Hil, according to wikipedia, the author of the Elsie books, Martha Finley, was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. I don't know what Presbyterianism was like in the 1800s (or, really, what it's like now). But maybe that had an affect on her perspective and writing.

Well, Elsie just spent two hours sitting silently next to her father as he read a book and ignored her. He was punishing her for setting free a rare bird that he's captured. She spent the two hours gazing at him, thinking about how handsome he is and despairing that he would never love her, would never take her upon his knee and caress her. Then he sends her to bed. She stands, waiting for a kiss goodnight, and he says that he won't kiss her, because she'd been naughty. She runs up to her room and breaks down in hysterics.

Yup, cruel father as disappointed God stand-in. When you free the birds you make Baby Jesus cry, and he won't love you anymore.

Jesus, the only thing that could redeem this book at this point is if Elsie ends up smacking that self-centered abusive father and ran off with her inappropriate lover to start a collective somewhere in the delta.

ETA: Also? I think we need a list of little known things that make the Baby Jesus cry.

According to wikipedia, she ends up marrying her father's friend.

I'm still trying to figure out where she lives. The books so far hasn't said anything more specific than "the south," but the internet says North Carolina. The internet also says it takes place in the 1840s, though it was first published in 1867.

According to wikipedia, she ends up marrying her father's friend.

Gross.

Good God, there's a whole series of those books, including the run from Elsie's Girlhood, through her children, through Elsie's Widowhood.

edit: Girlhood, Womanhood, Motherhood, Children, Widowhood, and Grandmother Elsie. I don't want to think what's in the Womanhood volume.

In completely unrelated news, Trader Joe's dark chocolate covered edamame are delicious. I'm having some people over tonight and bought them for snacks. My guests had better arrive in a timely fashion, or they'll be SOL.

Whoa. He hasn't punished her physically yet. But when he thinks she's lied to him, he's about to whip her with a riding crop. (She's saved at the last moment, by his younger sister, who's a few years older than Elsie, telling him that Elsie was telling the truth.)

(This book, as well as nearly all the sequels, are up at Project Gutenberg, in case anyone else wants to experience the horror for themselves.)