Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 16 to 23 of 23

Thread: Elsie Dinsmore, Violet Travilla and the Millie Keith Series

  1. #16
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Rhode Island (Cthulhu land!)
    Posts
    109
    I'm glad to hear that the modern writers "cleaned up" Elsie's act! Because back when I read the original series, I was disturbed by the essential hypocrisy of her thinking. The new, politically correct Elsie sounds a whole lot nicer and a much better role model for kids!

  2. #17
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Posts
    1
    I 2 have read all the Elsie Dinsmore abridged series and would strongly recomend them.... however will it mess me up if i skip the Millie Keith series and go to the Voilet Travilia books???

  3. #18
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Rhode Island (Cthulhu land!)
    Posts
    109
    Since Violet is Elsie's daughter---and part of the original Elsie series---it probably makes more sense to read the Violet books first.

  4. #19
    Piglet RJbibliophil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    The City
    Posts
    2,151
    Yes, if you read all the Elsie books, and then the Violet books, it should be fine. As Violet is Elsie's daughter, she appears in some of the later books about Elsie.

    Millie is a relative to Elsie, and you will not be missing out on anything by reading the Violet books first.
    When ideas fail, words come in very handy.


    Count to 10,000 and down to -10,000!

  5. #20
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Albuquerque, New Mexico
    Posts
    1
    Oh, dear. I wish I had found this thread sooner! It is a whole year old, and no one may read this! Adelheid said: "Yeah, I'm not as excited about the Laylie books too, because they are not written by the same author."

    There is only one book about Laylie, and it was written by the same author who wrote the Millie Keith books! I know, because I am her! The Millie books are 'based on characters by' Martha Finley -- in other words, I used the same names but the stories and the hearts of the characters are all mine.

    If you would like to know more about the writing of Millie Keith, visit my web page: kerstenhamilton.com

    Salt and light!

  6. #21
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Posts
    1
    It is amazing to find a thread about Elsie. I have never read the abridged versions, nor even seen them. I got the first five original ones from my grandmother, who was born in 1894. They were so deliciously racist and "closet" incestuous that I couldn't resist acquiring the whole 28 volumes. I also have three of the MIllie books. I agree that children should never have read the originals...even at fourteen, when I first read Elsie, I was shocked at her unconscious assumption of superiority and her vicious anti-Catholicism... not to mention all the fondling and kissing by Daddy dearest!

  7. #22
    So just a question who does die in the first Violet book and how and why? IF that makes since thanks

  8. #23
    FlowerLady
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    California
    Posts
    1

    Elsie Dinsmore?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mary Sue View Post
    I have a strange question here. Has anyone actually read the ORIGINAL Elsie series? I did, as a kid. And a few years back I set out to collect it again, searching through used and antiquarian bookshops. As of now, I own all 28 volumes in the old-fashioned maroon covers that I remember. They evoke nostalgia for my younger self, the little girl that used to spend hours poring over Elsie's long history. To me it was a never-ending saga with all the excitement and melodrama that I craved.

    In many ways the original series was a soap opera. There was Elsie's seemingly hopeless love for papa in book 1 and how, against all the odds, she finally won him over. There was her "death" and miraculous resurrection---a supernatural event, no less!----in book 2. Then in book 3, there were Elsie's suitors: poor Herbert, who died of a broken heart when she wouldn't have him; and treacherous, insincere Egerton, who nearly broke ELSIE'S heart.
    In book 4 there was her marriage to the much older Mr. Travilla, which as a child I considered unnatural and kind of "icky." Followed her near death experience on the honeymoon, when a rejected suitor tried to murder the newlyweds. By book 5 it was the Reconstruction Era, with Elsie under attack from the Ku Klux Klan and...well, you get the idea. One sensational happening after another. No wonder that, as a kid, I loved the series. And---I'm ashamed to admit---not for the piety of our little heroine, nor for the good Christian message that she conveyed. Quite honestly I was---and still am--- fascinated by the utter perverseness of Elsie Dinsmore.

    PERVERSENESS? How so? Well, if you don't believe me, read the original books. Unless I miss my guess, you'll be shocked. First and foremost, there's the racism. Elsie's slaves are denigrated, de-humanized, and made to appear as half-witted children. I can remember one passage in particular in which she was teaching the way of salvation to the younger ones, and she ended her sermon by promising them that "they wouldn't be Negroes in heaven"(!) For sheer offensiveness, it's pretty hard to top that.

    And then there was Elsie's religious bigotry. For all her sweetness and love, she had zero tolerance for anyone who thought differently. And since, within the context of the story, our saintly heroine was always right, no one could ever win an argument with her. My word, how Elsie hated, and I mean HATED, the Roman Catholic Church! To her it was all "ignorance and superstition," with evil Popists lying in wait to imprison Protestants in dungeons and torture chambers. She actually went mad for awhile, when papa threatened to put her in a seminary. And similarly she disliked Mormonism, calling it "a lustful, wicked pretense of a religion." Not very tolerant, our Elsie, and by today's standards not very politically correct!

    But the worst thing about Elsie was the incestuous subtext. All suggestion of this has been expunged, thankfully, in the modern revisions. But in the original series, Horace Dinsmore was besotted with his daughter, and she with him. The "love scenes" between them went pretty far. I can recall all manner of inappropriate behavior: papa coaxing Elsie to a seat upon his knee, papa "fondling" her incessantly, papa pressing kisses on the ruby lips. And in later books of the series, this father-daughter weirdness became a family tradition, carried on by the "next generational" Captain Raymond and HIS daughter, Lulu. As a child I recognized that "something wasn't right" about these Oedipal scenes, although I didn't understand psychology and therefore couldn't put a name to it. But at one point, I said to myself, "Elsie can never get married, because she's already in love----with her father!" Looking back, I still marvel that Martha Finley
    ---sweet, innocent Sunday school teacher---could have written such an erotic subtext without even realizing it.

    And today I have mixed feelings about Elsie. Being an adult now, with a sense of humor, I can reread these monstrous little books and...well, laugh. But a child? NO CHILD SHOULD EVER BE GIVEN THE ORIGINALS. The originals do NOT covey a wholesome message. I'll collect them as mementoes of the past, I'll even be amused by their purple prose and melodrama...but I'd never give them to a child of mine to read.
    I am 52 and just finished reading the first 4 Unabridged books of Elsie Dinsmore and was actually appalled at the underlying and unspoken, yet screaming opinion of slavery and submission, and yes, the latent incestuous tone between Elsie and her father. I was actually rather 'creeped out' by much of the physical 'affection', but I also keep in mind that this was indeed written in a time where slavery was the norm, and affections were displayed in much different terms than they are today. There were many displays of affection that were the norm, mostly within the family which we would never dream of doing today because of its ramifications to the 'outside' world.

    Also very disturbing was the harsh and often irrational control Horace forced on his child at every turn. I am not a feminist in the current sense of the word, but having raised two children, I was horrified that he smothered, and punished and coddled that child by turns, and sometimes almost in the same breath. To keep a child in constant mortal fear that a parent would withhold love so desperately wanted and needed, and the power Finley, as writer, gave him over that child was unnatural at best, and cruel and abusive in the worst way at worst. But again, she wrote in a different time and from a different life experience than we have now.
    I would be interested in reading the new abridged versions, but am not interested in reading any more of the original writing. For time period pieces, I prefer Austen, Montgomery and Ingalls.

Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •