Daddy Long Legs- A Review

It's probably one of those sad things about me that I take rootless interest in people I don't know and do a whole lot of aimless wondering. It feels creepy on bad days. Daddy Long Legs is weird for me 'cause it felt both not creepy and totally creepy. It must have been delicious for "Daddy" to get letters from someone who didn't know who she was writing to, be privy to hopes and desires and not have to figure his own out. (Too bad the sense that he knew them too well was creepy.) He had eight legs and none to hold with. (He was thinking with another appendage anyway.)

My favorite part of Daddy Long Legs is reading about how they survived on what they had then! Jerusha/Judy loves Jane Eyre, Stevenson, Little Women (only in college. She didn't have them before then). I've been thinking about Iranian readers of Jean Websters books. I used to email a Malay girl a few years back and she'd tell me about movies she had to watch in secret. Sometimes I'd disappoint her because I didn't value stuff like family honor. Are Websters books popular because they approach the line of freedom and step back behind firm lines of society and family? I would mentally shelve Webster under the heading of "Safe to have".

Daddy Long Legs is cozy and warm like inside the belly of a taun taun.
She calls him daddy.  The nick name is cute (daddy long legs 'cause his shadow looked spidery and long legged). It wouldn't be creepy if she didn't ask if she should still call him daddy in the last letter, now that they are engaged.

Did he choose to sponsor her for college as grooming for future wifedom? That's gross. That's what was creepy to me. She's supposed to become a writer. Jerusha doesn't know what she wants. Sure, parents pressure their kids to be doctors or something. (If he was paying for her to attend med school she'd dump him as soon as she graduated.) What is this vicarious living slash wife hunting? Don't know if I like it... Jerusha/Judy doesn't roll over for Jervis the man she knows, at least. It's lucky for her that she didn't figure it out (at first I forgave her because she grew up in an orphan asylum. Once she begins reading voraciously it is more troubling that her imagination couldn't do the numbers) because she felt so grateful to the "trustee" (this was creepy because inmates with special benefits are called this now) for her opportunities. It's a trap! (Picture your favorite Admiral Ackbar picture here. He smells fishy.)

His condition is that she write letters to him, letters he'll presumably never read, as well as standard great grades stuff. Jerusha/Judy takes to writing these letters with glee, sometimes annoyance or resigned longing, because she's never had anyone in all her life to write to. The relief to finally talk was the good part. The charm of Daddy Long Legs are the confidences that she makes in those letters. I liked how the girl tried to catch up to all the girls her own age, reading books she missed out on, the newness of academia and bigger social circles that can be taken for granted by those who have them. The weaker part is that it is the "safe" and "allowed to have". (I'm not begrudging anyone who has to have that. This is with me as a reader in mind. I wonder what other people want even as I'm hopeless at reading for anyone else.)

The downside is that it is one sided. Daddy/Jervis does not get to speak and over her shoulder it was easy to view him as someone who wanted to bottle her innocence and vibrance and direct it himself. When the world should have widened it cut off. Daddy Long Legs ends too soon and footnotes the growing up past the newness. Sometimes people tell themselves things. Jerusha tells herself she's over her past of being an orphan. She's not, it made her who she was. The telling and back and forth on that felt like a nervous tic, something to do with your hands when nervous, that one cannot disguise. Other things, being "grateful" and learning to smile through tedium was telling. Who wants to read a self help book? Letters should be like talking to yourself and to someone you care about at the same time. Mantras are not going to keep The Beatles from splitting up.

Yeah, yeah it was written eons ago. She marries a bossy man who "knows what's best" for her. If I were her friend getting letters about this guy I'd not worry about her because she knows when she's taken advantage of and told to be grateful (like the mistress of the asylum she tries to scorn with tongue and cheek but cannot help biting the insides of her cheeks not to scream). I liked Jerusha/Judy. I didn't fall in love with her. I'd have written back and asked questions. Maybe then.

Daddy waited too long to write letters (he does eventually, as Jervis. We don't get to read them). He could get to be warm too.

the fact that she called her romantic interest Daddy throughout the entire book wigs me a bit, and Jervis is so high-handed and lacking in candour that I'm deeply suspicious of him, but I'm gonna put down Judy's trilling that he's right most of the time because he's years older than her to the mushy-brainedness of the first flush of love, and believe that she's going to be able to handle him.