The Summer girl is pretty. If she wasn't pretty she wouldn't be a Summer girl. She wears a pretty girl's dress, has a pretty girl's teeth, and puts on a pretty girl's smiles. She also has a dimple or two to add to the picture. She is usually plump, but not stout; well formed, but not rotund. The young man who pays for her strawberries and cream, and takes her to picnics where they play Copenhagen [a game where the boys chase the girls and claim a kiss] is always proud of her. The Summer girl never gets soiled or looks dirty. She even manages to keep her back hair in good shape after a hugging match.
~ The Leavenworth [KS] Times 5 August 1883: p. 2, third body paragraph
XXX
Summer 1912
Marian Paroo hated being pretty.
As a little girl, she adored being pretty. Being pretty meant that she always got kindly smiles from strangers and a free lollipop from the nice man behind the counter at the corner store every time Mama took her shopping. It meant that the fancy grownup ladies who came to tea cooed over her charms and paid her several compliments, and that the other kids always wanted to play with her. It meant that teachers sat her near the front of the class and praised her work, and that she could get away with saying pert remarks other children couldn't.
As a teenager, being pretty became a little less fun, especially when her body started to take on the curves of womanhood. It meant that she always had willing partners at dances and that her peers wanted her to be their friend, which was nice. But it also meant that some girls mistreated and excluded her out of jealousy, and that she got wolf-whistles from the more rough-and-tumble boys who loitered at the corner store. Sometimes she got wolf-whistles from men old enough to be her Papa. And when her Papa sadly and regretfully warned her exactly what those men wanted from her, she was embarrassed, disgusted, and utterly aghast. For the first time in her life, being pretty felt like a sin.
When Marian moved to River City with her family as a grown woman, being pretty became unbearable. It meant that men openly ogled her as she passed by them on the street and that their wives glared at her with murder in her eyes – as if it was her fault they married scoundrels who couldn't keep their leers to themselves! It meant that men openly propositioned her when they weren't with their wives or girlfriends. It meant that Mrs. Shinn and her ladies spread malicious gossip that she was a shameless and brazen hussy whenever she paid perfectly proper visits to her dear Uncle Maddy.
Worst of all – it meant that when she was accosted and very nearly violated in the library by Ed Griner before she dissuaded his advances with a well-placed kick, she told absolutely no one what happened. She knew she would be blamed for what he tried to do to her. Because she was pretty.
After that incident, Marian briefly attempted to be ugly in the hopes they'd leave her alone. She wore dresses in colors that didn't flatter her and cuts that made her look like a frumpy matron. But it didn't stop the men from bothering her, not a bit. The ladies started saying nasty things about her dismal fashion sense in the same breath they continued to call her a scarlet woman. And she had to endure plaintive sighs and gifts of provocative gowns from her own mother! Since she genuinely loved pretty clothes, it hurt not to dress as finely as she knew how. So the librarian decided that since she could not win no matter what she did, she may as well wear what she pleased. She still hated being pretty, but her impeccable wardrobe was the armor she desperately needed to hold her head high and proud, no matter what they said about her.
By the time Harold Hill walked into her life, Marian Paroo hated men just as much as she hated being pretty. The only males she admired were the great men depicted in her books of literature and history – that is to say, they were either dead or fictional characters – the only men in whose company she had ever felt completely safe were Papa and Uncle Maddy, and the only man she ever dreamed about romantically was her imaginary white knight. And she was very careful never to forget that white knights didn't really exist.
Harold Hill was certainly no white knight. From the moment he followed her home, she knew exactly what he was and what he wanted from her, and she despised him for it. But he also made her cheeks flush, her knees tremble, and the pit of her stomach roil with those dangerous butterflies. No man had ever affected her this way before – at least, not physically.
And the more the would-be music professor pursued her, the less certain she became as to his true feelings. To be sure, he wanted to bed her without making her any promises, just like every other man she'd ever met. But no other man had gone to such lengths to ingratiate himself with her mother, or to make her beloved little brother so happy. No man had gotten the school board to stop feuding or the townspeople to dream bigger than their prosaic existences (she had tried to do the same thing with her library, but no one trusted her the way they did him). He had even gotten the ladies to read her books and stop spreading nasty rumors about her! And when he made it crystal clear he was pursuing the librarian, the other men finally left her alone. Even at his boldest, he never denigrated her the way other men had – she almost appreciated the veneer of gentility in which he couched his attempted seduction.
Harold Hill may have been a cad at heart, but he had gotten River City to accept her. Treat her with respect, even. And as their acquaintance deepened, she suspected that the music professor actually liked her cleverness and gumption just as much as he appreciated her physical attributes. When she saw the way his gaze lingered fondly on her as they matched wits (all the other men were intimidated or irritated by her intelligence), and the way that he seemed to favor her company above every other woman in River City who made cow's eyes at him, she remembered the travails of Jane Eyre and her anguished cry to Mr. Rochester – "If God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!" – and she was grateful for the beauty she had been granted by Providence. If she hadn't been pretty, he wouldn't have looked twice at her. But then again, no man would have, and she would have been just as lonely a spinster as she was now.
So how could she help falling in love with the man who helped her remember that her beauty was a precious gift? Because for the first time since she was a little girl, Marian was thrilled that she was pretty.