The Wide, Wide World

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Summary: Wonderful Book! Teaches Great Christian Values!
Review: 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. However, I would love to have a copy without the feminist afterward.

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Summary: Jane Tompkins calls WWW the Ur text of the 19th century.
Review: 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'ssensibilities 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. For a rich experience of sublimated religion and sexual titillation in a pre-Freudian and pre-Darwinian world, read Susan Warner's _The Wide, Wide World_.