Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy Read Free

New York or most states, a form of legal discrimination which elicited protest from feminist writers such as Susan Glaspell, in her story “A Jury of Her Peers.” Suffragist friends urged Webster to try to be seated on a jury. Instead, she wrote back on her most feminine stationery (“pale tinted paper, scented with violets”):
    Dear Sir. If you really wish it I shall be delighted to serve on the jury. I have always thought that it would be an interesting experience, but I had never hoped to be invited. The opportunity is very apropos, as I am thinking of having a courtroom scene in my next story, and it will be an excellent opportunity to study local color. Thank you so much for asking me. I am going to the country in June, so that I should not be able to serve then, but any time in May would be convenient, except for Saturday, which is my day at home.
    Sincerely,
    Jean Webster
    Â 
    P.S.—I am sure I shall make an intelligent juror. I never read the papers. J. W.
    She received a letter in response reiterating that she had to appear for jury duty or face a $250 fine. After asking ten lawyers for legal advice, Webster went to court on the appointed day, and was excused. 8
    Meanwhile, her literary career continued, with the publication of The Four Pools Mystery (1908), Much Ado About Peter (1909), and Just Patty (1911). But Daddy-Long-Legs, published in 1912, became the major triumph of her career, an instant and overwhelming success both in the United States and abroad in translation. In one sense, it was about her affair with McKinney; dedicated “To You,” it celebrates the epistolary romance. In another sense, one critic argues, it is “the ideal love story” of a feminist: “a girl is brought by a distinguished man to absolute independence and is then in a position to have an equal relationship with him.” 9
    In 1914, Webster turned the novel into a stage play starring Ruth Chatterton. It was “the biggest dramatic hit in the country,” and after an extensive run at New York’s Gaiety Theatre, played in Minneapolis, Atlantic City, Chicago, and Washington, as well as touring California and London. 10 In Chicago, it ran for twenty-five weeks to full houses, and it was performed at the Opera House in Poughkeepsie at the special request of Vassar students.
    Webster’s papers at Vassar College contain her descriptions of each act and her summaries of the main characters. Without the confines of the first-person epistolary mode, Webster is more explicit and didactic about her intentions. In particular, she stresses Judy’s innate and perhaps genetic gifts. While the “orphans as a body represent a dead level of mediocrity, the result of bad environment and in some cases bad heredity ... Judy stands out in striking contrast.” She “rises out of the mass, original, resourceful, courageous.... She emerges from her dark background, throws off the trammels that have bound her down and daringly faces life.... There is an element of revolt in her nature, a spirit of fight which makes her a fierce little rebel against injustice.” 11
    Daddy-Long-Legs inspired much interest in the plight of orphans. In 1915 Woman’s World reported,
    The book has aroused public interest in the lot of the lonely and homeless children of the asylums, and many well to do people, inspired by the example of Daddy Longlegs [sic] of the story, have come forward to adopt or bear the burden of the expense of educating one or more orphans. It is said a wealthy New York bachelor has thus adopted forty children. The New York State Charities Aid Society found so many requests for orphans for adoption coming in after the publication of the book that they appointed a special committee to look after the applications.
    Webster encouraged this interest in orphans with the production of thousands of Daddy-Long-Legs dolls, each carrying a message about the needs of children in institutions,