YMMV / What Katy Did

• Accidental Aesop: For Aunt Izzie; don't just assume that people will obey you without giving them a good reason to. Had she simply told Katy that the swing was broken then she wouldn't have used it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Does Dorry grow up solemn and somewhat dull because it was always in his nature to do so, or was it because his family inadvertently made him that way because they often teased him for being different? While Katy was beloved for her writing and unusual quirks, Dorry was chastised for his love of food and simple ways. It's certainly telling that Dorry is the only Carr child who doesn't move out to Colorado with the rest of the family and that no one seems particularly upset or surprised by it.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Katy changing from a lively, vivacious and brilliant girl into a saintly and proper young lady after her accident was very much celebrated back when the books were written, a common trope when it came to coming-of-age stories. Modern readers, however, tend to greatly prefer how Katy was before her accident, and find it unfortunate that her perfectly harmless and endearing personality had to tamed in order for her to progress into a proper young lady.
  • Cousin Helen is described as being 'half angel' by Dr Carr and is absolutely perfect outside of her disability, which also comes under being Inspirationally Disadvantaged. She's kind and understanding and is of the mind that a sick person can't complain because everyone around them is trying so hard to help them, lessons she imparts on Katy herself when she's bedridden. A beloved character back when she was written, Cousin Helen is now seen as being irritatingly perfect for the most part and even those who still admire her realise that her advice to suffer in silence is actually quite awful and detrimental to someone's well-being.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Clover kneeling and pretending to pray would have been seen as this back when the books were first published, even the author notes how wicked it was of her. Taken in a considerably more lighthearted way for modern readers.
• Designated Villain:
  • Lilly is as close to a villain as the series gets, she's dismissive of her cousins until they turn out to be popular at boarding school and then continues to be disgruntled whenever she happens to run into them. However Lilly was raised to be spoilt and self-centred by her own mother and Katy is almost infuriatingly perfect, it's easy to understand why Lilly would be irritated to spend time with her. Another of Lilly's supposed crimes is that she loves shopping and spent most of her time in Europe buying souvenirs instead of making memories like Katy and company.
  • Imogen, for the first part of In The High Valley because she is deeply unhappy at having to move to a strange country where she doesn't know anyone and has to deal with the insufferably perfect Carr family yet she's apparently not allowed to be upset at her situation.
  • Madame Frulini, the owner of the hotel where Mrs Ashe, Katy and Amy are staying when the former contracts 'Roman fever' is apparently heartless for asking them to relocate to a nearby apartment instead, as rumours of a fever and Amy's shrieking is costing her business. It sounds cruel, but Madame Frulini took the trouble of finding them somewhere to go and Amy's fever-fuelled tantrums are so bad that people in the neighbouring rooms can't sleep.
• Fair for Its Day: While women are expected to keep house and look after their men, Clover notably objects to the idea of a wife being referred to as 'thy handmaiden' and both her and Katy show distaste towards scriptures that point the man as the indisputable head of the house, to who the wife must follow without question. It helps that the older Carr girls genuinely seem quite happy to 'play house' as they call it and that they end up with partners who are willing to indulge their more creative and quirky natures.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Red Rose and Clover have the most fanworks dedicated to them given how close they are to one another, more so than their eventual husbands.
• First Installment Wins: Many people know about What Katy did, but few know of the two sequels involving her and even less know that Clover got her own book too.
• Glurge: Infamously so, especially for a modern audience. Katy's inspirational journey of becoming temporarily disabled and then curing herself through good thoughts and patience alone was a common one for that time.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In What Katy Did Next, the French are described as being overwhelmingly polite and so much more cultured than the English when in modern times, France is stereotypically known for being rude towards tourists.
• Les Yay: Tons of it, given that the girls are constantly showering one another with kisses. Of course, things were different back then, but the implication remains.
  • Between Katy and Cousin Helen.
  Then she (Katy) tumbled down by the sofa somehow, the two pairs of arms and the two faces met, and for a moment or two not a word more was heard from anybody.
• Informed Wrongness: Imogen's love for her homeland is frequently dismissed and looked down upon, yet everyone else is allowed to gush about how wonderful America is.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Lilly grumbles to her mother that Katy always gets her own way and she isn't wrong either; she's so saintly and perfect and everything does go right for her, including inadvertently winning Ned away from Lilly.
• Signature Scene: Katy falling off the swing and damaging her back.
• The Scrappy: Amy Ashe is a spoiled brat who acts a lot younger than she actually is and who somehow gets away with being incredibly rude and disrespectful to people. She throws tantrums that would shame a child half her age and has the irritating habit of slipping into baby speak. She spends most of her once in a lifetime trip through Europe complaining about how awful people are and how dirty everything is, and while it becomes more excusable when she falls ill, it also turns her into The Load as Polly and Katy then have to spend the greater part of a month looking after her. Amy's one redeeming feature is that her illness was what made Ned and Katy spend so much time together, which led to them falling in love and getting married.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Amy does eventually grow up into a polite and kind young woman who is actually a little embarrassed at how badly she behaved when she was younger.
• Sweetness Aversion
  • The Carr sisters are incredibly loving towards one another and those around them, and throw around the words 'delightful' and 'simply delicious' so often over the smallest things. To a modern reader, it can seem sugary sweet and over the top, but it was very much a product of its time.
  • The younger children, especially Amy and Little Rose, are written to be so cute that it borders on this. While it misses the mark completely with Amy, who comes across as being spoilt and childish, it's much more notable with Little Rose who is an incredibly droll three-year-old with a lisp. The scene where Rose Red makes Little Rose dress up like a cupid and recite poetry to Katy is slathered in sugar.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Of all the Carr children, we spend the least time with Johnnie. Her transformation from a tomboy into a stunningly beautiful young woman happens entirely off-screen, and all we're really told about her is that she's intelligent enough to get into the composition class shortly after starting school and that she has a number of young men interested in her. She finally appears in In The High Valley but only so she can get married to Lionel.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Clover is complimented endlessly by having a waist as 'small as a pin', but when Phil grows up thin due to getting sick in his early teens, it's only ever shown in a negative light.
  • The author is incredibly rude about the English people; they're portrayed to be idiots with no love of classical literature, and Americans are considered sophisticated in comparison.
  • While Katy in her pre-teen years is regarded as endearing, there's no doubt that she's regarded as in need of fixing. And how is she fixed into the perfect American woman of the period? By being crippled and confined to one room for four years!
  • When Aunt Izzie dies Katy takes on the role of running the household, even though she's only fourteen at the time and her father could easily hire someone as a housekeeper.
  • Disabled people are expected to be more or less rooted to the spot. Katy has a wheelchair, but the idea that it might be used to take her beyond her bedroom doesn't seem to occur to anyone, ever - let alone the idea that it would help for her to have a downstairs room rather than be cut off from her whole huge family upstairs during the day and have to wait for them to come to her; running the household would be much easier if she could actually visit various rooms on the ground floor like the kitchen, and the servants wouldn't have to keep coming upstairs; and it would be nice for her to go outside once in a while, even if it's just to the garden. There's also no physical therapy; Katy's actually warned not to make too much movement lest she "set herself back" and she has to wait in hope of outgrowing her injury. In short, disabled people just have to be beautiful, pleasant and uncomplaining at all times, no matter how severe their pain or frustration, or, Helen says explicitly, nobody will love them. It's Inspirationally Disadvantaged Type C or nothing.
  • Apparently Geoff and Clarence's attempts to keep house are laughable and pitiable and they can't help it because they're men.
    Mrs Hope: Men are dreadfully untidy, as a general thing, when left to themselves; but they like very well to have other people make things neat.

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