Jean Webster & Adelaide Crapsey

[osprey_archer]

As you may recall, some time ago I posted about discovering a blog about female literary friendships which was accepting guest posts. “I could write about Jean Webster and Adelaide Crapsey,” I mused.

Jean Webster wrote Daddy-Long-Legs - which I feel is long overdue a new film adaptation, one that focuses more on her intellectual development, although there would be the problem of adapting the romance to suit a modern audience. Adelaide Crapsey, meanwhile, invented the cinquain. You may have read her poems without knowing it: she’s often anthologized.

November Night

Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.

I wonder if I could read some of these with my coven of fourth-graders. Frost-crisp’d would undoubtedly perplex them.

ANYWAY. I wrote the essay, and it has been posted! Go feast your eyes upon its magnificence.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I'm sure someone would complain about the demographics of Patty's college, but someone's always going to complain about something, and if the producers are clever they can arrange it so people complain that there's too much diversity while actually keeping it at a more or less historically accurate level. There were already Japanese exchange students in women's colleges at this time (I think the first ones went to Bryn Mawr in the 1880s); you could also have a smattering of students from Latin America (like Rita, the Cuban cousin in Three Margarets - not a college book, but from the same time period).

Heck, you could even have a black student: Vassar graduated its first black student in 1897 (though she was passing as white at the time: here's the Wikipedia article). Smith graduated an openly black woman in 1900, and there were two others in the class after hers.

Re: Daddy-Long-Legs: on the one hand, giving Jervis more room to grow might help the audience warm to him; but on the other hand, I'd hate to shift the focus away from Judy as much as might be required to make that happen.

[amaebi]

Oh, my, I hadn't been thinking about the Whiteness, about which, yeah, your solutions are perfect. I was thinking of all the sweethearting among the women students, not that the Pattys are particularly rife with it.

Go women's college with their more successful Bronson Alcotting!

I was thinking that Jervis would have a lot of easy of-courses of wealth, unconsciously, and get them made visible by Judy, thus keeping the spotlight on Judy. Or, oh, he could give up mansplaining, which I'm sure he felt entitled to as man, elder, and secret patron.

I forgot about Jerry Junior, and don't remember! I've never read Jerry! Much Ado bout Peter is a complete mystery to me!

And I don't know Three Margarets and hadn't heard of it or its author.

[osprey_archer]

Is there are Jerry? Unless Wikipedia is cruelly misleading, I think Jean Webster only ever wrote a Jerry Junior. (IIRC the character actually appears first in Just Patty - he's the member of the Yale Glee club that the girls all have a crush on, and it seems like maybe Patty accidentally traded suitcases with him on the train, but then alas it turns out it was someone else suitcase.

[amaebi]

I was going from covers on Gutenberg. I bet Just Jerry was republished as (just) Jerry. Whew.

It was long, long ago when I read it, and I hadn't remembered that he appeared in the Patty books, from which (of course) Patty appears most clearly.

I think I haven't ate unpacked my Websters, but rereads are clearly in order.