Elsie's Motherhood

[hoipolloi]

Most or all of the Elsie books and at least a few of the Mildred books are available for free downloading from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/ ... tha+Finley

Don't know for sure but would assume that these are the original versions, not the "modern" ones.

One of the more despicable aspects of VF's peddling of the Elsie books was the fact that they chose to use the original versions, with the racist content, just as they chose to use the original Henty books, also replete with white supremacist content. While this may have been a business decision because it's easier to peddle "new" versions with out-of-copyright content at hugely inflated prices, it says a lot about the inherently racist nature of VF & its patriarchal allies, despite the occasional African-American individual or family depicted in Doug's Blog. Add this to other things -- odes to Dabney, junkets to visit Confederate cemeteries, heaping praise on the Christianist "historian" Otto Scott (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Scott), and you can see that it's all of a piece.

[Trynn]

Really? I don't remember any Mildred books on Gutenberg. Maybe there are now, it's been years since I've checked.

[Leftitinmysnood]

Ugh. I made it through a couple of the Elsie books when Little Bear Wheeler was selling them (pre-VF). Elsie was an insufferable doormat. I hated how she was so saccharine toward her bullies and had such an oppressed life. An older lady I knew, grandmother of a family of fundies, told me how much she disliked Elsie when she was a girl. She much preferred L. M. Montgomery's books. I was very pleased to quote Betsy from Heaven to Betsy to my mother: "But Betsy had never thought much of Elsie Dinsmore." Alas, my mother thought less of Heaven to Betsy and I was told I couldn't read that one again (it has a Ouija board in it).

[Trynn]

Elsie dinsmore is the best book ever compared to a book written around the same time by a fundy. The title of said book is "daisy" and it's even worse.

[thoughtful]

TCM is showing a 1936 movie called Love on the Run, in which I just heard Clark Gable, after spewing some sentimental claptrap, tell Joan Crawford "I know it sounds a little Elsie Dinsmore, but it's true!"

Elsie is everywhere this week!

[Hisey]

Ugh. I made it through a couple of the Elsie books when Little Bear Wheeler was selling them (pre-VF). Elsie was an insufferable doormat. I hated how she was so saccharine toward her bullies and had such an oppressed life. An older lady I knew, grandmother of a family of fundies, told me how much she disliked Elsie when she was a girl. She much preferred L. M. Montgomery's books. I was very pleased to quote Betsy from Heaven to Betsy to my mother: "But Betsy had never thought much of Elsie Dinsmore." Alas, my mother thought less of Heaven to Betsy and I was told I couldn't read that one again (it has a Ouija board in it).

I know exactly what you mean about Elsie, but I think you mean Maud Hart Lovelace (the author of Heaven to Betsy), not Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables). Maud was a popular name back then, wasn't it?

[thoughtful]

Maud was a popular name back then, wasn't it?

[roddma]

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.

He starts to get more likable later in the series after becoming Christian, though still somewhat shallow. But the books continue to hint you can't be good unless you are Christian and expresses 'sympathy' for Elsie' family members not Christian. They tried to convert Walter and Arthur which angered Horace's step-mother,Mrs. Dinsmore.

You can download a few Mildred Keith books on Gutenberg now. And who is Hinty?

[thoughtful]

G. A. Henty was an author whose books were sold for years by Vision Forum.

CloaknDagger says that they were pulled from sale due to the urging of some VF members who didn't like the racism:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25450&start=60#p908654

I don't know if that 2010 sale was trying to make back some money on them, or preceded that event.

Henty's view of black people:

They are just like children. They are always either laughing or quarrelling. They are good-natured and passionate, indolent, but will work hard for a time; clever up to a certain point, densely stupid beyond. The intelligence of an average negro is about equal to that of a European child of ten years old. A few, a very few, go beyond this, but these are exceptions, just as Shakespeare was an exception to the ordinary intellect of an Englishman. They are fluent talkers, but their ideas are borrowed. They are absolutely without originality, absolutely without inventive power. Living among white men, their imitative facilities enable them to attain a considerable amount of civilisation. Left alone to their own devices they retrograde into a state little above their native savagery.

https://racistchurches.wordpress.com/20 ... /ga-henty/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._A._Henty

[Leftitinmysnood]

I know exactly what you mean about Elsie, but I think you mean Maud Hart Lovelace (the author of Heaven to Betsy), not Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables). Maud was a popular name back then, wasn't it?

My apologies, there should have been a paragraph break between the sentences. The fundie family grandma I knew did prefer L. M. Montgomery to Elsie; magic, ghosts, fairies, and romance notwithstanding. She thought it was odd that someone was trying to popularize Elsie again when she had thought they were so preachy and intolerable when she was a girl.

Maud Hart Lovelace had Betsy speak deprecatingly of Elsie in one of the high school books. In retrospect, I think it was in "Betsy In Spite of Herself" not "Heavens to Betsy." I tried to use Betsy's disdain for Elsie to justify to my mother why I shouldn't read the books, but she preferred that I read Elsie and lamented the amount of time I spend with my Maud Hart Lovelace books.

[Talitha Cumi]

I've skimmed through a bunch of these on Gutenberg. It gets super-creepy later on, when one of Elsie's daughters marries a widower. The man has 2 or 3 kids, one of whom is a rebellious girl, and he finally decides to whip her, and the way it's written... let's just say that it's awfully bodice-rippy. Ewwwww.

[drivingmishcrazy]

I didn't realize that the versions I read growing up weren't the originals. O.O I used to love them when I was a kid, but after reading this thread, I'm not sure I want to go back and look at all of the red flags that went right over my head as a little girl.

Should I read the originals? I'm scared now.

[nickelodeon]

I can appreciate the Elsie books as a kinky daddy dom fantasy. All those scenes of handsome papas commanding, controlling and cuddling their dewy-eyed little girls are just too lovingly rendered for me to accept that the author isn't getting a depraved pleasure from it all! On that level I have to shrug and say "your kink is not my kink" and move on with my life.

But the pages on pages of smug superiority from an eight year old are not cute. Bleh. Elsie's so wholesome she makes the March Sisters (my overbearingly pious fictional girls of choice) look like riot grrrls.

[Trynn]

I wouldn't read the Elsie books unless you have a very strong stomach and a large bottle of wine. And that goes for the modern versions as well as the originals.

Lulu.... I liked lulu pre conversion. She was the only character in that whole series that behaved like a human being.

I downloaded some of the Mildred books, and I might blog about those. They're easier to stomach, and the modern re writes are actually good. At least from what I remember. Now that I'm not a Christian I'll have to go back and see. I did just get almost the whole series from a book sale, I just have to unpack them, then make time to read them.

[Sobeknofret]

I've also got and read all of the Elsie books, the originals, and can do a recap of them, although most of the books in the later half of the series are travelogues and American history recaps.

[Trynn]

I've also got and read all of the Elsie books, the originals, and can do a recap of them, although most of the books in the later half of the series are travelogues and American history recaps.

I think you should do the originals and I should get my hands on the updated versions and we should compare.

[Sobeknofret]

I think you should do the originals and I should get my hands on the updated versions and we should compare.

Awesome idea! I have never read the updates from A Life Of Faith, but I would really love to know how they compare to each other.

[Trynn]

Awesome idea! I have never read the updates from A Life Of Faith, but I would really love to know how they compare to each other.

I'll look for them at the library. Worst case scenario I do ILL and it takes a few daysZ

I actually read the newer ones first, and they were so bad they gave me a stomach ache. So of course I had to read the original train wreck.

At some point your keep going with the original Elsie series and I'd start on the violet travilla updated books. That's where the more modern series splits off. Also, there's some Elsie stuff in the original Mildred books that makes my hair curl.

[GiggleOfGirls]

It's been a while since I had a copy of any Elsie books around, but I've read several of the originals (as a tween/teen) and found some of the new revised ones about 8 years ago. The easiest way to tell if a copy is revised is whether the slaves speak in dialect. They changed how the slaves speak in the newer ones, if I'm remembering correctly.

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.

Ha! Yes. I also remember in another book I read from the turn of the century or first half of the 20th century that someone clearly mocks another character by telling them to "go read the Elsie books," but I don't remember which book that was from.

On another note, I at least partially credit reading E Nesbit's books as a child for the fact that I didn't grow up to be a "good Republican" the way I was raised to be. Socialist authors writing children's fiction, FTW!

[Trynn]

No, the modern revised ones have pink flowery covers, THATS how you tell. Also, things go differently plot wise in the modern ones.

Isabelle is an absolute bitch in the modern telling who manipulates people, whereas in the original series she's almost the most reasonable person in the books till lulu shows up.

[Sobeknofret]

Ha! Yes. I also remember in another book I read from the turn of the century or first half of the 20th century that someone clearly mocks another character by telling them to "go read the Elsie books," but I don't remember which book that was from.

Emily! In the Emily books by LM Montgomery, Emily's favorite teacher and writing coach, Mr. Carpenter, mocks the overbearing sentimentality of one of her stories by telling her to go read the Elsie books and get it out of her system.

And I'm afraid I don't know who Isabelle is in the original Elsie books; I can't remember a character named Isabelle. There is an Isadore, called Isa mostly, but I can't think of a Isabelle.

[Trynn]

It might be Isadore and I'm misremembering. Horace's step mother, mother of Adelaide, Walter, etc.

[Rachel333]

I read all of the Elsie and Mildred books that my library had. I liked the Mildred books better, but I read the newer versions of those while the Elsie books were the originals.

I remember the series focus changing to the kids of the widowed father that one of Elsie's children married, which seemed like an odd narrative choice.

A lot of the later books were just incredibly boring, even more so than the first books. There would be whole sermons just shoved in there. Imagine a book where instead of just reading that the characters went to church, you get to read the whole sermon they listened to as well. :? The one I remember was where a friend came over and told a long story about Queen Elizabeth I.

I love all of Lucy Maud Montgomery's books. They may have been written a long time ago but the characters are all still so relatable and actually seem like real people,

[GiggleOfGirls]

Emily! In the Emily books by LM Montgomery, Emily's favorite teacher and writing coach, Mr. Carpenter, mocks the overbearing sentimentality of one of her stories by telling her to go read the Elsie books and get it out of her system.

Thank you! That was bugging me. I loved the Emily books when I was younger. I should probably reread them (yet again), because it's been years since I last read them. I loved Emily even more than I loved Anne and that's saying something.

[roddma]

I cant seem to find Violet Travilla to download free.