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A review by ridgewaygirl
Dear Enemy by Jean Webster
5.0
Dear Enemy is the follow up to the successful Daddy Long Legs. It follows the adventures of Judy Abbott's flighty socialite college friend, Sallie MacBride, as she works to renovate and reform the grim orphanage Judy had grown up in. Sallie doesn't look like the kind of person who would be able to be an orphanage superintendent. She is, by her own admission, silly and too much in love with having fun. But she's goaded into taking the job by the laughter of her boyfriend and now that she's installed in the superintendent's ghastly living quarters, she's going to give it her all to improve the lives of the 113 orphans in her care.
This is a childhood favorite of mine, that I reread every few years. Written as the collected letters and notes of Sallie as she gets settled and learns how very much needs to be done, it's amusing in the best possible way. What's interesting as an adult is the picture of how things like genetics were viewed a hundred years ago. There are references to the cutting edge work of that time, including the fantastic The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, which is both laughable and frightening to modern eyes, but was seriously considered in the eugenics movement of that time. So that in between the silly capers and misadventures of Sallie and her orphans and the light romance between Sallie and the dour Scottish doctor is a heap of information on how people back then thought orphanages ought to be run and the role of a child's background in his or her future chances.
This is a childhood favorite of mine, that I reread every few years. Written as the collected letters and notes of Sallie as she gets settled and learns how very much needs to be done, it's amusing in the best possible way. What's interesting as an adult is the picture of how things like genetics were viewed a hundred years ago. There are references to the cutting edge work of that time, including the fantastic The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, which is both laughable and frightening to modern eyes, but was seriously considered in the eugenics movement of that time. So that in between the silly capers and misadventures of Sallie and her orphans and the light romance between Sallie and the dour Scottish doctor is a heap of information on how people back then thought orphanages ought to be run and the role of a child's background in his or her future chances.