gard is the oldest son of the peculiar Bents, Jud and Lavony, a handsome boy with black hair and light brown eyes on the edge of manhood when he first appears as Mattie's future beau. Gard is a learned reader like his father, has finished schooling, and is trying for a teacher's position at the nearby Rush Branch school. Gard and Mattie are immediately comfortable in each other's presence. Reverend Marcus Augustus Godley – The minister of the Bethel Church is a big, corpulent and florid man from Kentucky, bombastic and haughty by nature, and given to full-voiced preaching in his discourse.
Plot The Friendly Persuasion has as its common theme linking the fourteen chapters (only two of which, "A Likely Exchange" and "First Day Finish" are otherwise connected) the effects of the Quaker religion on members of a family and their interaction with their neighbors. West uses rich descriptives of geography and setting to bring out the dignity and strength of her characters. However her stated purpose in telling their story is to present descriptions of "real life" and "reality" as she understands them, not to elucidate the religion, stating that the Birdwells are characters "who happened to be Quaker" rather than personifications of Quaker traits.
Three stories ("Shivaree Before Breakfast," "Lead Her Like a Pigeon,"and "Homer and the Lilies") were based on recollections of West's mother (Grace) from her own girlhood. Family stories about her great-grandfather were the source for three others ("Music on the Muscatatuck,"A Likely Exchange," and "First Day Finish"). Although not connected to her own family or Quakers, "The Pacing Goose" was based on an actual incident chronicled in a compendium of early Indiana court cases.
Music on the Muscatatuck In 1858 Jess Birdwell's tree nursery is flourishing, bringing him contentment. As a Quaker, however, the one flaw in his happy life is that his religion disdains music as frivolous. He travels by train to Philadelphia and meets Professor Waldo Quigley, a traveling salesman for a company that sells pump organs. Jess accepts Quigley's invitation to hear a tune played and impulsively purchases an organ. When it arrives, Eliza errs in confusing her role as Quaker minister with that of spouse and makes an ultimatum that Jess can either have an organ or a wife, but not both. Jess, "a mild man until pushed"West (1945), p. 12 and about to recant, immediately meets her challenge and moves the organ into their house. Eliza protests by sitting in the snow. After being chilled to the bone, forcing her to think through the issue, she compromises with herself by allowing the issue to be between Jess and God, and with Jess by allowing the organ in the house but only in the attic. Jess is visited by the meeting's Ministry and Oversight Committee, concerned that Brother Birdwell is possibly not "standing squarely in the light."West (1945), p. 14 Mattie unfortunately picks that moment to play the instrument, but Jess saves his own and Eliza's reputation by an impassioned prayer of contrition that drowns out the music, earning the admiration of the committee.
Shivaree Before Breakfast One morning while passing the home of their neighbor Old Alf Applegate, a widower, Labe hears him speaking to someone and believes he has married again. He talks Josh into giving Old Alf a shivaree before dawn to celebrate. The boys, ten and thirteen, hear Old Alf speaking to "Molly darling" when they arrive, but he denies having a new wife. Old Alf explains that he could no longer bear the silence following the death of his wife and invented "Molly" to talk to so that he can hear his own voice. Josh believes Old Alf to be crazy but agrees to keep quiet lest the rest of the neighbors think so also, while Labe understands the old man completely.
The Pacing Goose Jess knows that spring is upon them again when Eliza begins yearning for geese as she does every year. Jess is dead set against geese as being destructive of new crops, but Eliza reveals she bought eight goose eggs from their neighbors the Overbys and set them under a hen to hatch. Jess cajoles Enoch to puncture the eggs with a darning needle, on the premise that their "fox-eared" neighbors sold them bad eggs to begin with, but Enoch's conscience won't let him destroy all eight. One hatches that Eliza names Samantha and takes for a pampered pet. Samantha disappears late that autumn and Eliza finds her back at the Overbys, who deny that she is the same goose. Despite a Quaker aversion for courtroom trials, Eliza brings suit against the Overbys for return of the goose. At the trial, after Milt Overby's truculence and Eliza's insistence that she identified Samantha among 39 other geese because Samantha has the gait of "a born pacer," the young visiting judge awards Eliza the goose. Jess finds the identification dubious until they get home. Upon uncrating the goose, he and Enoch observe that two-legged Samantha does indeed walk with the swing of a four-legged pacing horse. When Samantha maliciously bites Enoch on the leg, that identification is certain. Jess avers that although he still has no use for trials, he learned valuable lessons from it about the virtues of dependable women and the choosing of hired men.
Lead Her Like a Pigeon