Egg and Us

As history continues to trend towards the incorporation of interdisciplinary sources, it becomes a fitting place to champion one of the "lost voices" of American culture. This thesis seeks to establish Betty MacDonald not only as a subject worthy of academic attention but also as a historically significant American. Her continued popularity over nearly seventy years and across international boundaries suggests a strong element of realism in American pragmatic humor that provides a connective thread between disparate eras and countries. Her ability to cross class lines and act as a bridge-figure between rural and urban America provides a more complete picture of the country at mid-century. Through the use of MacDonald's four autobiographical works, the film version of her first book, audio interviews, the Betty Bard MacDonald papers from University of Washington's special collections, WorldCat searches, census data analysis, friends' memoirs, and foreign book jackets, this thesis attempts to reevaluate MacDonald's accepted place in the domestic humor genre, and suggests that she deserves a wider scope of inquiry relevant to her place in American humor and American history.