ELSIE DISNMORE, oh my God. You know, the vintage girls' book authors made fun of Elsie Disnmore so much -- I'm sure I've told this story before, but I'M TELLING IT AGAIN -- that I was sure it was just an unfair backlash against milktoasty popular girlhood tropes or whatever and it couldn't possibly be that bad but IT IS THAT BAD. It is A THOUSAND TIMES WORSE.
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.
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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.