43 pages • 1 hour read
Judy BlumeOtherwise Known as Sheila the Great
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Swimming and Dogs
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great is, at its core, a novel about the importance of facing one’s fears and exploring their causes. For Sheila, the world is a scary place, and danger lurks around every corner. However, during her summer in Tarrytown, two of Sheila’s biggest fears are challenged: her fear of dogs and her fear of swimming. The Tarrytown swimming pool and the Egrans’ dog Jennifer come to represent the fears that Sheila actively tries to avoid, and the unknowns she must learn to face head-on and overcome.
Sheila prides herself on doing things well, but when it comes to swimming, her fear causes her to give up before she even tries. Early in the novel, she declares she is “never going to learn how to swim” (35). Swimming represents Sheila’s fear of failure: failure to swim, failure to make friends, failure to maintain her image. Fear of failure motivates Sheila to try to take control of situations, even when her controlling behavior is overbearing, and even when it hinders her ability to rely on others. Sheila has a very hard time trusting Marty to keep her safe and teach her how to swim.
Sheila’s fear of failure is also a fear of shame. With swimming, she doesn’t just imagine drowning: She imagines “everyone [laughing] and Marty [having] to save [her]” (38). She wishes she could take swimming lessons at night when no one would be able to see her, and she tries in vain to hide the truth about her lack of swimming abilities from Mouse. Sheila’s real feelings around swimming come to the surface moments before she takes her swimming test at the end of the summer: She decides that if Marty must jump in and rescue her in front of everyone, “that would be as bad as drowning. Maybe even worse!” (125). Public humiliation is Sheila’s worst fear, and she will do anything to avoid being embarrassed, especially in front of her friends.
While swimming represents a fear of failure, dogs represent Sheila’s fear of not being liked. She is quick to say dogs “hate” her or don’t like her, and they want to eat her or hurt her because they don’t think she is a good person. Sheila has difficulty making friends, and the way this bothers her becomes clear when she worries one of the friendliest animals in the world won’t befriend her either. Instead of trying to endear herself to them, she adopts a stance of hostility. She insists Jennifer doesn’t like her because “[w]hen Jennifer [sees] [Sheila] coming she jump[s] off Libby’s lap” and “bark[s] and bark[s]” (15). Sheila announces that Jennifer “hates [her] already!” (15), so there’s no point in trying to befriend her. However, when Sheila runs and trips over Jennifer’s chain, Jennifer doesn’t attack Sheila; she licks her legs as a sign of affection.
At the end of her novel, surrounded by the friends she made in Tarrytown, Sheila has two strange realizations: She realizes Jennifer and Mumford are running around the yard, and she isn’t afraid until she reminds herself to be afraid. She also realizes she wouldn’t mind having a puppy, especially if he is “small and soft and his name is Jake” (138). At the end of Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Sheila is questioning her old habits, and these moments represent the possibility of change and growth in her life.
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Judy Blume places Sheila and her family in Tarrytown, a town of great literary notoriety thanks to the early American writer Washington Irving. Irving’s most famous story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” takes place in a village near Tarrytown, where Irving reportedly spent time during the yellow fever outbreak of 1798. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” tells the story of schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, a cowardly man who is fascinated by ghost stories, and his mysterious disappearance one night when he supposedly sees a ghost known as the Headless Horseman. Irving’s story becomes a motif that illustrates elements of Sheila’s inner conflict; Blume draws parallels between Sheila and Ichabod Crane, two characters who find themselves overwhelmed with fear brought on by their wild imaginations.
When Mouse first mentions “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Sheila is confused and asks if this is just a story, but Mouse claims there is more to the tale, saying she’s “heard [the Headless Horseman] around here lately” (54). Sheila’s reaction to the story of the Headless Horseman is like Ichabod’s: She has a strong belief in the supernatural, as evidenced by her reaction to the strange nighttime noises in Chapter 3, and the mere suggestion that the Headless Horseman might be real ignites intense fear in Sheila. Similarly, in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Ichabod’s deep love of spooky stories makes him fully believe in the story of the Headless Horseman, and when he meets a strange figure on Old Sleepy Hollow Road, he is certain the evil spirit has found him. Some interpretations of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” suggest Ichabod’s cowardice and wild superstition lead to his downfall, and the classic American ghost story can serve as a reminder to not let oneself get carried away with fear and imagination.
Sheila, of course, doesn’t know enough about the story or the lessons it is supposed to teach, so she plays right into the very spirit of paranoia and superstition the story criticizes. After talking to Mouse, Sheila is convinced that “whenever [she] hear[s] noises at night, [she] [knows] it [is] the Headless Horseman haunting Tarrytown” (55). When the night of the camp hayride comes around, Mouse tells Sheila the horse-drawn wagons are taking the campers to the very site of Ichabod’s unfortunate run-in with the Headless Horseman. Reality and fiction have blurred so completely for Sheila that she immediately panics and behaves like Ichabod, trying to run away and hide. She buries herself in the hay where she will be “[s]afe from the lightning and the horses running wild and the terrible dark woods and the Horseman” (122). However, where Ichabod’s encounter with the Horseman results in his mysterious disappearance altogether, Sheila’s attempt to hide in the hay is unsuccessful. While Ichabod is alone on the quiet country road the night of his disappearance, Sheila is surrounded by friends and camp counselors who refuse to let her cower, so Sheila’s and Ichabod’s stories diverge.
The Tarrytown House
When Sheila first learns about her family’s plan to spend the summer in a house in Tarrytown, she is disappointed. After all, Sheila wanted to go to Disneyland, not to the country where there’s nothing to do. However, as soon as her father promises that the girls will have their own bedrooms, Sheila’s interest is piqued. She has never had a space of her very own. The Egrans’ house in Tarrytown represents all of Sheila’s hopes and dreams for what the summer might be like and, ultimately, her disappointment when things turn out differently.
As soon as Mr. Tubman promises Sheila she can have her own bedroom, her imagination starts running wild. She tells everyone she meets that she’s going have a bedroom all to herself for the whole summer, and that the room will have “flowered wallpaper and frilly curtains and little lamps shaped like candles” (11), a “canopy bed,” and a special rug that is “very soft and fluffy and it’s all yellow except for a big red rose right in the center. It feels so good on your feet you never have to wear slippers” (12). At first, the reader might think Sheila is getting these details from her parents, but this information comes purely from Sheila’s imagination. She creates an impossibly perfect version of the bedroom based only on her desires, and she never stops to think about what the room might actually look like or who it might belong to. As the trip to Tarrytown draws closer, Sheila’s excitement grows until spending the summer in Tarrytown “start[s] to sound almost as good as going to Disneyland” (13).
However, the moment the Tubmans arrive in Tarrytown, Sheila’s expectations come crashing down. The first big shock is the Egrans’ dog, who “comes with the house” (14) for the summer. Then, when Sheila opens her bedroom door, she doesn’t find the beautiful room she dreamt up in her head. Instead, the dresser is “piled with models of planes, boats, and cars. And the walls [are] full of team pennants” (16). There are neither decorations nor beautiful rugs, and the closet shelves are “loaded with sports equipment” (16). The surprises with the Tarrytown house just keep getting worse. At night, Sheila finds that sleeping in a dark room by herself isn’t everything she dreamed it would be. After a lifetime of sleeping in the same room as Libby, Sheila is nervous and lonely. Once Jennifer starts howling outside of the window, Sheila’s frustration reaches a boiling point. She starts to realize—too late—that letting her imagination run wild is a recipe for disappointment, and reality rarely measures up to our daydreams. The Egrans’ house represents forces outside of Sheila’s control, and how she will be pushed outside of her comfort zone while in Tarrytown.
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By Judy Blume
