Catching-up - again

Barely caught up from the 48 Hour Challenge, I was off to Bristol, though we didn't even stay there the whole time, but went first to Hampshire to spend the night (great Pride and Prejudice argument with steepholm's mum) and then off to London, for a lovely meal and afternoon with fjm and chilperic. I have almost caught up with the washing/laundry, despite the horrible weather (no dryer, so 'bad drying weather' really means something in this house), but not yet with blog-reading. I am, however, a full 170 pages into Charlotte M. Yonge's The Daisy Chain, that being 25.48% of the way through. And The Wide Wide World (another hideously dense print, long, mid-1800s airy trifle) arrived this morning - along with Maureen Johnson's The Bermudez Triangle... Unfair, I call it.

So until I can finish off Shamanka and give it a bit of a coherent response to that, I'll stick with the 1850s and 60s. The Daisy Chain isn't quite as bad as I was starting to expect - having read of Charlotte Yonge's saying 'I have no hesitation in declaring my full belief in the inferiority of woman, nor that she brought it on herself'. I was very amused to see this bit from Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods: 'The Daisy Chain is not a bit like that really. It's a ripping book. One of the boys dresses up like a lady and comes to call, and another tries to hit his little sister with a hoe. It's jolly fine, I tell you.' Not quite feeling that about it either!

One of the most interesting quotes I found though, relates to previous discussion here about those father-daughter-like romantic relationships (Jo and Prof. Bhaer started it off here, but there are earlier ones in The Wide Wide World and Elsie Dinsmore as well). Guess who was upset by the one in The Wide Wide World? None other than Charlotte Yonge and Elizabeth Sewell (author of Amy Herbert, which seemingly has a character more Angelic Invalidly perfect even than Cousin Helen in What Katy Did!) Here's the latter:

'So... half the children of England would be permitted to read such books as "The Wide Wide World" and "Queechy", in which fascinatingly simple little girls of ten or twelve are petted and caressed by respectable gentlemen of five-and-twenty or thirty, who afterwards take the form of lovers, and marry them.'

I couldn't help think she'd have felt better if she'd allowed herself a resounding eewwww as well...