"One can’t help
thinking, Daddy, what a colorless life a man is forced to lead, when one
reflects that chiffon and venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet
are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman, whether she is interested in
babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or
gardens or Plato or bridge-is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.”
I read Daddy-Long-Legs as part of my classics challenge
about a month ago but I’m only now getting around to writing about it. This is
largely because it not an easy book to write about. Let me explain.
Daddy-Long-Legs has no real plot. Well, it does, but its wafer thin and quite
unremarkable. It also has just one real character: Jerusha a.k.a Judy. While
other people are mentioned, they
exist only as part of Judy’s narrative. Judy herself doesn’t really do very
much and nothing very much happens to her either. All of this isn’t meant to
imply that the book is boring. Hardly that. But it is difficult to write about without getting down to a textbook
analysis of a very adorable character.
To summarize briefly;
Daddy-Long-Legs is an epistolary novel about an orphan, Judy, who has been
given the chance to go to college by an unknown benefactor. This benefactor,
whom Judy calls Daddy-Long-Legs because of his long legged shadow, expects her
to update him about her life through regular letters. Judy enthusiastically
obliges and we ‘see’ her life at college and beyond, play out through those
letters.
I hate to resort to a cliché and call this a coming-of-age
tale, but I’m afraid it does belong to that category. However, this is less
Catcher in the Rye and more Anne of Green Gables with a little added spirit and
insight. The evolution of the letters in terms of style, tone and
content is interesting. Judy’s
observations about the world around her, the people she meets and her own
developing character are the most engaging and endearing parts of the book.
Since she has never seen or heard Daddy-Long-Legs, he is almost an imaginary
character to her and so she is able to write to him with absolute candor.
“We had a bishop this morning and what do you think he said?
"The most beneficent promise made us in the
Bible is this,'The poor ye have always with you.' They were put here in order
to keep us charitable."The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn't grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.”
This book is worth reading for Judy alone. It’s a small book and a very easy read. If you liked Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, you’ll probably like this one too.
