The Wide, Wide World

I enjoyed this novel for the most part. As a christian myself i feel that the theology is off. There are a few problems i have with the way this book portrays women. I do not DO NOT appreciate the afterward by Jane Tompkins. She jumps to so many conclusions and has the most odd ways of viewing the story. Just skip it if you don't want to be left feeling disgusted. I DO like that this edition includes the extra final chapter.

I am a 14-year old girl, and I have read this book twice! It is exceptional in that it teaches good Christian values that are much needed in our society today. If everybody learned to die to themselves and have the self-control that Ellen did in the book, this world would be a much happier place. I dislike the feminists' biased criticism of the book, but I am thankful that they had the book reprinted.

Susan Warner's _The Wide, Wide World_ was first published in 1852 and is often acclaimed as America's first bestseller. Its heroine, Ellen Montgomery, is her mother's sole companion, confidante, and spiritual prodigy. Ellen's father wisks the mother away under the pretense of taking her to a climate more favorable to her health. Her mother's last words to Ellen are "We must endure, but we must not rebel." Ellen is sent to her father's sister's house in the country. Miss Fortune is a pragmatic independent manager of a small farm. She takes Ellen in though she was not told of Ellen's coming. Ellen's sensibilities are crushed by Miss Fortune's lack of sympathy for Ellen's tastes. Ellen will find friends in the more genteel and conventionally religious neighbors, Alice and John Humphreys, who agree that Ellen would make a good wife for John when she grows up. Ellen's foil is the "wild girl" Nancy Vawse who roams the countryside and turns up to torment Ellen with her rough ways. When Ellen reaches her teens, she learns some very surprising news which precipitates a trip to Scotland. The intensly emotional and high-strung Ellen who "conquers her will" represents everything contemporary psychology and feminism denounce.