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Kit Kittredge
Circa: 1930s
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Growing up during the Great Depression in Ohio, Kit Kittredge has seen her fair share of hardship. Kit is spunky, doesn’t like traditionally gendered activities and prefers writing and dunking on annoying boys to doing what society expects her to.
In the aftermath of the crash of ‘29, her father loses his car dealership, and her family begins to take in boarders to make ends meet. Suddenly, Kit is thrust into a home half-full of strangers (and Stanley Tucci!) and struggles to understand why she has to wear dresses made of chicken feed sacks (though she does rock them)!
Her family realizes their situation is even more threadbare when it is revealed that, even after it was clear to Mr. Kittredge that his business was going to fail, he dipped into his own savings to continuously pay the salary of his employees. While admirable, this only leaves the family more destitute and in turn, kills his son’s plans for college.
Luckily, however, the family has a rich uncle they can turn to in a pinch. Unluckily for them, this uncle asserts that they should just “work more” if they want to, you know–not starve during the worst financial crisis the country had ever seen.
While Kit’s mother’s plan to take in boards proves to be successful, her father still has to leave the family in search of work in the city. Kit herself assists the family by selling eggs and accepting the mantra of “waste-not want-not.” She even uses her writing prowess and sells columns to the local newspaper! Kit sacrifices her childhood in order to make money to help her family.
During this time, Kit and her bestie Ruthie become fascinated by the burgeoning impoverished population who ride the rails and set up camps as they travel looking for work. Here, she discovers empathy for those less fortunate than her and even writes an article arguing that the unhoused people are human and worthy of respect (slay)!
If Kit is your favorite doll, you are spirited and crafty. You have a strong group of friends and definitely had a woods fort growing up where you cast spells and made potions. You are of course a writer and prefer a typewriter keyboard over a modern one, as you enjoy the clacking of keys over modern, minimalist, sad beige silence.
You have youngest child syndrome and are a daddy’s girl (even when he makes horrendous financial decisions–I can’t let this go). Like some are nostalgic for the COVID era of 2020, you look fondly back on the Recession of 2008, coloring the stressful times for adults with the rose-colored glasses of Y2K aesthetics. You had an Amelia Earhart phase and still wonder to this day what her fate was, though you are starting to side with the *crab* way of thinking.
