First of all - before you're coming at me now if you know the "Sue Barton" series, I know these are not children's books, but YA books.
There's a mix of both in what I have always been calling my children's book cabinet.
I never wanted to be a nurse myself. Nothing about it appeals to me personally. I can see my own blood, but not that of others, to start with. I can feel faint just from smelling a hospital on entering it. Mostly, though, I think I'm too soft ... or in other words, a wimp.
Feeling like that makes me appreciate nurses even more for being able to do this. I have been around one or two in my life (and haven't been happy with all of them, after all we are humans) and I'm friends with one or two as well.
So why have I read "Sue Barton" and why do I even own the books myself?
Oh, and if you don't know the series, who even is Sue Barton?
"Sue Barton" is the story of a young woman from student to staff nurse told in seven books written between 1936 and 1952 by Helen Dore Boylston who was a nurse herself.
Her books are among the first to define the YA category.
Boylston worked as a nurse in a field hospital during World War I and wrote a book about that experience as well. She stayed in Europe working for the Red Cross in different countries.
After meeting author Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder), they decided to drive from Paris to Albania in a Model T. They lived in Albania for about a year before returning to the USA, a book based on their journal and letters was published in 1983.
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| Helen Dore Boylston, ca. 1928 |
After losing money during the Depression, Boylston went back to nursing and then began to take up writing more seriously.
She based her Sue Barton books on her own experiences and real people she knew, she even kept some of the real names, but insisted on Sue not being autobiographical, but the nurse she would have liked to be herself.
Her aim was not to convey a romantic but a realistic picture of nursing, and her protagonist followed different paths during her career just like she had herself.
There are seven books in the series, "Sue Barton: Student Nurse", "Sue Barton: Senior Nurse", "Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse", "Sue Barton: Rural Nurse", "Sue Barton: Superintendent of Nurses", and the last two which followed some years later, "Sue Barton: Neighborhood Nurse", and "Sue Barton: Staff Nurse".
The first two books see Sue and her friends Kit and Connie train at a famous hospital. She falls in love with young doctor Bill Barry and gets engaged, but insists on working as a nurse before getting married.
In the third book, Sue and Kit work for the Henry Street Settlement as visiting nurses in New York. Bill, who has taken a job as a rural doctor, has changed his mind about waiting and wants to get married as soon as possible which leads to a breakup, but not for long.
When his father dies, Bill has to postpone the wedding. Sue wants to be near him and organizes a job as a rural nurse for herself in the fourth book.
Sue and Bill get married at the start of the fifth book and Sue works as the head of the new hospital's nursing school, but isn't sure she's right for the job. The marriage gets a bit rocky, but at the end Sue is pregnant with her first baby and resigns from the school.
In the sixth book, Sue and Bill have three children. Sue regrets having given up nursing, but finds her experience also helps her in the family and around the neighborhood. Kit is now head of the nursing school.
The final book sees Bill taken ill. He has to stay in a sanatorium for months, so Sue needs to go back to work and care for her now four children with the help of an old friend. Bill recovers, and although the end is open, it still seems to hint at Sue going to give up working again when he comes back.
In Germany, the books were first published as a three volume edition in the 50s. More editions followed, but only later as the series of seven volumes. I remember how surprised I was when I first saw the seven paperbacks at our book store because I thought I had missed something until I read the descriptions.
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| Susanne Barden - Hinaus ins Leben (Sue Barton: Student Nurse/Senior Nurse) Susanne Barden - Weite Wege (Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse/Rural Nurse) Susanne Barden - Reifen und Wirken (Sue Barton: Superintendent of Nurses/ Neighborhood Nurse/Staff Nurse |
I hated these covers and treated myself to a set of the edition I knew from my childhood as a birthday gift this year.
So sentimental, I know! The newer covers, however, always made me think of dime novels from the medical field (which takes me back to the shelf where they kept all the pulp fiction in the grocery shop of my childhood, so funny what we remember). I even liked the old font better.
Aren't they pretty?
For this post, I compared parts of the first books in English (which I found on The Internet Archive) and German, and the translation seems to stay true to the content for the most part, but is rather free in regards to the style.
There have also been some smaller cuts to the text. Maybe the reason for that was them turning seven books into three. I still don't approve and wonder why they felt they had to make the series a trilogy in the first place.
Sue Barton becomes Susanne Barden and a few of the other names are changed as well (which I only understand in one case in which the name has a special meaning).
What surprised me was that Fahrenheit wasn't changed to Celsius because that's something I'd have done. 68 Fahrenheit meant nothing to me as a kid.
My sister was the first one to borrow the books from our city library and she liked them (although she also didn't want to be a nurse), so I read them as well. That must have been around the second half of the 70s.
I don't think I really thought about how old exactly the books were, in the 70s they didn't seem that dated to me yet, after all I had absolutely no knowledge of nursing and you could have sold me anything.
I then bought the books for my collection as a grown-up. Of course it became clear to me then how old they were, but by now it was just a vintage read, anyway.
My favorites were the first one and a half German books (English 1 to 3) and the last third of the third book (English 7). I enjoyed the others as well, but not as much although at the time I never gave it much thought why that was. Do you already suspect something?
When I read the books again for this post, it was so obvious to me. Unlike others, I wasn't a fan of Bill.
My favorite books showed Sue as an independent woman who was following her dream and was good at it (okay, maybe a bit too good to be realistic, but it's fiction after all), and Bill wasn't featuring in them very prominently. Sure, he was the love interest, but for me romance wasn't the important part in these books. I think he lost me when he got really pushy about the marriage although he had promised Sue before that he would wait.
In one book, Sue called Bill "too serious, I sometimes think" (or something like that, I only know the line in German).
To be frank, to me he sometimes seems more like a spoilt child, no matter what a wonderful doctor he is, while Sue comes over as a lot more mature.
Boylston never got married, by the way, and neither did Kit in the books who is one of my favorite characters.
Then, however, I remind myself again of the time those books were written. The 30s were a time when women started to gain independence, for example in professions like nursing, but the 50s when the last two books were published wanted to see women back in the home, at the stove, and caring for husband and children.
At least, Sue could prove that she was able to survive without the man in the house.
I agree with a blogger, though, who wrote "I think the author sold out to the publishers on that one."
Granted, when Bill is telling Kit he will be coming home soon and wants to surprise Sue, she's sure Sue will give up working, but Bill wonders if she won't be missing it. Kit says that it's up to her and him to decide and Bill replies that it's up to Sue. It's just that I got the feeling from it that he hopes for her to quit and I don't seem to be the only one. Maybe we don't trust Bill to have grown up enough to understand?
As it is the last book, I guess we can decide ourselves what Sue is actually doing next.
I can't really tell you why I love reading these books, but every, now and then I grab them and still have fun with them, still feel Sue's passion about her work, still get annoyed about Bill and am still glad I'm not a nurse (as should every patient).
P.S. I seem to remember having seen Boylston's other series about actress Carol Page in the library or elsewhere, but don't think I've ever read them.
I have also never read Cherry Ames, another popular series about a nurse. Actually I had never even heard of her before researching for this post and couldn't find a German translation for the books.
Sources:
1. Katherine Ashenburg: Rereading: Sue Barton and Me. In: The American Scholar 72(2003),3, pp. 137 - 141 (closed access)
2. Deborah Philips: Healthy Heroines: Sue Barton, Lillian Wald, Lavinia Lloyd Dock and the Henry Street Settlement. In: Journal of American Studies 33(1999),1, pp. 65 - 82 (closed access)
3. Rebecca M. Douglass: Middle Grade Monday: Helen Dore Boylston. On: The Ninja Librarian, November 1, 2021
4. "lunacat101": Helen Dore Boylston (1895-1984), Part I, II, III. On: Authors' real lives, January 3, 2015 - April 5, 2015 - September 19, 2015
5. Travels with Zenobia - Paris to Albania by Model T Ford : A Journal by Rose Wilder Lane and Helen Dore Boylston. Ed. by William Holtz. Columbia & London, University of Missouri Press, 1983
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