Mrs. Everything

Bethie, the second protagonist, contrasts with Jo for the majority of the novel. She is a foil for Jo—as she’s a traditionalist when Jo wants to follow her lesbian longings, and then a nonconformist when Jo is married with kids. As children, Bethie and Jo are opposites, with Bethie representing the feminine ideal of a cheerfully domestic, proper young lady who prioritizes cooking, cleaning, dressing up, shopping, and falling in love with boys. She’s a traditionalist, like Sarah, who pictures a conventional life (unlike Jo) tending her marriage, babies, and house. When Bethie is sexually assaulted by Uncle Mel, her resulting eating disorder turns her from a stunning young girl into someone judged for her weight gain. No longer desirable by society’s standards, she becomes depressed and turns to food as a coping mechanism. Because she wants to be desired again (and audition for an upcoming play), Bethie hypercorrects her overeating by starving herself until she’s “beautiful” and “thin” again, as a woman should be. Bethie later sees her beauty not as a power but a liability; while it had made her popular and confident, she believes her appearance also made her a target of Uncle Mel and, later, the men at the music festival who rape her: “Once, she’d thought beauty was power, but now she could see that it was just trouble. A pretty face, a cute figure, a smile, all of those were weak spots. They were ways in, and Bethie wanted to be armored, defended, unbreakable” (220). With Jo’s help, she transforms from someone who longs to be the perfect woman to a self-sufficient, independent woman who runs a successful business. She worries less about what other people think and prioritizes herself and her dreams, including her marriage to Harold, a Black man. Bethie, once eager to be accepted and admired, finds value within herself and follows the path that makes her feel strong and fulfilled.

Bethie, like Jo, doesn’t follow a traditional path; like her sister, she must work for years to find her true self as the empowered, whole woman she was meant to be after facing hardships that alter her dramatically. Bethie’s mild-mannered, accommodating, and creative personality makes her a likable lady who has, in Jo’s viewpoint, “a genius for conformity, for making herself the best, most stylish example of whatever version of femininity was currently in fashion” (195). As a singer and performer in school plays, Bethie has a talent for adapting to the “ideal” woman throughout the early decades of her life, as she turns from a prim schoolgirl into a hippie in college. Bethie changes her hair and clothes, hardworking attitude, and values about sex and drugs to give in to the pleasures of the time, naively falling in love with emotionally unavailable Devon, who introduces her to drugs. Though she feels guilty for relying on Jo, Bethie knows her sister will help her when she faces an unwanted pregnancy and has nowhere to turn. She overcomes her addiction to drugs through the sisterhood of the women on the commune and finds meaning in her work there. The theme of sisterhood is shown deeply in Bethie's empathetic character as well, since after she finds herself and runs Blue Hill Farm, she offers Jo money, insists she isn’t being true to herself or brave like she was before, and tends to Lila and Lila’s baby, Tim.