The Saturdays

Elizabeth Enright’s children’s novel The Saturdays was published in 1941 and is set in the same period. The novel’s historical period greatly influences its characters and events, as the Melendy kids cope with the typical challenges of growing up at the tail end of the Great Depression while becoming increasingly conscious of the new war beginning in Europe.

The Great Depression began with the collapse of the US stock market in October 1929, after which economic contagion rapidly spread through much of the world. By 1932, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the US had fallen by 30%, and millions of people were out of work. Though the world economy began to recover by 1933, unemployment in the US was still around 15% in 1940, far higher than the 4-6% that economists consider healthy. The Melendy family appears to have been spared many of the vicissitudes of the Depression, as they continue to live in a spacious Manhattan brownstone, vacation in the Hudson Valley, and employ a live-in housekeeper. However, Mona’s conversation with the hairdresser, Miss Pearl, shows her that the preceding decade has not been so comfortable for many of her neighbors. Miss Pearl’s story of her impoverished childhood and abusive stepmother teaches Mona to be grateful for what she has. 

While not such an immediate danger, the war in Europe also makes an impression on Enright’s characters and shapes the Melendy children’s perspective on the world. Most historians date the onset of World War II to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Though the US did not enter the war until after Japan’s attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, in December 1941, the Melendy children are already keenly aware of the shadow hanging over the world. At the beginning of the story, it is clear that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler is already a household name, as the kids joke that the water leak print on their ceiling looks like him. Rush promises to put plasticine over it so it will look like a bearded man instead of the dictator. 

Before Pearl Harbor, most Americans disapproved of Hitler and the Nazis, but large majorities opposed US involvement in another global war, and this opposition sometimes overlapped with antisemitic and pro-Nazi sentiment. The most influential isolationist organization was the America First Committee, led by famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, whose tone grew increasingly antisemitic over time. In a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in September 1941, just months before Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh claimed that the “Jewish race” was pushing America to war (“America First and WWII,” Charles Lindbergh House and Museum). After the Pearl Harbor attack, public sentiment rapidly shifted, and the America First Committee ceased its activities.

The author captures the sympathy many Americans felt for those facing the brunt of the conflict. For instance, young Randy visits an art gallery exhibition to benefit people affected by the war. Their housekeeper, Cuffy, scorns Hitler and Mussolini, lamenting that the world just emerged from a “long, bad war” less than two decades before, and now is embroiled in another one (160). She fondly remembers how she enjoyed the peace of the interwar years on her travels to Europe as a young woman. She tells Randy, “It seemed like a lovely world…It was nice when you could go anyplace; on boats and trains to furrin cities” (159-60). As more news of the conflict’s devastation reaches America, Cuffy points to the pain and devastation caused by the war to remind the Melendy children of how fortunate they are to be growing up in peace and relative prosperity in America. She tells Mona, “Right now, right this minute, hundreds of children are fast asleep in subway stations, or down in boiler rooms. Think of the good supper you didn’t eat because you was too concerned about yourself” (99). The characters’ growing awareness and concern about the war and its effects grounds the story in its 1940s setting and helps the reader see the conflict from an American child’s perspective.