Why do fundies idealise Little Women so much

[Loveday]

I think you can get the Nook version for free on Project Gutenberg. Most older books are in the public domain and Project Gutenberg legally helps provide those in electronic format.

Thanks, I'll check that out! :dance:

[Conuly]

No matter how much I try to twist my brain, I can't figure out in what way his "fondling" of her when she would sit in his lap wasn't sexual. He fondled her often. I don't know of any meaning other than the meaning we all know when referring to fondling a person.

Think "snuggling". It's the frequentative of fond (fun fact! or am I the only one who loves identifying frequentatives?)

[desertvixen]

Think "snuggling". It's the frequentative of fond (fun fact! or am I the only one who loves identifying frequentatives?)

It's still creepy. In Elsie's Girlhood, he gets all worked up about the unworthy guy defiling "his" lips (hers, of couse). I'm hoping to read far enough into the series that he can die in a fiery car crash.

[Conuly]

It's still creepy. In Elsie's Girlhood, he gets all worked up about the unworthy guy defiling "his" lips (hers, of couse). I'm hoping to read far enough into the series that he can die in a fiery car crash.

Yes, in this book it's creepy as fuck. The whole book seems to be creepy (I'm following along at the above-mentioned Forever in Hell). But the word comes up in other older books with the same intended meaning (at least I'm assuming that this author didn't actually intend to glide over molestation with "fondle" a zillion times) so it's worthwhile to have a ready synonym to plug in when you read them. Snuggle or cuddle is close enough. (A similar problem in older books has to do with "making love". Anne complains that her friends' stories all have too much "making love" in them, another character in a different book says she was "making love" in the parlor, that sort of thing. It means "flirting"!)

[desertvixen]

A similar problem in older books has to do with "making love". Anne complains that her friends' stories all have too much "making love" in them, another character in a different book says she was "making love" in the parlor, that sort of thing. It means "flirting"!

That one I am familiar with - even funnier when they talk about making "violent love".

ETA - obviously just in the "flirting" sense.

[tabitha2]

LM Montgomery Considered Emily Starr to be closer personality wise to herself and the Emily Books are realistic in many ways.If you have not read them definitely read them.

[Elle]

Wait, I'm confused! :lol: The Rock House and Laura and Almanzo's house--aren't they in Mansfield, Missouri, or are you referring to the Ingalls family home in South Dakota? De Smet is in South Dakota, where Pa and Ma finally stayed put after so many years of traveling around, and where Laura and Almanzo got married etc. I've always wanted to see the house in town where they spent that long, awful winter burning sticks of hay and eating nothing but beans and bread. Have you been there? I'd love to know what you thought of if if you have! :)

Ah, crap, that's what I get for trying to remember things when I'm on Vicodin. The Mansfield house. That's the house with the museum with Charles' fiddle. Someone else mentioned De Smet and the museum with the violin (violin, fiddle, same thing), and my drugged brain crossed them.

[Loveday]

Ah, crap, that's what I get for trying to remember things when I'm on Vicodin. The Mansfield house. That's the house with the museum with Charles' fiddle. Someone else mentioned De Smet and the museum with the violin (violin, fiddle, same thing), and my drugged brain crossed them.

:lol: I've been in a Vicodin haze myself now and then, so I understand (and I hope you're feeling better now!). I just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed a vital bit of information--my sense of direction is dicey at best, and I really might end up in South Dakota when I meant to go to Missouri. Or vice versa. ;)

[ilovetchotchkes]

:lol: I've been in a Vicodin haze myself now and then, so I understand (and I hope you're feeling better now!). I just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed a vital bit of information--my sense of direction is dicey at best, and I really might end up in South Dakota when I meant to go to Missouri. Or vice versa. ;)

The mansfield house is the one with the fiddle. TBH its about the ONLY thing for miles. Unless you're into Heirloom Seeds and want to hit up Baker creek. :) :lol:

[luckystone]

De Smet's the one! It's also close to Rock House, the large home Rose built them. That house is part of the same ticket, so you get to see both, plus the museum. Rock House's kitchen has a lot of furniture in it, and even an apron hung up, all that Laura painted (and she made the apron). In the De Smet house, there's a dish in the kitchen that has a sliver of soap that has been virtually untouched since she died. Being able to stick my nose inches away from the bar of soap she was using when she died was more of a religious experience for me than Charles' violin, which is behind glass in the museum next to it. The soap dish in in Laura and Almanzo's home, in their personal and private space. It was truly amazing.

The house in Little House on the Prairie was torn down ages ago, but historians have tracked down the location using descriptions from the book and then found a hand-dug well right where it should be that dates to about when the family lived there. That house is a reproduction, and I haven't been to that one yet. One day I'll get there, and will also go back to De Smet and Rock House, but have a spy camera or something to take pictures since they aren't allowed and I didn't do such a great job with the ones I snuck last time I was there.

!!! I want to go so badly!

[Loveday]

The mansfield house is the one with the fiddle. TBH its about the ONLY thing for miles. Unless you're into Heirloom Seeds and want to hit up Baker creek. :) :lol:

I'll have a field day, then, I'm interested in heirloom herbs. :dance:

I had a look at Elsie Dinsmore on my Nook last night before I went to bed. Not the original, apparently, but 'updated' versions. I may not be able to take too much of her. :angelic-pink:

We should get a group together for an FJ Laura tour. :lol:

[Talitha Cumi]

I kind of enjoy in Elsie's Girlhood, where she falls in love with a wrong guy, and has a hard time shaking it. She seems almost normal in that part of the book.

Her father is creepy. Her husband is not much better.

Her husband is creepy because he's her father's best friend, and they groomed Elsie to be his wife for years. Just. Creepy.

I read the books on Gutenberg because I heard about them through VF, and I wanted to see how bad they were. Train wreck-- I can't look away.

[Talitha Cumi]

Yes, in this book it's creepy as fuck. The whole book seems to be creepy (I'm following along at the above-mentioned Forever in Hell). But the word comes up in other older books with the same intended meaning (at least I'm assuming that this author didn't actually intend to glide over molestation with "fondle" a zillion times) so it's worthwhile to have a ready synonym to plug in when you read them. Snuggle or cuddle is close enough. (A similar problem in older books has to do with "making love". Anne complains that her friends' stories all have too much "making love" in them, another character in a different book says she was "making love" in the parlor, that sort of thing. It means "flirting"!)

I always liked the phrase "casting sheep's eyes." Because EW! :lol:

[gingernut]

I just stumbled across this thread and have to say that in the fundie circles we used to be in, Little Women was VERY frowned upon and Anne of Green Gables was to be viewed/read with extreme caution.

[phoenissadido]

Want to cast my vote as another Blue Castle fan! Also, in the Emily series, does anyone remember this bit? Hilarious chapter overall xD

"A Wood Stream--

The threading sunbeams quiver,

The bending bushes shiver,

O'er the little shadowy river--

There's only one more rhyme that occurs to me and that's 'liver.' Why did you leave it out?"

Emily writhed.

"Wind Song--

I have shaken the dew in the meadows

From the clover's creamy gown--

Pretty, but weak. June--June, for heaven's sake, girl, don't write poetry on June. It's the sickliest subject in the world. It's been written to death."

[Eclipse]

LM Montgomery Considered Emily Starr to be closer personality wise to herself and the Emily Books are realistic in many ways.If you have not read them definitely read them.

They are a good read, and certainly less glossy than the Anne books. Emily's colder and more old-faishioined Aunts were based on her experiences being raised by her strict Grandparents.

By the time L.M. Montgomery wrote her later Anne books, she was suffering for severe depression, suicidal, stuck in a very unhappy marriage to a mentally ill husband that required a lot of care and she was tired of Anne. This all reflected in her treatment of Anne. Rilla in Rilla of Ingelside has a lot of Anne's early spunkiness and of course its an earlier work. A lot of the treatment of her later works is being rethought and re-evaluated since it become known that she suffered from depression and committed suicide.

Has anyone else visited the L.M. Montgomery sites? I went to PEI as a child and my mother, sisters and I were in heaven visiting all the sites. Green Gables is a nice old house, and you can still walk the Haunted Woods, Lovers Lane and Balsam Hollow. They had the typewriter she wrote on and the "A", "N" and "E" keys were worn down. We also went to where she was born, grew up and her grave. Plus PEI is a beautiful place.

[Elle]

The mansfield house is the one with the fiddle. TBH its about the ONLY thing for miles. Unless you're into Heirloom Seeds and want to hit up Baker creek. :) :lol:

Loveday, I'm hitting the Vicodin bottle pretty heavily right now thanks to having to wait for a dental appointment. Have you ever had a tooth abscess? Worst pain of my life. I'd rather go through 10 more drug-free childbirths with a malpresenting baby again than to ever deal with another abscess. Make that 20, 30, 50 more.

Tchotch, when we went to Mansfield, it was my grandparents, an aunt, a cousin, and my daughter. We took a full picnic and a bunch of yummy munchies, and went in my grandparents' RV. It was a hot day, but not unbearably so, September heat, summer winding down. We went to the museum and houses, and kicked back in the RV with the doors and windows open to get a nice breeze. So it was relaxing. It's definitely not an area to go to unless you love the books because there really, truly is nothing else to do around there, and it's out of the way. My grandpa only went because he was the only one of us who knew how to drive a 36' RV!

[Loveday]

Loveday, I'm hitting the Vicodin bottle pretty heavily right now thanks to having to wait for a dental appointment. Have you ever had a tooth abscess? Worst pain of my life. I'd rather go through 10 more drug-free childbirths with a malpresenting baby again than to ever deal with another abscess. Make that 20, 30, 50 more.

Yes, unfortunately. I'm so sorry you're going through that. :( I've only had one other medical situation as bad as a tooth abscess, and that was a kidney stone a few years ago. You have my full sympathy, I hope you don't have to wait too much longer for that appointment.

[Eclipse]

Loveday, I'm hitting the Vicodin bottle pretty heavily right now thanks to having to wait for a dental appointment. Have you ever had a tooth abscess? Worst pain of my life. I'd rather go through 10 more drug-free childbirths with a malpresenting baby again than to ever deal with another abscess. Make that 20, 30, 50 more.

I am sorry you are dealing with this and feel better soon!

And now for a moment of going off topic for the benefit of any fundie lurkers: this is why modern medical science is good! And why doctors and dentists are important to our health! People in biblical times used to die of tooth abscess! If you don't believe visit the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where there is a mummy of a woman in her twenties who died from a tooth abscess. Elle is going to be fine due to medical science because she doesn't scorn it and its practitioners.

[desertvixen]

Her husband is creepy because he's her father's best friend, and they groomed Elsie to be his wife for years. Just. Creepy.

I always get the impression that Travilla waited for her (and to be fair, he did attempt to make her father see that he was being way over-the-top on discipline) but not that Daddy Dinsmore was intentionally grooming her for him.

[uncreative]

You all have NO IDEA how excited I am to find out that so many other adult women love the Little House on the Prairie books as much as I do! I'm in heaven here!

[Hane]

Another here who went to PEI on an Anne pilgrimage! I took my daughter Anne there in 1992, when she was 12. I especially loved seeing the trilingual French-English-Japanese tourist signs. Japanese girls read Anne in school as part of their English education, and many of them choose to get married in PEI for that reason. Not long after our trip, I had a young Japanese woman in my ESL class, and, sure enough, she had read Anne, too!

[Maude]

Another here who went to PEI on an Anne pilgrimage! I took my daughter Anne there in 1992, when she was 12. I especially loved seeing the trilingual French-English-Japanese tourist signs. Japanese girls read Anne in school as part of their English education, and many of them choose to get married in PEI for that reason. Not long after our trip, I had a young Japanese woman in my ESL class, and, sure enough, she had read Anne, too!

That's awesome! I hope to get out to PEI one of these days. :)

[Elle]

Yes, unfortunately. I'm so sorry you're going through that. :( I've only had one other medical situation as bad as a tooth abscess, and that was a kidney stone a few years ago. You have my full sympathy, I hope you don't have to wait too much longer for that appointment.

I had gall stones and have to have my gall bladder removed on an emergency basis. I'd prefer that again to this because if you don't have insurance, you don't have to wait until you can come up with the money to get care. With dental even if you have insurance you're lucky if half is covered, meaning you've still got to come up with several hundred before anything is done, even though dental abscesses can kill you. I've been drugged out of my mind for a few weeks and on multiple antibiotics to keep it from getting worse (it was at the point I could hardly swallow and had to go to the ER a couple times) until we can get the money together. I tried for Care Credit, but was denied since you have to have an established credit history, and we don't use credit. It's frightening to have a condition right now that can kill and I can't get care until I can get together over a grand, and then it'll be more for the crown. Such is life in America, the richest country in the world.

Our fundy friends would let me die while Jesus gave help to those who needed it. The hypocrisy of this isn't lost on me, especially right now. I've got a raging infection inches from my brain that is taking multiple antibiotics to control, and those who claim to be Christ-like are the ones who would expect me to just die.

[Elle]

I am sorry you are dealing with this and feel better soon!

And now for a moment of going off topic for the benefit of any fundie lurkers: this is why modern medical science is good! And why doctors and dentists are important to our health! People in biblical times used to die of tooth abscess! If you don't believe visit the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where there is a mummy of a woman in her twenties who died from a tooth abscess. Elle is going to be fine due to medical science because she doesn't scorn it and its practitioners.

Agreed. While modern medicine is overused sometimes (got an energetic kid? have some Ritalin! got a viral infection? have some penicillin!), it also does save lives.

I'm going to be fine because it looks like we'll be able to get the money together. We have the medical/dental technology today to save lives from this condition, but we've still got a major problem in America with people not being able to access care.

The county programs here don't offer services to those who make more than something like $1800/mo for a family of 3 (after taxes, that's enough to scrape by on, never mind come up with over a thousand to take care of a tooth abscess) at a discounted rate. If you qualify for the discounted rate, you're still paying $25 for one x-ray and a basic exam, and an extraction, without an abscess, starts at $40 and goes up depending on tooth and complications, such as an abscess. That's what you pay if you're under the federal poverty line (this area I'm in takes more income than the poverty limit for a family to scrape by). Over the poverty limit and you're bumped up to standard rates.

The dental schools don't deal with emergencies, and getting appointments can take weeks, and they only take those with issues that their students need to practice on. The rates are 60%-70% of usual rates, and you can expect two appointments, each taking several hours, first the exam to determine course of treatment, then the treatment itself. If you can't afford the rate, then you don't get the treatment and the student doesn't get to practice. For a tooth abscess, when it requires a root canal instead of extraction (some extractions require further expensive treatments to prevent other problems, and with the location of my abscessed tooth, I'd have to have a bone graft to keep my other teeth from shifting into the spot and causing a bunch of major issues), that still means several hundred dollars you have to have,

Since an abscess isn't something that can wait for several months, if you can't come up with the money, even for an extraction, your option is to go to an emergency room where they can sometimes remove teeth for several hundred and bill you afterward, but then you need to come up with the money to not only pay that, but to pay for the resulting problems, if you're someone like me who has one of the worst possible teeth abscess where a canal ends up being the least expensive treatment.

I haven't even had the canal, and we've already spent about $400 out of pocket between appointments I've had to try to get it under control and the medications I've had to buy out of pocket and a mouth guard I have to wear over my front teeth to keep the teeth in back from touching and causing searing pain for the abscessed tooth. I'm luckier than many because we had a bit of savings to buy the medicines, though it's drained our savings. Without the medicines, especially the antibiotics that finally worked (no generic version), I'd probably be in the hospital right now. I'm also luckier because I just got approved for a program that will cover part of the cost, leaving us only having to come up with $700, which isn't chump change, but is less than we'd have to come up with otherwise, and I still have enough of the narcotic drugs to get me through, though I do have to team it with some sleeping pills to boost the effect a bit, though it does mean I'm sleeping a lot, but I can't handle the full pain.

So while I'll be okay, it's taking some fairly extreme financial measures on our part (not only draining our entire savings, but some things we're having to sell cheaply to get the money fast enough) and a major stroke of luck with that program covering part of it.

While we have the care available in this country, there's still a major problem of access to that care. People are still dying today because of the problem of access. Tennessee's ERs last year had FIVE TIMES as many people come in for dental problems as people come in for any burns, people who couldn't afford dentists and were in such severe pain they needed pain meds and antibiotics to buy them time.

And our lovely, Christ-like fundies are out there ranting and railing against the mere idea of care for all.... And now I'm really pissed off. I was feeling mellow, but not anger has filled me again.