The Willoughbys

The Willoughbys is a story that pokes fun at itself and at the world of children’s literature, which is frequently fraught with clichés, stereotypes, and exaggerated situations. Throughout the novel, the characters regularly refer to themselves as though they are characters in a story, creating a metafictional tone. They explicitly compare themselves to the orphans featured in other well-known books, such as Pollyanna or Anne of Green Gables. The children consider themselves old-fashioned and imagine that their story follows a similar trend. Thus, they expect everything that happens to the old-fashioned characters in such stories to also happen to them. Their literary fixation also predisposes them toward drastic action. Since they believe themselves to be in an old-fashioned story, they decide that there is no one to turn to when their parents neglect them, so they resort to trying to arrange for their parents’ demise instead. Additional literary clichés occur when the children find their house has been sold, for Tim suggests that each of them embody a different literary trope. For example, he tells Jane to die of a slow disease and urges the twins to join the circus, while he resolves to pull himself up by his "bootstraps” and find a kind and wealthy benefactor. Like any old-fashioned story, Lowry’s novel embraces the unrealistic tone of the “happily ever after” conclusion. However, she puts a unique twist on this particular cliché; although the ending is happy for the protagonists, it is simultaneously amoral, as is suggested when the children celebrate their parents’ deaths and the resulting improvements in their own lives.