Elsie Dinsmore

The Elsie Dinsmore books by Martha Finley were very popular amongst Christian homeschool girls back when I was younger. I even knew a guy who read them. I've read them several times over the course of my life, and my impressions each time were very interesting.

The first time I read them I was 8. I thought Elsie was amazingly perfect. The way all the "good" people treated each other was sickeningly sweet, and the "bad" people weren't too awful. They actually came up with some pretty funny remarks.

The next time I was about 10. I noticed that Elsie actually wasn't perfect; there were at the most, two instances where she was slightly less than perfect. Their interaction with each other were still so sweet as to be sickening, but the "bad" people seemed worse.

I read them again when I was 14. By this time I realized that Elsie definitely wasn't perfect, but still close enough as to put me to shame. Strangely, the the over-use of "dearest" and "darling" in conversations was only becoming more unpleasant for me, even as I realized that Elsie wasn't as good as I'd originally thought, and that the "wicked" relatives were worse than I'd previously thought.

I thought when I'd read them at 14 that I'd probably already changed my opinion as much as I ever would, but I just began reading them again this week, and my opinions have continued to change. Elsie, far from being perfect, really has some pretty petty and childish moments. She and her father are very prejudiced against the "lower class," and while they are kind, they avoid contact unless to preach the gospel. This is particularly annoying to me as I would qualify as the lower class in their million-dollar world. Their frequent use of endearments annoys me even more than it did 3 years ago.

Besides that, their slaves do everything for them, and in one book Elsie admits that she's never so much as put on her own shoes and stockings, and they proclaim themselves tired after something as ridiculous as a carriage ride! And Elsie, as a grown woman, is requested by her father that she not carry her own child! A baby! And I know many 9-10 year old girls who quite frequently carry 2-year-old's with little difficulty. They are pathetically weak, susceptible to disease, and, dare I say, lazy!

The final straw has been this fourth book. Perhaps I will be able to recover some of my former interest in these books, but right now my Southern pride is aroused. They are supposed to be southerners, but they hide in England for the duration of the Civil War, chiding the South for attempting to succeed, from across the Atlantic Ocean. The Civil War was, as some people don't know, actually over state's rights. The federal government was becoming too powerful, so some Southern states decided to leave the Union. I wish the South had won, I think our country would be in a much better position today if they had. I'm completely disgusted with Martha Finley for creating such awful characters.

I can't read them any more. I wish I'd left the Elsie Dinsmore books as a pleasant childhood memory. Perhaps I can erase my memory of this reading and remember it as I did: a fairy-tale story of a little girl too perfect to be real.

~Lizzie