she<\/em> falls into illness\u2014all because he has this bizarre desire to see her submit to him in all things, no matter how small.<\/p>\nOver the course of six chapters Horace takes away all of\u00a0Elsie\u2019s freedoms including her correspondence with Miss Rose (remember the Christian friend she met in the\u00a0beginning\u00a0of book 1?), her travel privileges, even her Mammy, and then he threatens to sent her away to boarding school. He finally even leaves the house so as not to accidentally cave in and give her any sense of victory whatsoever. He promises to relent only when\u00a0Elsie\u00a0agrees to give up her obsession with placing God first, which she\u2019s never gonna do.<\/p>\n
Hilariously, the detail that sends\u00a0Elsie\u00a0over the edge into actual sickness is the mention of being sent to a Catholic boarding school.\u00a0Elsie freaks out, saying, \u201cThey will try to make me go to mass and pray to the Virgin, and when I refuse they will put me in a dungeon and torture me!\u201d Aunt Adelaide and even the author herself do very little to dispel the reader\u2019s bad image of Catholicism, calling the religion \u201csuperstition\u201d. I was raised a Catholic and this part just made me laugh.<\/p>\n
The morning after the \u201cCatholic scare,\u201d Elsie\u00a0is found feverish and weak, causing some family members to worry for her very life. And they are correct. She declines so far that she is actually pronounced dead at one point, until they figure out her heart still beats, barely. This crisis produces the long expected change of heart Horace needed. He decides to no longer make\u00a0Elsie\u00a0obey when it goes against her conscience. Great. She still has to unquestioningly obey all the other times of course.<\/p>\n
The rest of the book is basically about how inseparable Horace and\u00a0Elsie\u00a0are now that they are both true Christians. Oh, did I mention Horace had a mini-conversion from whatever lackadaisical Christian he was originally? This book makes it clear there are right kinds of Christians and wrong kinds. Presbyterians get all the good adjectives, so they are obviously right. Catholics get bad adjectives, so they are wrong. The book does very little to elaborate on why this is so.<\/p>\n
One thing that really got to me during the reading of this book was how assured the storyteller is of the themes she embeds in the story. I mean, I<\/em>\u00a0know I\u2019m not sinning by reading, say, Memoirs of a Geisha<\/em> on a Sunday. But to\u00a0Elsie? There would be no question of the worldly, even carnal nature of my chosen entertainment. I doubt she\u2019d approve of it for even a weekday, let alone a sabbath. Her certainty (and by extension the author\u2019s certainty) makes me highly uncomfortable. I\u2019m starting to realize how much I truly value honest discussion and the ability to think about things and change one\u2019s mind. This story seems to actively encourage the opposite<\/em>\u00a0of that. I actually felt like I was upside-down reading some of this. It was so absolutely convinced of itself that I wondered if I\u2019d fallen into a different reality. I literally took a break from reading for two days at one point. It was just so disheartening.<\/p>\nI thought the story had a lot of problems from the nitpicky (author has no sense of subtlety) to larger issues such as Elsie\u2019s extreme emotional attachment to Horace. I had a hard time with the idea of the \u201ctrue father\u201d the books seem to endorse. There\u2019s really nothing magical about a child having its parents\u2019 DNA that should automatically make that child and parent \u201cright\u201d for one another. But\u00a0Elsie\u00a0seems to think there is. Otherwise why would she put so much stock in the affections of a man she knows so very little? And speaking of misplaced affection, what is Travilla\u2019s character really after anyway? Throughout the books he repeatedly tells\u00a0Elsie\u00a0he wishes her to live with him. Somehow I doubt he\u2019s really talking about adopting\u00a0Elsie. I can\u2019t think the author, with all her \u201ctrue father\u201d nonsense, is a big adoption fan. I think he\u2019s hitting on her. This is another spoiler actually; Travilla and\u00a0Elsie\u00a0wind up married in a later book. That\u2019s all kinds of weird.<\/p>\n
Another thing about this book I\u2019ve been kicking around inside my head is the author\u2019s definition of love. At the beginning of book one,\u00a0Elsie\u00a0keeps going back to the refrain, \u201cIf only Papa would love me!\u201d She seems to think Horace only loves her whenever he is pleased with her. I don\u2019t treat the idea of love like that. I maintain that I still have love for a child or adult with whom I happen to be angry. To me love speaks to something deeper than pleasure, encompassing the fact that I would put myself on the line for a person I love, regardless of my current surface emotion. The books are treating love as if it is a trivial emotion akin to liking something. When\u00a0Elsie\u00a0thinks Papa doesn\u2019t love<\/em>\u00a0her, she\u2019s really experiencing times Papa doesn\u2019t seem to like<\/em> her. I wonder if the definition if love has changed or if humans just have trouble grasping its meaning, each of us using a different definition. The author\u2019s definition strikes me as somewhat shallow.<\/p>\nWhich brings me to the author. I said I\u2019d mention what little I know about her, so here goes. Her name is Martha Finley. She was herself Presbyterian born in 1828 and lived through the Civil War. She lived in a variety of places during her life: Ohio, Indiana,\u00a0Pennsylvania, and Maryland. She was a teacher and also a writer, penning things for the Presbyterian Publishing Board. She wrote\u00a0Elsie\u00a0Dinsmore just around the time of the Civil War\u2014it was published in 1867. The books (a single manuscript divided in two) was so well liked she was able to write many more books about\u00a0Elsie (28 total) and other similar stories. She was still writing stories until within a few years of her death in 1909.<\/p>\n
No one seems to have information about what Finley was like herself. I mean we can guess some of it based on what she was writing, but it\u2019s not like we have interviews or a back flap description for Ms. Finley. I\u2019ll give her this\u2014her writing is something compelling. Some of the over-emotional scenes are weirdly fascinating. I found myself hooked, waiting to see what ridiculous thing Horace would do next and what\u00a0Elsie\u00a0would cry over in this chapter.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, I\u2019m really not a fan of these books. They make me very determined to pay attention to my (future) kids\u2019 reading habits. I\u2019m thinking I don\u2019t want to teach them to avoid certain books\u2014I want to instead teach them to think about why<\/em>\u00a0a books gets written, so they can feel free to disagree with the author. We could play this game after every book and talk about the story, even when they are little. It will totally be a fun bonding activity.<\/p>\nBefore I go, I will leave you with this amusing thing I discovered. I think it\u2019s possible\u00a0Elsie\u00a0is a nudist. Remember that Mammy is constantly having to dress her? She MUST be shedding clothes. And if that\u2019s not enough evidence for you, on page 20 of\u00a0Elsie\u2019s Holidays at Roselands I found the following exchange:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you going to wear to Isabel Carleton\u2019s party tonight,\u00a0Elsie?\u201d asked Lucy at the dinner table.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing,\u201d replied\u00a0Elsie, with an arch smile.<\/p>\n
In actuality, Horace isn\u2019t letting Elsie attend the party\u2014another punishment for another small offense\u2014but that\u2019s good because the other guests will all have dresses!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Guest Post by Tracey<\/i> Another thing about this book I’ve been kicking around inside my head is the author’s definition of love. At the beginning of book one, Elsie keeps going back to the refrain, “If only Papa would love me!” She seems to think Horace only loves her whenever he is pleased with her. I don’t treat the idea of love like that. I maintain that I still have love for a child or adult with whom I happen to be angry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[363,338,361],"class_list":["post-15327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-an-outsider-reads-elsie-dinsmore","tag-elsie-dinsmore","tag-guest-post"],"yoast_head":"\nGuest Post: An Outsider Reads Elsie Dinsmore, Part III<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Guest Post by Tracey Another thing about this book I've been kicking around inside my head is the author's definition of love. At the beginning of book one, Elsie keeps going back to the refrain, "If only Papa would love me!" She seems to think Horace only loves her whenever he is pleased with her. I don't treat the idea of love like that. 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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2013\/05\/Elsie-Dinsmore-3.jpg\" "\\"Elsie")
<\/a>A Guest Post by Tracey<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n