Lyddie

Lyddie is a 1996 novel written by Katherine Paterson, winner of the National Book Award, the Newbury Medal, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Astrid Lindgren Award, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal. Lyddie was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, an ALA Notable Children’s Book, and an Honor Book of the International Board on Books for Young People. Some of her notable books include Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved. The novel spans three years in the life of a Lowell Mill Girl named Lyddie. It is written from the third-person limited perspective, following Lyddie’s experience and delving into her thoughts and emotions.

This guide is based upon the Puffin Books Trade Paperback Edition published in 2015.

Content Warning: This novel contains depictions of children experiencing hunger, poverty, neglect, and financial abuse at the hands of their family. It is an account of child labor that includes themes of corporate exploitation of underage workers, as well as discussions of the enslavement of human beings, a teenage pregnancy, a character’s confinement in a psychiatric hospital, and continued attempts by a factory supervisor to sexually assault the underage female employees he oversees.

Plot Summary

In rural Vermont in 1843, Lyddie Worthen’s life is irrevocably changed when she is ousted from her family home by her emotionally unstable mother. Struggling against poverty since her father left the family four years ago, ostensibly to find work that would benefit his wife and four children, Lyddie has worked tirelessly to ensure the family’s survival. When her mother moves in with relatives and leases out their family farm, Lyddie and her brother Charlie are separated and sent into servitude while their mother collects the profits of their labors. When Lyddie is dismissed from her position at Cutler’s Tavern due to a misunderstanding, she is inspired to travel to the growing industrial city of Lowell, Massachusetts, where she heard she can find work in a factory and make an amount of money she can barely imagine. Lyddie settles in at the boardinghouse known as Number Five and begins her career as a weaver for Concord Corporation. She devotes herself utterly to her work, saving as much as she can in the hopes that she and her family can return to their farm and regain a sense of prosperity.

Throughout her time at Concord Corporation, she develops relationships with strong, independent young women like herself: Diana, the labor activist who mentors Lyddie and teaches her to become a proficient loom operator; Betsy, the hopeful college student who ignites Lyddie’s passion for reading but succumbs to lung disease as a result of 10 years in the factory; and Brigid, the gentle but plucky Irish immigrant who struggles at first but soon thrives in the factory environment as she works to support her family. Lyddie battles against the unwanted attentions of an overseer, Mr. Marsden, and against the oppressive, exhausting, and dangerous conditions of her work environment.

Lyddie is thwarted in her hopes when her uncle comes to visit her at the boardinghouse, bringing her younger sister Rachel and informing Lyddie that he and her aunt have placed Lyddie’s mother in the Brattleboro asylum and will be selling the family farm. Lyddie tries to compel Charlie to stop the sale, but Charlie encourages it and also tries to persuade his sister to accept the marriage proposal of their kind neighbor Luke, whose father purchases their property. When Lyddie’s mother dies, Charlie returns for Rachel, who has also begun working in the factory, bringing her into the family to which he is indentured and with which he has developed a familial relationship. Lyddie, forced to accept a future without the possibility of returning home but enlivened and inspired by the women she has come to respect, begins to consider what she wants for her own life.