Amy, DeRay, and I watched the musical, "Daddy-Long-Legs" the other night.
Daddy-Long-Legs is a 1912 epistolary novel by the American writer Jean Webster. It follows the protagonist, Jerusha
"Judy" Abbott, as she leaves an orphanage and is sent to college by a
benefactor whom she has never seen.
Plot summary
Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John
Grier Home, an old-fashioned orphanage. The children were completely dependent on charity and had to wear
other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual first name was selected by
the matron from a gravestone (she hates it and uses "Judy" instead),
while her surname was selected out of the phone book. At the age of 17, she
finished her education and is at loose ends, still working in the dormitories
at the institution where she was brought up.
One day, after the asylum's trustees have
made their monthly visit, Judy is informed by the asylum's dour matron that one
of the trustees has offered to pay her way through college. He has spoken to
her former teachers and thinks she has potential to become an excellent writer.
He will pay her tuition and also give her a generous monthly allowance. Judy
must write him a monthly letter, because he believes that letter-writing is
important to the development of a writer. However, she will never know his
identity; she must address the letters to Mr. John Smith, and he will never
reply.
Judy catches a glimpse of the shadow of
her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. Because
of this, she jokingly calls him Daddy-Long-Legs. She attends a "girls
college" on the East Coast. She illustrates her letters with childlike
line drawings, also created by Jean Webster.
The book chronicles Judy's educational,
personal, and social growth. One of the first things she does at college is to
change her name to "Judy". She designs a rigorous reading program for
herself and struggles to gain the basic cultural knowledge to which she,
growing up in the bleak environment of the orphanage, was never exposed.
During her stay, she befriends Sallie
McBride (the most entertaining person in the world) and Julia Rutledge
Pendleton (the least so) and sups with them and Leonora Fenton.
At the end of the book, the identity of
Daddy-Long-Legs is revealed as. . . . . . .guess you’ll have to read the book or see
the musical to find out the ending.
We grew up being proud of Daddy for being Daddy-Long-Legs in that play. Didn't his teacher play the other lead? Can anyone remember her name?
Isn't that Daddy's handwriting?
