Letters from Pemberley

I wanted to wait on this until more people had had a chance to read it (you can do it online here), but I think we’ve discussed her so much in general in the comments that I need to address my concerns with her now.

Background (when I first encountered the books)

The Elsie books (all 28 of them) were “rediscovered” and republished in the 90s.  I had to borrow them from a friend and read them under the covers at night because my mom previewed them and considered them “trash.”

Memories of the books

I personally remember sobbing, flashlight in hand, as Elsie’s father cruelly persecuted her for her faith for hundreds of pages.  I also vividly remember that at Elsie’s 10^th Anniversary, she easily fits back into her wedding dress, after having five children.

Of the twenty-plus women I’ve asked about their childhood memories of Elsie, every last one rolls their eyes and says that their parents bought them for them because she was a supposedly good role model, but the melodrama and her unbelievable perfection made for awful reading.  The only people I know who are buying them for their daughters now were not subjected to them as teenagers.

Questions or concerns

Recently, several entrepreneurs have republished “lost gems” from the Victorian era.  Heavy on sentimentality, KJV scripture passages, and morally uncompromised children, these books went out of print for over a century for a reason, and it’s not political correctness.  Can a perfect heroine be a good role model for young girls?  Do stories of perfect children make a good read for kids struggling with their own very real sin nature?

Impressions upon rereading

I think the synopsis of the first two books will speak for itself:

Beautiful and astonishingly rich, Elsie is raised in the home of her grandpa and evil step-grandma, not even meeting her father until age 8.  Despite being mistreated by her vicious uncles and bratty younger aunts, she has a strong faith in God, instilled in her by her personal slave Mammy.  She reads the Bible two hours a day.  When her father returns and meets her, his “lax” religious values clash with her extreme legalistic standards; he asks her to sing a song on a Sunday, but she refuses because it is not a hymn.  At various times, she’s locked in a room, forced to sit on a stool until she faints from hunger (she falls off and sustains a severe head injury that temporarily softens her father’s hard heart), and similar punishments.

Going into the second book, he learns to love her, but he’s a sadistic disciplinarian.  Elsie sins by getting down on the floor to entertain young houseguests, forgetting that he has told her never to sit on the floor.  She is sent to bed early with bread and water.  She never intentionally disobeys, but when she forgets one of his innumerable commands (always in the act of selflessly serving a friend or loved one), she always goes to him to confess, then is deprived of privileges and normal food.  He is sick at death’s door and asks her to read him “just a simple moral novel” that they had started together.  She refuses because it is a Sabbath and the novel is not about God.  He asks if there’s a scripture verse that can back up her stand.  Although Elsie has thusfar been able to quote Bible passage upon passage to all and sundry for any reason, she can’t give him chapter and verse, but assures him that there are verses that tell us that on Sundays we must only think of God.  [I don’t ever remember reading those verses—do any of you?]  In response, he banishes her from his sight, grounds her for months, inflicts extreme verbal and emotional abuse (along with the rest of the family, annoyed at her legalism), takes away her personal slave Mammy, and abandons her at his parents’ home until she will apologize for disobliging him and admit she was wrong.  She wants to give in because she loves him so, but she knows it would be a denial of her faith in God.

The climax comes when he writes to say he will send her to a convent.  Here I simply must quote from the original: “much of Elsie’s reading had been on the subject of Popery and Papal institutions; she had pored over histories of the terrible tortures of the Inquisition and stories of martyrs and captive nuns, until she had imbibed an intense horror and dread of everything connected with that form of error and superstition.” [Remember—she’s 8 years old!]  Elsie literally goes insane, screaming that they will force her to kiss an idol, and spends over a chapter growing sicker by the day until they have to cut off her beautiful curls and send for her father, whom she doesn’t recognize in her delirium.  She “dies,” and her father reads her will, with the Bible she leaves him, and becomes a Christian.  As they prepare her for burial, wait!  She’s actually alive, and has lost her memory for the last year and a half, conveniently forgetting all of her father’s abuse.  When she eventually remembers it, her father apologizes, but she refuses to let him finish, and here again I must quote, tells him, “You had a right to do whatever you pleased with your own child.”

The series continues in the same vein, although I couldn’t make myself read further this time around.  Elsie goes on to marry her father’s friend, at least 17 years older than herself, who lets her and her father know in book 2 that he’s in love with her and wants to marry her when she grows up.  They have 8 delightful children and more grandchildren, who eventually become the focus of the series.

Does this work accurately reflect God’s creation?

That is the question!  The publishers market this as inspirational reading for young Christian girls, but I have several problems from a Biblical standpoint.

First of all, “there is no one righteous—not even one.”  Elsie claims to be a sinner, but her level of holiness is simply not realistic.  Every girl I know who behaves this well has problems with pride, self righteousness, or judgementalism.  But the narrator assures us repeatedly that Elsie’s not even proud of her holiness!  I believe there’s a reason the Bible is full of sinful, broken people—we all need a Savior.  I see two reactions to reading Elsie—either a child will roll her eyes because she already knows that no one can be that perfect, or she’ll try to be that perfect–and feel bad that she cannot ever measure up, because she has a real sin nature.  I want my children to look to Jesus as their one perfect example.  Besides, were perfect heroines effective in inspiring virtuous daughters?  The Victorians glutted children’s bookshelves with morally uncompromised role models, but we see how successful they were in promoting moral behavior in the next generation!

Secondly, the father-daughter relationship in these books seriously disturbs me.  Mr. Dinsmore has neglected his child for 8 years, but he suddenly becomes more of a parenting expert (while still unregenerate) than Christian couples who have been parenting for 30 years.  We as readers are clearly intended to respect his harsh standards for Elsie and despise the other parents who allow their children to eat hot bread, sit on the floor, and stay up past 8 pm.  Children are to obey their parents, but Paul goes on to tell fathers not to exasperate their children!  If the goal of discipline is to train our children towards godliness, overly harsh punishments for minor, freely confessed infractions are just as sinful as the infractions.  Little sins are a big deal, don’t get me wrong, but Mr. Dinsmore’s behavior is beyond the Biblical authority granted to parents.  Contrary to Elsie’s statement quoted above, we parents do NOT have the right to “do whatever we want” with our children.  It’s funny—Mr. Dinsmore initially serves as a source of persecution for Elsie, but she and the narrator never question his methods.  Even after he becomes a Christian, he continues to parent in the same way.  Telling children you never want to see them again, grounding them for months, locking them up in a wardrobe for hours, or humiliating them in public are NOT Biblical forms of discipline.  When she freely confesses and repents for every slip, he still exacts a harsh punishment.  In addition, Elsie’s dad stresses the need for her to obey without questioning (a good thing), but her heart problem is not rebelliousness but forgetfulness (always because she’s consumed with ministering to someone else).  He chooses not to give her reasons for the arbitrary commands he makes, but at her age and maturity, she would be fully capable of hearing a reason that would help her remember when someone asks her to do something he forbids.  His rigidity is unhelpful and ultimately unloving because he’s not training towards godliness, just punishing away from what he considers sin.  I’d rather have my kids read about parents who are worthy of respect (not perfect, because we’ll be set up to disappoint), but doing their best with the grace given them.  I mentioned some of them to Keith back in the comments this week—Marton Nagy in The Good Master, David and Eunice Worth in They Loved to Laugh, Marmee in Little Women, Uncle Alec in Eight Cousins.

And much of what he and Elsie consider sin is not what I consider sin.  My kids eat pancakes (“hot bread” seriously gets a bad rap in these books!) and sit on the floor all the time, and I’m totally fine with that.  Most of Elsie’s “virtuous” choices center around legalistic standards that our family doesn’t share.  We believe we can glorify God by reading “simple moral novels” or singing non-hymns even on Sundays.

Another huge problem is latent racism.  I believe the books have been re-released since the version I read, and hopefully much of that has been cleaned up, but every black character speaks almost incomprehensible English, and all white Southern characters, even small children raised exclusively by their slave mammies, speak pure English with no discernable dialect.  Slaves’ intellect and capabilities are always lower than their owners.  Even though Elsie’s Mammy is one of her chief spiritual influences, the little girl is able at age 8 (because of her race and extreme holiness?) to instruct Mammy in the intricacies of doctrine that the simple woman couldn’t understand before.  Ugh!  The series does go through the Civil War and addresses emancipation, but beforehand, the characters have no problem with slavery.  Some might say this is just a sign of when it was written, but you don’t have to look very far (Alcott, anyone?) to find alternatives written at the time that don’t have to be cleaned up.

I could go on, but these concerns are a starting point.  I don’t believe that this series accurately reflects God’s creation, and I don’t agree with many of the morals it promotes.

Is this a work of literary and artistic excellence?

Well, no.  The plot is contrived and melodramatic, the characters one-dimensional, and the writing style affected.

In Conclusion

I can’t think of a single redeeming quality that would induce me to let my daughters read this series, especially while there are probably a hundred books for girls that have better morals and finer writing!  I’d put most sentimentalist Victorian literature in the same category, perhaps less insidious than Elsie but still not worth my kids’ time.  I don’t plan to read any more of it for the blog unless someone has a specific book they want us to discuss.  If you have a title that you think I might unfairly disregard, let’s read it together and discuss!

I’d originally wanted to follow this right up with a look at Anne of Green Gables, but Derek and I haven’t finished reading that one together, so we’ll have to wait a little longer to compare those two series!

On a final note, I’m not the only one who has significant concerns with Elsie.  If you want to read more, here are some thoughts by a former Quiverfull homeschooler who wrote this to her Christian friends a decade ago.