The Friendly Persuasion

This is a perfectly delightful collection of stories about a family of Quakers, the Birdwells, in Civil War-era Indiana. For the most part, they center around the ongoing but largely unspoken battle between the somewhat free-spirited husband, Jess, who likes singing and horse racing and the like, and his more serious wife, Eliza. The themes dealt with are mostly minor, though the difficulty of remaining pacifist in the midst of war is treated, and, of course, became the core issue in the excellent Gary Cooper film version of the book.The real value of the book lies in its implicit rebuke to one of the central conceits of the modern age, that simply because rather restrictive religious beliefs were central to peoples' lives in that earlier America, their existences must necessarily have been dour and joyless. This prejudice is silly on its face, contrary as it is to everything we know about human nature, and Jessamyn West's stories, with their devout, but playful, Quaker characters, are a terrific antidote. Though the Birdwells' lives are proscribed by rules and social conventions which may strike us as odd, they are also filled with joy and love and a sense of community, both the physical and the spiritual community, which any one of us would envy.GRADE : B+

Friendly Persuasion is a group of short stories following an Indianan Quaker couple and their family through their adult lives. Jess, the father is a nurseryman and Eliza, his wife, a Quaker clergy. Jess keeps life lively with comeuppances and an attraction to new conveniences such as gas lighting and running water in the home. The opening story "Music on the Muscatuck" was particularly funny. Well written vignettes with clear characterization. Published in 1940 and still in print. An old-fashioned, "classic" sleeper.