Book Meme, Part 1
Sep. 19th, 2016 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerFinally getting around to answering the questions for this book meme! First, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
evelyn_b. (Actually this is only the first of the questions you ask, but the answer grew so long I thought I should probably do the other two separately.)
2. What’s the worst book you’ve ever read, and why?
In terms of social message, it’s probably Elsie Dinsmore. Poor Elsie is meant as a model for young girls; the narrative reminds us that Elsie is “not yet perfect,” but she’s clearly approaching perfection asymptotically. At eight years old, she’s naturally beautiful, musically talented, rich, with a “lovely and well-developed Christian character” and deep emotionally sensitivity. She’s so upset by the idea of seeing a slave whipped for allegedly stealing a pocket watch that she offers to buy a new one out of her own pocket money, for instance.
And, although the narrative insists that she’s completely average, she’s also brilliant. She’s eight years old and she can not only quote reams of Bible passages, but she understands them so well that she can successfully argue Biblical interpretation with adults. And also she has a well-developed Christian character and loves the Bible so much that she gets up early every morning to study it.
Actually, in between the emotional sensitivity and the brilliance, I think you can make an argument that Elsie is a profoundly gifted child, and it would probably be a really interesting textual interpretation. But it’s probably also completely maddening for any slightly less gifted eight-year-old who is being compared to this unattainable example - especially given that Elsie is described as average, as if beauty and brilliance and passionately intense empathy were available to any everyday eight-year-old who just wanted them enough.
And even the rare child who could live up to Elsie’s example is probably going to end up totally fucked up by it, because all of Elsie’s gifts are purely secondary: what she’s meant to be modeling for us is self-abnegating obedience to authority, particular to one’s parents, most particularly to one’s father. (Elsie’s mother is conveniently dead, presumably because she might occasionally be nice to her child.)
Except of course when Elsie’s father orders her to disobey Holy Writ! Then she steadfastly refuses, even to the point of nearly dying of a fever brought on by despair because her father has shunned her for months because she refused to sing him a secular song on the Sabbath.
We are supposed to be rooting for Elsie and her father to patch their relationship up, rather than hoping that he will die of fever instead, although I was certainly on Team Elsie’s Father/An Early Grave. (There’s also a definite creepy quasi-incestuous vibe to Elsie’s relationship with her father.)
In any case. Suicidal despair is apparently also a sign of a lovely and well-developed Christian character. The thing about Elsie Dinsmore is that ultimately what these books are teaching is self-loathing and depression, and in the books it’s all cured in the end by the fact that Elsie’s father converts (he’s won over by Elsie’s near death, of course) and promises to love Elsie properly forevermore, but, well, that’s in the books. Most nasty fathers don’t learn their lessons like that, and even if they did that’s not necessarily enough to save their sad little girls.
evelyn_b. (Actually this is only the first of the questions you ask, but the answer grew so long I thought I should probably do the other two separately.) 2. What’s the worst book you’ve ever read, and why?
In terms of social message, it’s probably Elsie Dinsmore. Poor Elsie is meant as a model for young girls; the narrative reminds us that Elsie is “not yet perfect,” but she’s clearly approaching perfection asymptotically. At eight years old, she’s naturally beautiful, musically talented, rich, with a “lovely and well-developed Christian character” and deep emotionally sensitivity. She’s so upset by the idea of seeing a slave whipped for allegedly stealing a pocket watch that she offers to buy a new one out of her own pocket money, for instance.
And, although the narrative insists that she’s completely average, she’s also brilliant. She’s eight years old and she can not only quote reams of Bible passages, but she understands them so well that she can successfully argue Biblical interpretation with adults. And also she has a well-developed Christian character and loves the Bible so much that she gets up early every morning to study it.
Actually, in between the emotional sensitivity and the brilliance, I think you can make an argument that Elsie is a profoundly gifted child, and it would probably be a really interesting textual interpretation. But it’s probably also completely maddening for any slightly less gifted eight-year-old who is being compared to this unattainable example - especially given that Elsie is described as average, as if beauty and brilliance and passionately intense empathy were available to any everyday eight-year-old who just wanted them enough.
And even the rare child who could live up to Elsie’s example is probably going to end up totally fucked up by it, because all of Elsie’s gifts are purely secondary: what she’s meant to be modeling for us is self-abnegating obedience to authority, particular to one’s parents, most particularly to one’s father. (Elsie’s mother is conveniently dead, presumably because she might occasionally be nice to her child.)
Except of course when Elsie’s father orders her to disobey Holy Writ! Then she steadfastly refuses, even to the point of nearly dying of a fever brought on by despair because her father has shunned her for months because she refused to sing him a secular song on the Sabbath.
We are supposed to be rooting for Elsie and her father to patch their relationship up, rather than hoping that he will die of fever instead, although I was certainly on Team Elsie’s Father/An Early Grave. (There’s also a definite creepy quasi-incestuous vibe to Elsie’s relationship with her father.)
In any case. Suicidal despair is apparently also a sign of a lovely and well-developed Christian character. The thing about Elsie Dinsmore is that ultimately what these books are teaching is self-loathing and depression, and in the books it’s all cured in the end by the fact that Elsie’s father converts (he’s won over by Elsie’s near death, of course) and promises to love Elsie properly forevermore, but, well, that’s in the books. Most nasty fathers don’t learn their lessons like that, and even if they did that’s not necessarily enough to save their sad little girls.
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no subject
Date: 2016-09-19 01:53 pm (UTC)I haven't read any of the Elsie books, but I've heard of them - mainly they crop up in one of the Chalet School books (I think it's Jo of the Chalet School, but it could be Rivals because bits where Joey is recovering after nearly dying of an illness happen in both. And probably others). Anyway, clearly even in about 1926 Elinor M. Brent-Dyer thought they were preachy and precious, but Joey enjoyed the American history, which she didn't know so much about and then wrote her own sequel in which Elsie had sons who had much more exciting adventures. It did make me curious about how dreadful and preachy they were and whether or not it'd be in a so bad it's enjoyable way. From reading your verdict here, I'm still not sure.
But obviously not for the actually average 8 year old. Depending.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-19 02:04 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that "so bad it's enjoyable" is the right word to describe Elsie Dinsmore, but reading them is certainly... an experience. Even as I was appalled, I got very emotionally wound up in Elsie's sufferings; it's a bit like reading whump fic, I think? I started sharing bulletins on Elsie's latest miseries with all my friends because I just had to let it out somewhere.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-19 04:29 pm (UTC)It's curious that most of the vintage hate gets focused on Elsie, the "perfect child" and not on her father, who is a bizarrely abusive monster who doesn't know wtf he wants out of life and takes it out on an eight-year-old who loves him unquestioningly, LIKE GOD LOVES THE WORLD, I guess.
So weird, so bad, so uncomfortable. And of course Elsie later marries her dad's slightly more rational friend who, when she is eight and trying desperately to please her dad, looks at her and goes, "That child will make a great wife as soon as she hits childbearing age, hmmmmmm. . . ." And then he sets himself up as her defender against the mad dad so she'll trust him.
I keep getting torn between wanting to write fix-it fic for Elsie and not doing it because it would require me to re-read the book. :p Vision Forum (I think it was) put out brand-new abridged editions of these in the early 2000s, then walked it back a few years later. "The series that was too dodgy even for Vision Forum!" should be the blurb on the front cover.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-20 10:34 pm (UTC)I imagine that girls hated Elsie because she was the one parents compared them to? "Why can't you be more like Elsie Dinsmore," a hypothetical mother asks, and her young sprout goes up to her room and gives the Elsie books a vicious kick. Probably no one ever got told they ought to be more like Horace Dinsmore, Worst Father Ever.
The Elsie books are so fucked up that I was actually in favor of Elsie marrying her dad's friend. Is it creepy that he has clearly had his eye on her since she was eight? And is also literally old enough to be her father? Yes and yes, but he was clearly the best of a raft of terrible options and ALSO he will get her away from her father, thank God.
I actually meant to read the book set after Elsie's marriage, but somehow I lost interest in it; so much of the "Oh my God WHAT" in those books came from Elsie & her father's relationship, I thought that an Elsie book post-marriage might be boring. Especially as we won't be getting an Elsie-eye-view on the sex, which would have been... well, probably bizarre and terrible like everything else in these books. But illuminatingly bizarre and terrible, like everything else in these books.
I think it was Vision Forum; I remember that all the bookstores had them on the YA tables and I looked at them speculatively because I was about the right age, but I never did read them, thank God.
What would fix-it fic for Elsie even look like? Does she get sent away to boarding school before she ever meets her father, and the gentle and loving teachers draw her out of her misery?
no subject
Date: 2016-09-19 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-20 10:27 pm (UTC)This does not make Jesus's love look as attractive as I think Martha Finley thought it would.