Daddy Long legs novel: How much planning in advance? (Spoilers)

Cafe Society
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Okay, spoilers for the book for those who haven’t read it yet:

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The big surprise at the end is that Daddy Long legs is also Mr. Jervis, the uncle of one of her room-mates. This enables to clear up the mis-understanding where Judy first rejects Jervis for some reaons, while he thinks she doesn’t love him.

However, this knowledge puts the beginning of the novel in a different light - maybe only to a cynical person of today, where stalking is no longer considered romantic?

We only see things through Judys eyes (with the exception of the first chapter), so the motivations of both the college dorm assignment and of Jarvis remain hidden to us. Still, at the beginning Judy gets her own room - she speculates because she’s an orphan, so “normal” girls don’t want to stay with her. The reader starts liking her from the very first letters for her naivity and boldness in adressing authority figures, including Daddy Long Legs himself, but also her insight and the joy of her discovery of books and “normal” life.

Jarvis meets her later, coming to meet her room-mate, his niece, but becoming more interested in Judy.

So: did Jarvis arrange that meeting because her letters to him as Daddy Longlegs had intrigued him and got him interested? Was, in other words, everything manipulated by him, including her two room-mates, one of which a relative as “innocous” pretext?

Or did he pay little attention to her letters at first and fell in love only due to the honestly accidental meeting? Did he honestly intend to visit his boring niece, although he generally didn’t like that boring side of his family and kept far away (as Judy later observed when she visited that part of the family with her room-mate)?

We do know, or can infer safely, that he later uses his position as Daddy Long-Legs to advance his cause as Jervis, once, when he forbids her to visit her friend Sally McBride at camp because of potential Jimmy as rival there, ordering her instead to the farm where he happens to show up; and again, when he tries (but fails) to forbid her a summer teaching job, because he wanted to travel to Europe with her.

So how much did he set up? Did the author intend to portray Jarvis as arranging things from the very beginning because stalking was romantic in those times? Did she intend to leave it ambigious instead?

Would for example the college administration on a women’s college in those times have bowed to requests from sponsors on how to pair freshmen; would it have been entirely alphabetical (Abbott, McBride, Pendleton?); some character or grade assessment by the teachers; arbitrary?

So, wikipedia and other cursory sources haven’t given me the necessary background, maybe some Dopers with more knowledge can give additional background?

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I’ve always assumed that Jarvis was interested in Judy as a kind of science project at first, and arranged to have her room with his niece because he wanted to be able to check on her. She was a project and watching her progress amused him, especially since he was a socialist class-traitor: he probably really enjoyed watching the Judy, pure prol, do so well among his own class. Furthermore, her success confirmed some of his radical socialist ideas. Over time, his academic amusement and pride evolved into genuine affection for her as a person, not just as an experiment.

If you like Daddy Long Legs. I really, really recommend Dear Enemy, the less-known sequel. Sally is appointed head of the John Greir Home and the novel is her collected letters to Judy and others. It’s a really neat look at what was considered “progressive” at the turn of the century. I like it better than Daddy Long-Legs.

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Well, the only possible motive is given in the explanation in the first chapter that the head of the orphanage gives to Judy as to the details of the grant: every year, “Mr. Smith” sponsors a boy to go to College, but so far, has never been interested in girls. (Given that the only girls he knows in his social circle and family are vain airheads, he seems to think it would be a waste of time). The boys have so far repaid that investment by becoming good workers.

This year, an exception was made for Judy as girl because her English school teacher made a plea on her behalf, and one of her essays (criticiszing the orphanage while displaying her wit and special style) was read to the trustees.

So from that evidence, I assume that the style of that essay convinced Jarvis to try sending this girl to college who was obviously not an airhead, but a critical thinker (and she told in her letters how she researches to decide which kind of socialist she is going to be) and humorous, too.

I think this interpretation is a bit harsh on Jarvis. After all, the reason given for her letters - that it will help her to develop her literary talent, but not interested in answering (because that would be a burden - and I can understand that!) - and the timeframe of once a month doesn’t indicate detached interest of a project to me.

Yes, I did read it after I discovered Daddy Long Legs. I’ve also downloaded some of her other works from Gutenberg, like the Patty novels, which are more simple school stories.

The “Dear Enemy” suffers only from the difficult character change that Judy, who was so concerned with the bad circumstances in the orphanage, would then go on a year-long honey moon with Jarvis while Sallie wrote letters on how difficult the change was.

Unless Judy and Jarvis were prescient enough to know that not only Sallies affinity to the policitan was a bad choice - Sally says that out loud at the start - but also that Sally would find her real vocation there. While friends may sometimes have a better viewpoint towards one’s own strengths and weakness or good spouses, it’s a bit of artistic license to believe they knew things would work out so well.

Also, the strong theories on biological determination - late science at that time, but now disproven to a large degree - and the fate of the Doctor’s wife make the novel more depressive.

However, it’s really astonishing that the author - who apparently researched the topic of welfare and economic reform in college, to have wide knowledge of accurate theories, instead of “only” personal experience (though she probably, during her long research, also spoke with people in such institutions) - correctly describes the cottage or family system as the best for orphanages and lets Sallie introduce it in the fictional John Grier home; but in real life, orphanages are still run on the normal mass kid system. When for example Herman Gmeiner started his family-like approach in the 1950s with the SOS childrens village, it was hailed as revolutionary new approach, and still hasn’t been done in official institutions. One wonders why.

I’m also astonished by the strong feminist tone in both novels and the stress of the importance of a real job, a vocation or profession, for women, even for those who don’t “need” the money. It’s a bit sad that this is still such an important topic 90 years later.