The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 24 April 2023
by Edward Streeter
It's not easy to imagine the emotional roller coaster a father experiences watching his beloved daughter grow up, become independent, and then one day find a partner, someone she eventually marries, ostensibly dedicating herself to that person for the rest of her life. In 1949, when this novel was first published, there were some deeply conventional cultural expectations surrounding this event. The woman was giving herself to a man, a man whose life she would endeavor to complement. These expectations arise from the deepest history of human civilization, and it seems that every generation finds a way to challenge them in some small way. In 1949, it was the recognition of the sly wisdom women posess in the face of the clunky old male ego. In 2023, it is the utter upending of gender and cultural norms, the first real glimmers that recognizing personal freedom is to recognize the fluid nature of our personal needs and preferences; that choosing a mate for life, anachronistic as that is already, is a fundamental part of our identities. That culture would merely let this happen, of course, is why we're all shouting over eachother about it. In any case, in 1949, George Banks is faced with his beloved daughter Kate and her plans to embark on married life. He recognizes its inevitability. He can barely handle the reality.
George Banks is a modestly successful New York lawyer (and World War 1 vetran). His lifestyle is much the conventional style of the 1940s and 1950s: a professional man, working in a downtown office building, commuting (by train!) to his large and comfortable home (purchased with a single household income!), raising his 2.3 kids (two beanpole boys and the aformentioned beloved daughter), and settling in to read the newspaper and put on his slippers as the wife (or, here, the maid!) whips up a full dinner to be served at table. (We needn't belabor the difference between ideal and reality in that era, not to mention the role of the maid, who gets here just one line in the entire book.) Upon this idyll falls the announcement that young Kay Banks is planning to wed her beanpole (and World War 2 veteran) boyfriend of unknown prospects, but the son of a much wealthier family across town. As the titular father of the bride, George must now confront the obligations and (gasp!) costs of hosting a wedding with anywhere from fifty to six hundred guests. Wackiness ensues. Actually, it doesn't get that wacky, but Streeter's empathy for this man, and his wry gaze upon the conventions make the prose consistently amusing and sometimes surprisingly sharp for such a light comedy. Some of that comedy will also arise from the fact that a 21st-century reader may find the cultural morés and (gasp!) prices of that era rather startling. (Modern movies temper those details, give the bride-to-be more agency and independence, but ultimately fail to shed the capitalist fantasies of big old houses and affluent protagonists.)
The book is a light read, funny and sharp in that way one might find in the early television sitcoms of that era. Don't expect a withering mortal gaze at suburban expectations, but don't dismiss it because of its levity, either. It was a wild best-seller in 1949, perhaps because of the mojo it got from the Book of the Month Club.
(This book, of course, was made into a movie of the same name in 1950 with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, which spawned a sequel and a television series, only to be remade with Steve Martin in 1991, which itself had another sequel, was again remade in the Tamil language, and most recently in 2022, with Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan, and set within sunny and wealthy Miami.)
Also by Streeter: [Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter] [Dere Mable]