Daddy-Long-Legs

 

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (1912) 194 pages

I recently read a book* that reminded me of Daddy-Long-Legs, which I'd read as a preteen. I wanted to read it again to see just how similar the plots are. In Daddy-Long-Legs, Judy is an orphan who has lived in an orphan home her whole life. She's 17 and finished with high school. As the oldest of the orphans, she basically works for her board, helping with the younger children and with cleaning, especially prior to visits by the members of the Board of Trustees. After one of their visits, Judy is told that one trustee, upon learning that Judy has excelled in writing, wants to finance her college room and board. The only requirement is that she write to him every month to let him know how things are going. He stays anonymous ‒ to her, he is "John Smith." Not sure who he is exactly, and not liking the generic name John Smith, she refers to him as Daddy-Long-Legs.

Judy is a perky and enthusiastic young woman who often illustrates her letters with drawings that add to the charm. Her writing shows that she is sometimes impulsive but quite thoughtful, and oh-so-happy to be at college with hopes of becoming a writer, and with a budget for proper clothing so that she no longer looks like an orphan. Judy's letters continue all through college, until she finally meets Daddy-Long-Legs some months after graduation.

For a bit, I wondered if Judy was "being groomed" by the trustee or by society at large, but decided no, based on her spunky personality and her sometimes stubborn streak that seem to be a good compass for her choices, especially notable since the book was written over a hundred years ago and has Judy writing in favor of more rights for women. Fast read.

* Dear Mr. Knightley, by Katherine Reay

Dear Mr. Knightley

Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay (2013) 325 pages

Samantha Moore spent years of her life at Grace House, a place for children who have been removed from their families. After graduating from college, Sam had worked for a large company, but had lost her job, and at age twenty-three, she decided to see if a benefactor who had offered to pay her way through graduate school was still willing to fund her, and he was. The requirement for her funding in the journalism program was that she write letters regularly to the benefactor, who used the pseudonym Mr. Knightley, after a character in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

The book is comprised almost entirely of Sam's letters to the benefactor, with a few exceptions. Sam is a great fan of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, among other authors, and at a young age had found escape, solace, and coping mechanisms in their books, often hiding behind the words of their characters in her own life.

The book follows Sam's life from about the time of her application to get into grad school through to the end of the program, showing how her life, her writing, and her relationships change over time. Dear Mr. Knightley is the author's debut novel.