I'm rereading a series of books that I LOVED as a kid. It's the Emily of New Moon series by L.M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. I enjoyed this series so much more than the Anne books. The character of Emily is not NEARLY as sanctimonious, nor does she so often have verbal diarrhea with a side affect of excessive superlatives. She is actually pretty dark and sarcastic. In other words, more like me as a kid. My sister was more the Anne character. Hmmm... maybe that’s why I have such a hard time not making fun of poor, excessively sincere Anne.
Anyways, I'm rereading these books and, much to my surprise, I find something offensive about them. Not a very big something, but it touches on one of my hot buttons (and not in a good way). In the first book, she has the main character saved by a man who is over 20 years her senior. He's 36 or so, and she is 12. Then, the man falls in love with her. A 12 YEAR OLD. He makes comments alluding to waiting for her to grow up, and saving her first kiss for him, all of which completely go over her head. This character continues to develop, and he is a part of the next couple of books. He is a part of her life in her early teenage years, and stays in love with her this whole time. Now, when I was a kid, that was the coolest part of the story. A hot older man, falling in love with you, and then actually waiting for you to grow up. Sweet! But, as an adult, it seriously strikes my ewww reflex. It's CREEPY. 36 year old men have NO business looking at a 12 year old in a romantic way. I don’t care if it is just an acknowledgment of potential. The mans time would have been better spent looking for an ADULT with the same characteristics he found so attractive in a child. But that’s not nearly as romantically tragic, so that’s not what happens in the book (not to give too much away). I don’t know. It just pisses me off to see such a warped thing written about in such a nonchalant manner. Same thing happened to me with Neal Stephensons "Snow Crash". I LOVED that book. I still do. But the fact that he has a 15 or 16 year old girl hook up sexually with a man who is a hell of a lot older than her REALLY bothers me. I know that a huge part of her character development goes into showing how much older she is mentally, but she's still just a kid. Her relationship with this much older man is written about in a very matter of fact, blasé way. The emphasis isn’t so much on the fact that he is older than her as it is on the fact that he's a bad guy. I just don’t like that shit. And I feel like a hypocrite saying that, too. After all, I've ALWAYS dated older guys. When I was 15, I was in love with a 26 year old. When I was 21, I was dating a 42 year old. So I don’t know why it bugs me so much to see it written about. Maybe because I've always been pretty convinced that conventional rules don’t apply to me, but make pretty good sense for every one else. That and the fact that I'd emasculate anyone looking at any 12 year old I know in an inappropriate manner.
What do you all think? Anyone ever read the series I'm talking about and get uncomfortable during those scenes? How about "Snow Crash"? Any differing ideas on that relationship.
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It's a TWELVE YEAR OLD! That is so revolting. It's one thing if you are over the age of 18 or something, that is all well and good. Older men can be quite sexy in a swauve deep voiced sort of way. But 12!!! 15!!!! UGH!!!! THAT IS JUST WRONG!
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quote: So I don’t know why it bugs me so much to see it written about. Maybe because I've always been pretty convinced that conventional rules don’t apply to me, but make pretty good sense for every one else.
Perhaps you're second-guessing your own preferences but can't admit it consciously to yourself.
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I know of one story where that worked out really well- and no eeew factor. But..I can't go telling you what it was because then it'd ruin it for you, so... conundrum..
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Perhaps that's true, Tom. But I dont think so. If anything, the older I get the more convinced I am of my statements truth. I consider religion to be one of those conventional rules that just dont apply to me anymore, but I can see it's worth for other people.
No, I think it's more a matter of not having fully explored what icks me out in those stories vs. my own experience. See, it wasnt about sex in my relationships with older men. Sex didnt even come into the picture, in my mind anyways. It was more about growth, and a type of romantic idealization that I needed to put on men. I liked older men because they were respectful, appreciative, and had self control. That was important to me at those ages. Sex wasnt. When I was ready to think about a sexual relationship, I started to become attracted to men who were closer to me in age (hmmm... TMI, I know.)
In the stories I'm talking about, sex has alot to do with it. Now, there isnt exactly a steamy love scene in a Lucy Maude Montgomery book. But there is a level of intensity and mystery surrounding his feelings for her that comes off as VERY sexual. At least to a pervert like me. And that I find creepy.
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You know, that has been bugging me for a while too. I love those books though. So much better than Anne of Green Gables. Better yet: Jane of Lantern Hill, and The Blue Castle.
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I haven't read that book, or if I did it was about 18 years ago. But I was mulling this over. I wonder if it has something to do with the culture and the times?
I'm picturing older men betrothed to young girls, then waiting for the girl to be old enough for a wedding. I'm picturing men looking for certain traits and, if finding them in a young girl, patiently waiting for her to grow up. These seem very familiar storylines to me. Is that because these things occurred in the past in Western civilizations or are those all just from books I've read?
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Ditto Theaca's response. I'm wondering if it was more socially acceptable then because the idea of a man taking care of his helpless wife was so central to marriage in those days.
But yeah, although I haven't read it that would elicit a big "ewww" from me, too.
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An older guy who likes a 12 year old has got to like some of the stuff that goes along with her being 12 -- so fresh, so innocent, naive, unspoiled, unpretentious. Now if he waits for her until she is, what? 18? 20? won't he be disappointed that she's changed? Well of course -- she grew up. And he's going to be looking for someone else with those same special qualities. Like another 12 year old.
Did Lucy Maude mention any of that?
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quote:Originally posted by foundling: I liked older men because they were respectful, appreciative, and had self control.
That is pretty much why I had a habit of dating older men. Boys my own age mostly wanted to see how far they could get, whereas the older men liked to actually take me out and spend time with me.
Also, I think I was a little traumatized by the first boy I dated, who was my age. When I told him I didn't want to go out with him anymore (after eight whole days! I was fourteen), he threatened to shoot up his school. Also he tried to French kiss me a lot, which freaked me out.
I have since gotten over the French kissing thing.
But I do agree that an older man going after a twelve year old is creepy. And also, his whole "saving her first kiss for him" thing is probably an attempt at keeping her just as fresh, innocent, and childlike as she grows older as she was when he met her.
posted
If I'm remembering right, didn't OSC's Women of Genesis (I think it was Sarah and Abraham) have some of the same little girl-grown man thing going on? Definitely acceptable in that culture/age. But hard to imagine in our day and time.
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I dont know. It is true that the feminine ideal of that time was centered around the bloom of youth. 15 and 16 were considered great ages for girl to be married at. Well, actually, by the time these stories were published, maybe a little older. But, still, teenagers. Romance at that age is a pretty consistent theme through L.M. Montgomerys books. But, she normally focuses on a pure, high ideal of romance. The love of a 36 year old man for a young girl is hard to idealize, when it's romantic in nature. Maybe her plot runs deeper than I expected and she's actually making a social critique of the practice in those times of older men marrying younger women. It just doesnt come off that way. You know, I dont want to go into TOO much detail about this particular story line, cause I dont want to ruin it for anyone who hasnt read it. But she really does deal with some intensely adult issues in this series of books. Obsession, and the need to own someone you love, arent common themes in childrens books of that time. I DO love them, almost more as an adult than a child. But it doesnt change the fact that she idealizes a relationship between 2 people that really is wrong on a lot of levels.
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quote: I know of one story where that worked out really well- and no eeew factor. But..I can't go telling you what it was because then it'd ruin it for you, so... conundrum..
I do believe that our own OSC wrote a story concerning a romance that involved two characters with a very large age gap...I forget if it was Rebecca or Sarah from the Women of Genesis story.
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Have you ever read Heinlein's The Door into Summer? I think Riki is even younger than that, no?
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I loooove those books. But you know, the point is for you to root for the relationship between Emily and Teddy.
And, um, yes, I am not at all squicked out when Rose marries her cousin Mac in Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott.
Now, the fact that I've started getting vomitus up my nose every time I throw up (that has never happened before in my life, but it's happened the last 5 times!), that makes me go "Eeeeew!"
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There is an OSC story, I think it may be Clap Hands and Sing but I don't have my book on me, so I am not sure, where a 23 year old man is in love with a girl who, I believe, was 13. They end up having sex. Now the details make this a bit of a different situation, which I won't go into or else I will spoil the story, but its another example of an older man and a very young girl in a romantic relationship. Of course there's also Hart's Hope, where a sympathetic character rapes a 12 year old.
Or A Song of Ice and Fire, where Dany gets married at 13 to a much older man.
Or in Endymion by Simmons, where a man in his thirties meets a girl when she is 11, kisses her when she's 16, and marries her when she turns 21 or so.
I'm sure I can think of many more examples. I don't really have a point, just showing that its actually a pretty common thing in literature, though none of the books I've mentioned are children's books.
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I specifically remember Sarah having the age gape, but I think it may have happened in the other two books as well.
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Y'know, we should probably remember that these things didn't used to be as unusual as they are now. In fact, in some parts of the world, they're not unusual.
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Worthing Saga, where almost all the colonists get married at a young age (starting with the second generation, of course).
The point being, of course, as KQ said, that society has more of a say in the squick factor of being married at a young age.
The age difference talked about up top is weird, for sure.
But there are parts of the world, even now, where 13 year olds are married, producing members of society.
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There's America, an OSC short story, where a 15-year-old boy has sex with a woman in her 30s or 40s.
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I don't find it odd at all. For that time and culture it was probably fairly common for older men to look for young, well-bred women to wed. Tante (and others), I very much disagree with the idea that the man would necessarily want a 12 year old because she's young and he's a pedophile (as you seem to be implying but I could be wrong). I mean, it is *possible*; I haven't read the book, so perhaps there's other indications of creepiness like the obsession and ideas of "owning someone", but just the age differences don't bother me. Heck, at least he waited for her. 50 years ago, 12 year old Inuit girls in some places were still getting kidnapped and carried away from their families to be married right then with no idea what was happening to them. That's the way their culture worked then. There's a lot of cultures out there that still work around ideas which encourage elder men to marry younger women. I'm not going to say any culture is necessarily worse than ours either; they're just based on different ideals.
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He is a creepy character; and like I said, you're supposed to root for the other romantic interest (who is her age.) But people in the book had problems with the match because he was weird, not because he was so much older, except for a concern here and there about her future happiness. It should be noted that at that time, in some places, girls were still supposed to "make a match" for money and prestige more than for love. In fact, the book is very Victorian in the struggle between what is socially appropriate and the very romantic love story (while she makes fun of the Victorians all the while.)
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Ahh. When you said Teddy, I assumed he was the older man, since I didn't know there even was a younger one.
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Oh, sorry. I was speaking to the original post there. Teddy is Emily's age. Dean is the older man.
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quote: I'm sure I can think of many more examples. I don't really have a point, just showing that its actually a pretty common thing in literature, though none of the books I've mentioned are children's books.
I dont think I've seen any books mentioned that were geared specifically twords children. I dont actually think it makes that much of a difference. The issue is tackled in a very different way in the L.M. Montgomery book than it is in Neal Stephensons book, or O.S.C.s for that matter. But just because explicit sex isnt involved doesnt make it ok to romanticixe a relationship between a VERY young girl and a much older man. I dont agree with that no matter the genre or the writer.
I understand that ideas have grown and changed over time about the appropriate age to have sex. And the examples of cultures given where girls get married extremely young to older men dont squick me out as much because they made sense for their time. However, we are talking about an early 20th century Canada. It wasnt a cultural norm for a man to be involved romantically with a 12 year old. So, whats your point (not you, Xavier, i know you dont have one:) ) if you're saying that there are plenty of examples of something like this happening in books and real life? Does it make it any less squicky?
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But he wasn't romantically involved with a 12-year-old-- when he met her, he specifically said that he would wait until she was grown up to court her and start thinking of her that way, and just be friends for now (although, being 12, she didn't really know what he was saying.)
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What about Claire and Henry in "Time Traveler's Wife." I love this book, but a case could be made for their relationhsip being suspect.
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OK, ketchupqueen, I can understand what you are saying. The way Dean FEELS about Emily doesnt neccesarily get translated into action until she is quite a bit older. Still young, but not prepubescent. And while the way he treats her in the story still annoys me, you can also see that as the story progresses the author doesnt try and make it seem healthy. Emily becomes more uncomfortable with it the older she gets and the more she understands about how he feels. I can deal with that. However, what about the other examples mentioned? I only brought up Snow Crash because that is a story I specifically remember getting upset about the love story between the young girl and older man. Incidentally, I actually liked the story line between those two, and if she hadnt been so young, would have cheered them getting it on. I've read O.S.C.s version of Sarah, and really enjoyed it. To me, it is a historically accurate depiction of an interesting story. The fact that she was so young when they first met is nothing more than FACT (well, as far as all that can be considered fact), and isnt really a plot device.
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