![]() ![]() And to become an author no less! Forget being best friends, I might just want to BE you! I hate to think what might have happened to you if you hadn't written that funny paper about your life at the orphanage, cracking DLL up enough that even though he was a trustee of the very orphanage you were making fun of, he decided to send you to college. Your letters jumped right off the page showing how smart, resourceful and hilarious you are. I mean, how could he resist? You are awesome.) I feel like I know you so well! Reading your letters to Daddy Long Legs (DLL) was like reading your diary and I bet it felt like that to you too, with him stubbornly refusing to reply and all. I've already let Anne, Jo and Sarah know to make room for you at our lunch table. ![]() But despite these undercurrents Dear Enemy’s still an undemanding read and the orphans themselves are great supporting characters.įorgive me for jumping ahead of myself but in my imagination we are already the best of friends. Although by modern standards the attitudes to children with disabilities are appalling. ![]() But Sallie’s plans to improve the orphans' surroundings also bring her into contact with theories about child development and provides a fascinating insight into the impact of debates that were raging over nature versus nurture, part of the early 20th century conflict between the growing eugenics’ movement and people who considered environment more important than heritage. Her letters are full of amusing anecdotes of the children’s exploits and her attempts to juggle difficult staff and demanding sponsors. Webster’s beliefs are more obvious in Sallie’s narrative carefully teased out through Sallie’s experiences living with children who’ve been abandoned. Judy’s a likeable, forthright and fiercely independent character who reflects Webster’s own background as a socialist and a suffragette. Both stories are told through letters, Judy’s narrative is fairly light and frothy presenting a vivid picture of her years studying, reading voraciously, going to parties and starting out on a writing career, it’s engaging and entertaining even though the power dynamics of the underlying romance are more than a little dodgy from a contemporary perspective. Dear Enemy returns to the orphanage where Judy grew up but this time follows her best friend Sallie McBride who reluctantly takes over its day-to-day-management. In Daddy Long-Legs orphan Judy Abbott's life’s changed when an anonymous benefactor sponsors her college education, the only condition that she sends letters updating him on her progress. Jean Webster’s linked novels feature young, spirited ‘new’ women carving out lives for themselves, the kind that wouldn’t be out of place alongside Anne Shirley or Jo in Little Women. I can't explain the softness of the feelings she has me feel, she makes my eyes well up talking about the mundane things, she breaks my heart out of sheer love I feel for the characters she makes, she makes me relive all the romance of all the centuries, and so when I got this book as a gift in English I couldn't contain myself, I rushed home to read it and because of how much I love it, I did myself the pleasure of reading it all out loud, I had to see that I love these words at 30 as much as I loved them at 13 and I did, actually i love every word more, i love the fact that it's an epistolary novel, how Sallie sits down to write her heart out before it implodes with emotions, I think I had to do the same. I first read this book as a translation when I was a teenager, I loved Judy and daddy long legs, but that was only the first book, then I found out there's a sequel and i had to have it, I got it and i read it and never had I been more touched so deeply, the only other writer who does that to me is Charlotte Bronte and Jean Webster is a true disciple. ![]()
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