Creepy!

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

does this sound like the beginning of incest porn to anyone else?

well, yeah. Like I said ...eww.....

She got in trouble with her grandparents because she wouldn't tell her aunt (who's actually two years younger than her) a fairy tale on a Sunday. She'd be happy to tell her a Bible story, but not a fairy tale. Her grandparents tell her father what happened, and he says she didn't do anything wrong in not telling a story when a little girl demanded it, but she did do wrong in talking back to her grandfather during the argument about it.

Then he says that while it's perfectly fine for her to put her strict religious rules above what other people tell her to do, he will not allow her to follow her religious rules if it contradicts what he tells her to do, because he must have complete obedience from her.

Well, pop lit could be incredibly overwrought in that era. Lots of emoting and caressing and suffering. Think of Little Lord Fauntleroy, calling his mother "Dearest." That's why Louisa May Alcott is so wonderful and refreshing.

Well, pop lit could be incredibly overwrought in that era. Lots of emoting and caressing and suffering. Think of Little Lord Fauntleroy, calling his mother "Dearest." That's why Louisa May Alcott is so wonderful and refreshing.

I've read Little Lord Fauntleroy. It doesn't come anywhere close to this.

But there there are a lot of overly moral, syrupy disturbing books from that era--it's just that most of them have thankfully sunk into obscurity. I have a bound copy of a year's worth of a magazine called the "Girl's Own" from the late 1800's, and many of the stories are about girls suffering to be good and getting horribly punished for being "bad." The definition of bad seemed to be headstrong and willful and ever getting angry. They have to learn to be gentle and yielding so they could be the moral light of the home and have men love them.

This book seems like it's more overtly Old Testament than a lot of them, but the underlying message and the intense emotion is the same.

The definition of bad seemed to be headstrong and willful and ever getting angry. They have to learn to be gentle and yielding so they could be the moral light of the home and have nem love them.

Headstrong and willful and angry would make this book infinitely better. Elsie is constantly described as humble, submissive, and meek. The first time she said no to an adult's request was over a hundred pages in, when her grandparents told her to tell the fairy tale to the other little girl. And even then, we're told that her tone was respectful.

does this sound like the beginning of incest porn to anyone else?

That's what I'm saying!

She disobeys her father! He tells her to play the piano and sing for some guests, and she says no, because it's Sunday and the song he wants her to sing isn't a religious song. He tells her that she will sit on the piano stool, with no food, until she obeys. She faints and hits her head on the corner of the piano while falling. Travilla, the friend who later marries her, says to her father, "Dinsmore, you're a brute!" Her father had said that her disobeying had humiliated him in front of his friends. We get to read a bit of the conversation among the friends at the party, though, and they seem to think that her father's insistence was much worse than her disobedience.