Elsie Dinsmore

[oscar]

Humbert Humbert- I'm always amazed at the men that don't see him as a pervert but rather as an accurate describer of his experience.

Yeah, I find this to be a sort of handy shibboleth - when someone argues, "But he loved her!" I know I am probably going to have a hard time with whatever that person has to say about relationships. Or literature, for that matter.

[Lainey]

Mr. Pervypants? Why?

Oh, where to begin...to truly understand, you'd have to read his books. I like(d) the Xanth and Incarnations of Immortality series, but his perviness has even affected Xanth recently! He has a book called Pornucopia. I may have read it; I can't remember. He's also a little too fond of teenage girls.

ETA: As for Lolita, I despise that book with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns, but that's because I found it so hard to read. I had to look up all the French and Latin passages, plus the (Russian) author knew English better than me! I had no idea there were words for all the things I had to look up. I guess I'm used to books about older men taking advantage of younger women by this point, but the fact that he killed her mother pissed me off.

Oddly, reading Reading Lolita in Tehran helped me understand the original a little better.

[justlurking]

Glad to know there are other Bad Seed fans out there.

There was a remake, actually. :(

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088766/

Whenever I teach "Au Clair de la Lune" to piano students, I have to warn them never to play it too fast, for fear of giving me nightmares! ;)

While I'm annoyed to see there was a bad, TV movie remake, I am amused that the mother in that remake was played by a woman named Blair Brown--6 degrees of separation anyone? :mrgreen:

Now, let's all play nice and go read the Elsie Dinsmore books, that we won in Sunday School, under the beautiful scupernog arbor.

[Lainey]

Now, let's all play nice and go read the Elsie Dinsmore books, that we won in Sunday School, under the beautiful scupernog arbor.

Only book I ever won was Pat the Bunny for being the youngest member of the library when I was three. :mrgreen:

[doggie]

Oh, where to begin...to truly understand, you'd have to read his books. I like(d) the Xanth and Incarnations of Immortality series, but his perviness has even affected Xanth recently! He has a book called Pornucopia. I may have read it; I can't remember. He's also a little too fond of teenage girls.

r.

the guy is over 70 and sick. I don't think he is a perv more that he is getting more into reality of the world. I used to be careful not to have anything resembling sex in his books. pornicopia was a pretty good book then he had a sequel.

but his books are maturing and are more like reality then they used to be.

[Lainey]

No, seriously, doggie, he's a perv. Seriously. He is getting worse.

[Patsy]

Not being familiar with the author, I'm reminded of discussions of violence against women in books and movies - is it perpetuating the trope and glorifying in it, 'punishing' female characters for stepping out of line, or is it representing how life is for women and how society punishes them?

Lainey, would you be willing to expound a little? Are we talking 'women of gor' levels of violence, where it's obvious the author enjoys writing about it?

[FaustianSlip]

I remember that book - I must, I must increase my bust!!

I loved that book as a kid. Must have read it a hundred times.

I haven't read any of the Elsie books, but I am slowly working my way through my first Henty (While London Burned, I think it's called). It's not terrible, really; reminds me of a lot of the older adventure books I used to enjoy as a kid, or stuff like the Bobsey Twins or Happy Hollisters. There's definitely a patronizing and chauvinistic attitude towards women and patronizing stuff about minorities, but that was pretty par for the course at the time, so that doesn't bother me in and of itself. It's not nearly as loaded with religion/Christian stuff as Elsie seems to be, however.

[thoughtful]

While I'm annoyed to see there was a bad, TV movie remake, I am amused that the mother in that remake was played by a woman named Blair Brown--6 degrees of separation anyone? :mrgreen:

Now, let's all play nice and go read the Elsie Dinsmore books, that we won in Sunday School, under the beautiful scupernog arbor.

What will you give me for a basket of kisses?

Oh, and justlurking, I really like your green smiley. May I have it after you die? :angelic-halofell:

[booksnbeats]

I can't believe any fundie family approved Mark Twain. The man was the polar opposite of the lady who wrote the Elsie Dinsmore books (whose family, with the help of Hometime, restored the author's house in Minnesota, which was the model for Elsie's home).

Have you ever read The Bible According to Mark Twain? It's got some great stuff in it.

[Avalondaughter]

You're right; it is creepy, though I never thought of it as being as creepy as what's being described in the Elsie Dinsmore books. It helps somewhat that this comment goes right over Emily's head at the time and isn't perceived as being lecherous; that Dean is a hundred times more interesting than her eventual husband, super-boring Teddy Kent (who seems bereft of any personality whatsoever); and that he's too chicken to kiss Emily during their entire (eventually failed) engagement. I always assumed that the relationship wasn't so much about Dean's waiting for Emily to grow up as it was about Dean being too weird to be in a relationship with anyone else. Eventually Montgomery concludes that their incompatiblity wasn't because of their age difference, but was because he lied to her about the merit of her work, and because he was jealous of her devotion to her career. Her stories are full of older people finding common ground with young people in entirely platonic relationships based on a similar poetic outlook on the world, so that such a friendship would turn romantic isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility in her work. But apologetics can only go so far - if I look at the story with the eyes of an adult reader, I think to myself, "there is something wrong with that man." Which is pretty much what Emily's Aunt Elizabeth says (or secretly thinks) for the entire novel, so that viewpoint is present.

I remember when I read the first Emily book I was enchanted with her relationship with Dean. Maybe I just related to his weirdness and the fact that Emily was so willing to care for him when no one else could. Their friendship was an interesting and intellectual one (how different was it from her relationship with her crazy schoolteacher?)

I was a bit squicked by the idea of the two of them marrying though. I suppose the age difference had a lot to do with that, but I read Emily's Quest around the same time I read Jane Eyre and I wasn't squicked by the age difference there.

Despite his jealousy and possessivness, there was always a part of me that rooted for Dean. I always imagined him heading west, properly chastised about how he should treat women, and meets some plain local schoolmarm with whom he has a deep intellectual and emotional connection and they live happily ever after. Dean does give Emily the house after all.

[Lainey]

Not being familiar with the author, I'm reminded of discussions of violence against women in books and movies - is it perpetuating the trope and glorifying in it, 'punishing' female characters for stepping out of line, or is it representing how life is for women and how society punishes them?

Lainey, would you be willing to expound a little? Are we talking 'women of gor' levels of violence, where it's obvious the author enjoys writing about it?

I will try. I'm not familiar with "Women of Gor," so I can't really speak to that. Also, I haven't read anywhere near ALL his books. I suppose there is some violence towards women, but it's treated as how society punishes them (in the books I've read). As far as I can remember, it's treated as wrong (there are some of his books that I haven't read since I was a teenager, and now I'm 32, so...). The reason I say he's a perv is because the books--especially the latest books--are full of gratuitous sex. There's nothing romantic or even interesting about it--it's like a bunch of bunnies going at it all the time. He does appear to like writing about sex in this fashion. Why I don't know; it's boring as hell.

Also, I say he's a little too fond of teenage girls because his books are geared towards teenage girls being beautiful and losing their appeal when they get a little bit older. Also, in his Author's Notes, which is a section at the end of the book where he drones on and on about his life, well...you get that sense from him, too.

Here is a review from the latest in the "Incarnations of Immortality" series: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2IQCYBGRF ... hisHelpful

And here is my review from the second-last (so far) of the "Xanth" series: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-rev ... centReview

[justlurking]

What will you give me for a basket of kisses?

Hmm, let me guess...how bout a basket of hugs :lol:

Oh, and justlurking, I really like your green smiley. May I have it after you die? :angelic-halofell:

:confusion-helpsign:

[Artemis]

GenerationCedarchip wrote:

the "I fell in love with you when you were just a child and waited all these years for you to grow up" plot was present in way more books than I care to remember

I think that part of the issue here is that unless the heroine is a child (under 14) the hero can't be shown intereacting with her in any way that makes the reader aware of her virtues without going beyond the bounds of what was acceptable in polite society, with the two of them being alone together. So, until she reaches the magic age of 14 'standing with reluctant feet / where the brook and river meet' as Lewis Carroll put it (and we all know how odd he was, with the photos of naked little girls!) it's OK for the hero to talk to her, ride with her, take her walking, read with and to her etc with the two of them on their own, in a way that it would not have been if she were older. So rather than being necessarily indicative of paedophilia, it's a plot device to indicate the development of a deep and meaningful relationship.

If you look at some of this literature, in a lot of cases, the hero is in this 'pure' relationship with the heroine, finding out about her character and assessing her suitability, until she reaches about that age (14). At that point there is usually a gap in their relationship, and when they meet again, he courts and marries her. To a certain extent this is true with Travilla, and it's also true of two other well known heroines : Ellen Whitaker in 'The Wide Wide World' and Elfleda Ringgan in 'Queechy'. It does also show the man's celibacy of course: it's made quite explicit in Queechy that Guy Carleton is not interested in 'the baser vices' AKA visitng prostitutes.

To do Mr Travilla some justice, he does at least argue against her father's exceeding harshness, which borders disturbingly on sadism, and tells him he's a bastard. And when Elsie does marry him, he does not ask her to obey.

Unfortunately after a few books Finlay kills him off and Elsie, suitably provided with children to provide the next generation of daddy's darlings, goes back to being a daddy's darling herself, complete with, as a widowed woman of 36 ish, still sitting on her father's lap and having him kiss 'her ruby lips' which he does disturbingly often throughout the entire series.

I have read all the books - out of sheer curiosity, and because I read extremely fast, I would like to point out.

They become excruciatingly boring, with the same tedious characters popping up everywhere - a ventriloquist cousin who plays practical jokes, for example, and an Aunt who speaks in Spoonerisms (you have hissed all my mystery lessons), and doesn't die nearly soon, or quickly enough.

The later books are also lavishly provided (via the convenient and inquiring child who asks the lead question, and whom, one quickly thinks, should have been strangled at birth) with huge chunks (and I do mean huge - chapters!) of didactically presented 'history' told from a patriotic and partial viewpoint, and all going to prove the depravity of perfidious Albion, and the stalwart independence of the early Americans.

Story, there is very little of.

Elsie, I am sure you will be delighted to know, remains beautiful, soft, smiling and tearfully virtuous throughout. . . .

[Angri-la]

I love that movie and I'm especially happy that Hollywood never made a remake of it.

Alas, they did remake it, terribly, in 1985, and the guy who made "Hostel" supposedly remaking it currently. *shudder*. Some things should never be remade.

The Bad Seed is one of my all time favorite "horror" films. Threadjack!

I highly recommend getting the DVD of the original with commentary by Patty McCormack and John Waters. Funniest ever.

"Leroy, give me those shoes!"

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

I know I'm biased since I study Slavic lit, but Lolita is one of my favorite books! Nabokov is absolutely brilliant, both in Russian and in English. I've read his lectures on literature, and he was, in a word, insufferable, making all sorts of absolute pronouncements on what was and wasn't literature (in case you are curious, women writers are decidedly NOT, though IIRC he made an exception for George Eliot.) On exams, a student's success was directly proportional to how well he/she could regurgitate every detail of his lectures. He saw the artist as a superior being, whose genius, once recognized, must be appreciated in very specific ways - not analyzed, not identified with, not related to social circumstances, etc. Basically, a neo-Romantic take on literature, probably a reaction to Soviet socialist realism. To extrapolate between that and the interviews he's given on his writing, I would say that Lolita was, for him, the ultimate experiment in this conception of literature - the exploration of an extremely controversial topic, one on which nobody could be morally neutral, while attempting to draw attention to the beauty of the story and his masterful use of language. If only you can ignore the plot itself - which is difficult to do - it is full of multi-layered witticisms, fantastic imagery, incisive observations, word play, etc.

Actually, the first time I read it, I was 13. I totally identified with Lolita. I thought it was a love story. I read it again at 21 and I was horrified. The third time, I was 24 and doing an MA in comp lit. In an intro to literary theory course, we wrote 6 essays analyzing the novel from every imaginable lens. By the end, I was able to get past the plot, but I can see why it squicks people out. Humbert is a perfect villain, and that is part of why the book is brilliant. The other thing is that it's presented in the introduction as a "defense" written by Humbert in prison - he keeps addressing the "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury," and early on he comments that "you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." The book is an attempt by Humbert to "talk himself out" of his situation. In another sense it's also a see-saw between aesthetic perfection and moral rectitude: can/do they co-exist? Does attaining the former excuse significant shortcomings in the latter?

Anyway, please excuse The Grad Student Rant...I just think it's a brilliant book!

[bea]

FWIW, I liked Pale Fire a lot better than Lolita, but that's because the whole trope of an unreliable narrator is one of my favorites.

I am now onto the second Elsie Dinsmore book. EEEEEW. The lap sitting! The kissing! The hand-holding! The ultimate patriarchal authority! At least the books are free on Kindle through Project Gutenberg, so I'm not paying to be tortured.

Recommend me some other awful Christian classics, wise people. Sometimes I like to make myself suffer.

[GenerationCedarchip]

FWIW, I liked Pale Fire a lot better than Lolita, but that's because the whole trope of an unreliable narrator is one of my favorites.

I am now onto the second Elsie Dinsmore book. EEEEEW. The lap sitting! The kissing! The hand-holding! The ultimate patriarchal authority! At least the books are free on Kindle through Project Gutenberg, so I'm not paying to be tortured.

Recommend me some other awful Christian classics, wise people. Sometimes I like to make myself suffer.

Go check out the VF site. They have what sound like some real knee slappers over there. My personal favorite title is Little Daisy and the Swearing Glass. Also if you should ever happen to run across children's books published by Moody in the 1950s or so - they had some real humdingers. Our church library was well-stocked with them. And let's just say that our church librarian thought that Grace Livingston Hill was a little racy for middle school girls to be reading!

[Sanveann]

Oh, where to begin...to truly understand, you'd have to read his books. I like(d) the Xanth and Incarnations of Immortality series, but his perviness has even affected Xanth recently! He has a book called Pornucopia. I may have read it; I can't remember. He's also a little too fond of teenage girls.

I think i stopped reading the Xanth books when "The Color of Her Panties" came out ...just the title pushed it over the line for me. Now that I'm a lot older, I find a lot of Anthony's books pretty squicky.

[Guest Anonymous]

Go check out the VF site. They have what sound like some real knee slappers over there. My personal favorite title is Little Daisy and the Swearing Glass. Also if you should ever happen to run across children's books published by Moody in the 1950s or so - they had some real humdingers. Our church library was well-stocked with them. And let's just say that our church librarian thought that Grace Livingston Hill was a little racy for middle school girls to be reading!

Leaving aside your gluttony for punishment, keep trawling Gutenberg. There's a mother lode of them in the "Anonymous" section, among them

The Pearl Box, by A Pastor

Strive And Thrive

Pleasing Stories For Good Children With Pictures

The Moral Picture Book

There are others of equal awfulness but it's after midnight and I can't keep my eyes open another minute.

Good luck!

[sisof9]

I was literally going to post Little Daisy and the Swearing Class yesterday. It made me cry as a kid 'cause I used "Gee Whiz" ALL the time as a kid and I didn't know I was swearing. ;)

Grace Livingston Hill was a nono in our house 'til I was older and even then only preselected works. :) Her aunt or something though wrote books too that were "good to read" The King's Daughter and... I'll find her name for you, so you too can be "edified" ;)

[sisof9]

Isabella Macdonald Alden!!

http://www.isabellamacdonaldalden.com/d ... _alpha.pdf

[GenerationCedarchip]

I was literally going to post Little Daisy and the Swearing Class yesterday. It made me cry as a kid 'cause I used "Gee Whiz" ALL the time as a kid and I didn't know I was swearing. ;)

Grace Livingston Hill was a nono in our house 'til I was older and even then only preselected works. :) Her aunt or something though wrote books too that were "good to read" The King's Daughter and... I'll find her name for you, so you too can be "edified" ;)

Only pre-selected Grace Livingston Hill, huh? Who knew she could be so racy? Mostly I remember laughing out loud over mentions of how virtuous schoolteachers shouldn't go to the local barn dances because all that dancing gives rise to unseemly urges. Oh, and women who wear nail polish are evil! And there was one book written in the 1950s where the heroine's brother is dating a divorcee. The scandal!

[Lainey]

I think i stopped reading the Xanth books when "The Color of Her Panties" came out ...just the title pushed it over the line for me. Now that I'm a lot older, I find a lot of Anthony's books pretty squicky.

I could totally see that. I was in my teens when I read most of them. I was embarrassed to be seen reading "The Colour of her Panties," but I don't remember anything particularly risque about it.

[Sanveann]

I could totally see that. I was in my teens when I read most of them. I was embarrassed to be seen reading "The Colour of her Panties," but I don't remember anything particularly risque about it.

I was in my teens, too. I don't think I ever even read that one ... I didn't even want to be seen buying it!