When she is eight years old, Tacy contracts diptheria, a highly contagious bacterial infection that caused significant rates of mortality among children in the early 1900s. Tacy and her siblings are quarantined at home for an entire spring season. It lasts so long that Tacy grows taller (and prettier, Betsy notices!) during it. While a vaccine for diptheria had been in existence as of the 1890s, it was not widely available until 1920.
Betsy-Tacy and Tib chronicles this as a period of significant fear and worry for the Kelly family, the Rays, and the entire neighborhood. Deep Valley adults speak of Tacy’s illness in hushed tones. Betsy and Tib miss and speak of Tacy every day, but they continue with school, of course, still go out to play, and occasionally even forget to be sad. But then they quickly remember again. Betsy cleans out Tacy’s desk at the end of the school year, and it appears that Tacy’s quarantine will continue into the summer.
While diptheria is currently a controlled disease with relatively few reported cases, the world experienced a gigantic quarantine with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2021. The scope of this quarantine brought social institutions and physical interactivity nearly to a halt for many months. The internet, social media, television, and radio were used to sustain everyday life and organizations to the extent possible. Society was instantly reshaped, stitched together by technologically enabled forms of communication and association. Going to school online became a reality for children across the globe. Hybrid forms of work and schooling emerged and expanded in the aftermath, many of which continue.
Tacy is unable to go to school or keep up with her friends (as a child in the digital age might do with the aid of technology), likely adding layers upon layers of loneliness atop her illness. Still, the children improvise, much as we must all improvise in the face of a sudden disruption in our lives. Tacy waves at Betsy and Tib from her window (today this might happen via video call), and gifts and notes are sent back and forth on a fishing pole (today, likely, they would be sent via texting, perhaps facilitated by a caregiver).
Eventually Tacy recovers, the house is fumigated, and the trio is happily reunited. But as her careful, measured account of this episode concludes, Lovelace takes care to note the toll that the illness had on Tacy’s mother. Mrs. Kelly holds back tears as she watches the girls resume their joyful romping and playing. Betsy, ever-observant, sees the barely hidden sadness in Mrs. Kelly’s trembling smile. It makes her “feel funny” (p. 83, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993), and prompts her to reflect further on life and death (see also the posts on The Birth of Margaret and Death of Baby Bee, on the Betsy-Tacy page on this site).
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The Digital Betsy-Tacy 