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Richard PeckA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Granddad waves the family down to meet Buffalo Bill Cody. Buster moves in a dream because Cody is “every boy’s idol” (110). Buffalo Bill sweeps off his hat as he kisses Aunt Euterpe’s hand. Buster introduces himself and reveals his real first name, LeRoy. The governor and mayor, having climbed out of the coach, introduce themselves to Granddad, who in turn introduces them to Euterpe. The mayor remembers that Euterpe’s late husband was a valued member of the business community.
Cody sends Euterpe and the girls to sit in his own box seats. Rosie wonders if now her aunt’s social standing will improve, but Euterpe replies that, in the social world, “it is not the men who matter” (114). At one end of the row of seats in Cody’s box sits the most beautiful woman any of the family has ever seen. She smiles and nods, but Rosie has learned a “hard lesson”: you are not supposed to speak to anyone to whom you haven’t been introduced.
The second act of the show is a buffalo hunt, with Buffalo Bill rounding them up amidst Sioux horsemen. The beautiful lady comments on the dust, and Euterpe begins chatting with her. Euterpe points out that her father and the colonel fought together in the war, to which the woman replies, “And yet men at their most warlike are less cruel than women” (116). Euterpe agrees heartily. When the show is over, Buffalo Bill rides to his box and hands a spray of carnations to Aunt Euterpe, violets to Lottie and Rosie, and a spray of roses to the beautiful lady. He introduces her to the crowd as “the toast of America—Miss Lillian Russell!” (118)
The band strikes up a song made famous by Russell, “After the Ball,” and the actress rises and curtsies. Granddad rushes to the box, and Russell offers her hand. He says he is “crude as a ripsawed plank” (119) but is her greatest admirer. He then introduces her to Euterpe. Russell hesitates, aware of her reputation and the cruelty of Chicago’s matrons. Euterpe, however, rises to the occasion by saying that “Miss Russell” honors to the city with her presence. Rosie concludes that she and Lottie saw how things could be between two ladies of “real refinement, even if Society wouldn’t know them” (120). Buster wonders aloud if Miss Russell is named for their horse.
Rosie’s third and final postcard to her parents is a photo of Lillian Russell. In it, she says that they went to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Granddad and Buster’s favorite attraction and Tip’s, too. Then, she says, they met Miss Lillian Russell, “the real one, a lady” (121).
The family goes on visiting the fair each day for the rest of the week. They come home one day to find a visiting card from Mrs. Danforth Evans, the wife of a dean at the University of Chicago. They have all been invited to a musical evening at her home the next day. Euterpe wonders how the invitation came about and Rosie reflects that, for once, she is blameless.
Rosie believes her sister has had something to do with the invitation. But she thinks that now she is “more of a woman” (125) after her Chicago experiences and will not plague Lottie. Lottie seems distracted. The next day, the women shop for new outfits before going to the Evans residence. Mrs. Evans says she thought it was time she met Aunt Euterpe. She introduces them to her husband, the dean, and then to a handsome young man who turns out to be Everett. “Hecka-tee,” says Granddad.
It turns out that Everett is a college student at Chicago. He had taken the job as a hired hand to build his strength after overdoing his studies. Lottie, in turn, has known all along that she would be sure to see him in Chicago. At the party, Rosie dances with a boy for the first time and Aunt Euterpe acts as chaperone, part of a row of refined society ladies.
The family uses the last night of the fair for their ride on the Ferris wheel. Each car holds 60 people. As it carries them up into the sky, the exposition unfolds beneath them and the electric lights come on. Rosie believes that the fair and “all the world” (132) belongs to her.
Lottie and Everett marry the summer after the fair, and Rosie sings at the wedding. They urge her to come to Chicago and live with them so she can go to high school there, and she does. The fair has convinced her that she had “a world more to learn” (134). Aunt Euterpe sells her house, moves into a nice hotel, and is welcomed into society as a relative of the Danforth Evanses. Buster goes out east to find work in the motion pictures, eventually ending up in California as a famous producer of Westerns. Granddad “never died. He lived on and on, in our hearts” (134).
Peck’s author’s note describes how the fair closed on October 30, 1893. Although it promised a prosperous future driven by steam and electricity, it ended on an ominous note as Chicago’s mayor was assassinated shortly before the fair’s last day. The author describes the lasting influence of the fair. In addition to its influence on architecture, it inspired artistic creations such as L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which reimagined the White City as the Emerald City. It also inspired carnival features such as Ferris wheels and midways, along with rodeos. Products from hamburgers to carbonated drinks became popular, and everyone who saw the fair believed they had seen the future.
Powerful forces are at work on the characters in these closing chapters. The first is Aunt Euterpe’s shared understanding with Lillian Russell, consolidating the theme of Female Power and Social Structures in the 1890s. Both women have suffered because of this fact, creating the common ground that leads to their handshake. This is also a lesson to Euterpe, who realizes that her social aspirations have made her complicit in superficial value judgements about the actress. The scene is a reverse of the one in which Rosie tries to introduce Mrs. Palmer to Euterpe. In that scene, Palmer draws back with an “Ah” because Euterpe Fleischacker is beneath her. In Chapter 11, it is Russell who draws back and says “Ah” because she knows Chicago society has condemned her: Instead of disdain, Russell shows consideration for Euterpe, In this way, the novel shows that Russell is in fact a better woman than Mrs. Palmer, despite their different social positions. The handshake, in turn, shows Rosie “how things could be between two ladies of real refinement,” (120), modeling a much-needed example of feminine dignity and kindness that she hasn’t previously seen in Chicago. This helps Rosie to carry off her next entry into polite society without disgracing herself.
Lottie proves to be the most adept of all the novel’s female characters in navigating the social order, and she does this by remaining true to herself while being sly with others. She resists Everett’s attempts to educate her, knowing her beauty and character will win him over. She circumvents her mother’s misplaced snobbery by simply holding her tongue about Everett’s identity—in Rosie’s words, “a lesson to all mothers everywhere” (130).
In this final part, the fair comes to its apogee as a central force acting on the characters, especially as a metaphor for the potential lives of the young characters. Peck has said he chose the World’s Columbian Exposition as the subject for Fair Weather because he wanted to show his characters the “new century about to be born, with a fair to point them in the directions their futures would take them” (Penguin Random House, Fair Weather). This is especially true for Rosie, whose personality is so unformed at the novel’s beginning. Narrating the story from a point years in the future, Rosie once again repeats a phrase used earlier in the book to emphasize the deeper meaning it has taken on. In Chapter 3, Rosie comments that “all the world we knew fanned out around us” (30). In the final chapter, as the family ascends in the fair’s Ferris wheel, it is the great exposition “fanning out” below them to show them the future. In both of these images, it is the family who is at the center, concluding the theme of The Advantages of Family Love and Friendship Compared With Wealth Alone. Furthermore, having conquered her fear of the Ferris wheel with the encouragement of her loved ones, Rosie can look down and see “the future unfurling below” (132). It is her own future that she sees, and she has gained the courage she needs to make a new life in Chicago with her sister and Everett.
The fact that Rosie sings at Lottie’s wedding is another instance of a small detail that takes on more weight as the story progresses. In Chapter 4, she described the stage fright she had at age six and said it would be “many years” before she sang another solo. Her solo is yet another measure of the growth she has experienced as a result of her trip to the fair. As Rosie relates what happened to all the major characters at the end of Chapter 12, she reveals something further about her own future. Lottie has married “up” in social status and is presumably living comfortably in Chicago. Buster is on the west coast, making movies. Rosie has to this point only told readers that she accepted Lottie’s offer to attend high school in the city. However, Granddad is still going to town for the mail at the novel’s end, “in case one of us children has written a letter home” (134). None of the Beckett children have returned to farm life. The fair, symbolizing progress and education, has changed all of them. Progress, the novel suggests, has also changed the rural lifestyle forever, concluding the theme of Country Ways Versus City Ways.
By Richard Peck