Elsie's Motherhood

[roddma]

I still have a fascination for Elsie books and on Chapter 20 of Elsie's Motherhood. Elsie's Motherhood is mostly focused on Civil War and attacks bu the KKK. While still legalistic it's not as sappy as the early books.

[DGayle]

I couldn't get past half the 2nd book.

[Trynn]

I liked this book because it focused on the kids more. Which one is this again, book 4 or 3? Is this before or after that creepy tra ills guy dies?

[Trynn]

I might go re read those again just to deconstruct them, and because train wreck.

[samurai_sarah]

I might go re read those again just to deconstruct them, and because train wreck.

If this is about "Elsie Dinsmore (sp?)", then please do. I'll sponsor you for the alcoholic beverage of your needs.

[princessmahina]

I have the whole series, but have only read the first one. Sounds like I should read the rest :)

[roddma]

EM is the 5th book. Travilla dies in Book 7"Elsie's Widowhood".

[Hane]

Ahhhh---The Encyclopedia of Daddy Issues. I hate-read my way through FAR too many of them.

[Trynn]

If this is about "Elsie Dinsmore (sp?)", then please do. I'll sponsor you for the alcoholic beverage of your needs.

Well, someone else started to, which is why I didn't, but then that person quit a few years ago, so I could be persuaded to take up the mantle. Although I'd rather do the modernized versions just to show how fucked up those are, and that they're not really any better than the source material.

I'll so need oranges and cream flavored vodka. I mix it with orange soda and yum.

[Trynn]

EM is the 5th book. Travilla dies in Book 7"Elsie's Widowhood".

It takes 7 books for him to die? Good grief!

[DGayle]

Well, someone else started to, which is why I didn't, but then that person quit a few years ago, so I could be persuaded to take up the mantle. Although I'd rather do the modernized versions just to show how fucked up those are, and that they're not really any better than the source material.

I'll so need oranges and cream flavored vodka. I mix it with orange soda and yum.

Elsie's been modernized? Wow.

[samurai_sarah]

Well, someone else started to, which is why I didn't, but then that person quit a few years ago, so I could be persuaded to take up the mantle. Although I'd rather do the modernized versions just to show how fucked up those are, and that they're not really any better than the source material.

I'll so need oranges and cream flavored vodka. I mix it with orange soda and yum.

One crate or two? Considering that there are seven books, I'll just put an order in for two crates... :? :lol:

[Mama Mia]

I just wikipedied this series :shock: :shock: :? :cray-cray: :doh:

What the hell is this ??? The whole thing seems incredibly creepy and sadistic. And what is up with all the repeat names???

[GenerationCedarchip]

True story - and funny:

I mentioned the Elsie books around one of my great-aunts (oldest of my grandma's sisters -she's well into her 90s), and she told me that as a child, she and most girls she knew were barred from reading the Elsie books because they were "unhealthy and morbid."

This particular great-aunt grew up in a very conservative and religious family, so this was NOT what I expected to hear. Makes me wonder what other "classics" have only recently been picked up in fundie circles.

[roddma]

It takes 7 books for him to die? Good grief!

He treated Elsie better than Horace, whom I eerily started to like better in the later books, though it was hard to forget how he treated her earlier.

Im' surprised Steve Maxwell doesn't require his daughters to read the Elsie books, at least the first two or three.

[DGayle]

I just wikipedied this series :shock: :shock: :? :cray-cray: :doh:

What the hell is this ??? The whole thing seems incredibly creepy and sadistic. And what is up with all the repeat names???

Elsie's father "fondles" her, and kisses her full-on hard on her mouth, and his best buddy likes the 7 year old to sit in his lap since he's infatuated with her. Fans of the book say times have changed, that's all. No, even back in the 1840's, fondling meant the same thing, and it wasn't accepted, nor was a hard kiss on the mouth, and crushing on little kids and having them sit in a creepy infatuated man's lap.

The books also have the happy-negro crap going on, with them all being heppy dey messahs curs about dem so dat dey messahs ain't no 'fraid of givin's dem whippin's. And that is how the black people talk in those books, and they cry all the time because of how perfect little Elsie is and how she so sweetly tells the little black kids that surely god's going to make the right and white in heaven.

It's sick, and 1 of the only books my kids will be banned from reading until their older.

[Hane]

In one of E. Nesbit's freaking brilliant and hilarious books for kids, one of the characters ridicules Elsie Dinnsmore's weepiness--and the Elsie books were written only a few decades before.

[thoughtful]

I've never read the books -- Rhoda Penmark's being an Elsie fan is enough to warn me away from them. :lol:

[ILoveJellybeans]

Elsie's father "fondles" her, and kisses her full-on hard on her mouth, and his best buddy likes the 7 year old to sit in his lap since he's infatuated with her. Fans of the book say times have changed, that's all. No, even back in the 1840's, fondling meant the same thing, and it wasn't accepted, nor was a hard kiss on the mouth, and crushing on little kids and having them sit in a creepy infatuated man's lap.

The books also have the happy-negro crap going on, with them all being heppy dey messahs curs about dem so dat dey messahs ain't no 'fraid of givin's dem whippin's. And that is how the black people talk in those books, and they cry all the time because of how perfect little Elsie is and how she so sweetly tells the little black kids that surely god's going to make the right and white in heaven.

It's sick, and 1 of the only books my kids will be banned from reading until their older.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww no.

[FundieliciousTaterTot]

This sounds terrible. The Wikipedia entry makes the books seem very tame and the racist depiction of black persons in the book is mentioned as an afterthought

[Mama Mia]

Elsie's father "fondles" her, and kisses her full-on hard on her mouth, and his best buddy likes the 7 year old to sit in his lap since he's infatuated with her. Fans of the book say times have changed, that's all. No, even back in the 1840's, fondling meant the same thing, and it wasn't accepted, nor was a hard kiss on the mouth, and crushing on little kids and having them sit in a creepy infatuated man's lap.

The books also have the happy-negro crap going on, with them all being heppy dey messahs curs about dem so dat dey messahs ain't no 'fraid of givin's dem whippin's. And that is how the black people talk in those books, and they cry all the time because of how perfect little Elsie is and how she so sweetly tells the little black kids that surely god's going to make the right and white in heaven.

It's sick, and 1 of the only books my kids will be banned from reading until their older.

I just got the first Elsie book free on kindle. Wow. Her dad really is a jerk isn't he? And creepy, creepy, creepy guy - who apparently later becomes her husband ? Ugggghhhh. Although I don't think fondling did mean the same thing. I think it meant closer to " cuddling" as we use it today. But, yea, most parents wouldn't want some creeper guy to be cuddling and hanging all over their little kid like that.

[TrueRebel1]

Ahhh...the Elsie books!

I read them (up to #11, I think?) as a teenager when Vision Forum started selling them.

Elsie crying about everything always annoyed me. As did her father's apparent delight in making her cry and learning lessons from it.

Elsie was so stuck on her "principles". To the point of making enemies of people because the tiniest thing ticked her off as being "sinful".

Then the Travilla dude. What teenage reader wants to see the pretty girl marry an old guy? I really hated that part. She should have fallen in love with a handsome youngster her own age.

So much weirdness as you progress in the series. I will say the KKK part was interesting, historically speaking.

Then, if I'm remembering right, in book 7 or 8, one of Elsie's sons "rescues" a 16 year old girl from a terrible fate when her parents die and marries her right there and then. Maybe there was more to the story, but I just remember it seeming really bizarre.

Then there's the Mildred Keith series (Elsie's cousin, right?). I remember actually liking this series better. Not so much daddy-issues and drama. AND, (correct me if I'm remembering this part wrong), there was an awesome, totally not-in-line-with-conservative-beliefs section where Mildred and the man she falls in love with are lost in the wilderness and decide to marry with a "Quaker" ceremony alone by themselves, then continue the journey to civilization as man and wife. I may have been a 14 year old hard-core SAHD, but even I saw the irony. ;)

[Grimalkin]

I really wish I was a fast reader. I would like to tackle these books but I feel like I have so little time to read for enjoyment. I get an anxious feeling like life is too short to read about her.

[FundieFarmer]

Ugh, I read the originals as a child and found them skeezy. The modernized versions are almost worse, if you ask me.

That whole series is a giant pile of no thank you.

[Trynn]

Elsie's been modernized? Wow.

Not modernized... Just republished with some of the racist and anti catholic parts taken out.... They left In the sexism and abuse though.

The company went under, but the dolls were excellent quality, and I have 2 of them. (Purchased not from the company, as I was not comfortable supporting them at all.)

Www.alifeoffaith.com

That link may or may not work....

And I may choose to start with the Mildred series, which is less horrible, largely because that's what I own at the moment.

The modernized Mildred series, I mean. I don't have the older books with me.

If I get rid of this hangover today I'll post about the first chapter. Whoever is sending the crates of booze, please double the amount you will be sending.