THANK YOU. I couldn't believe how many of my friends were deeply moved by this wish-fulfillment fluff. As a teacher licensed in teaching academically gifted students, I can't get over the misguided and unrealistic portrayal of Mad (the main character's daughter) and her extreme precocity, which is supposedly owed to her mother's assumption that she can reason like an adult.
My aunt, who was a working woman in the sixties, and I shared an "I hate this book" slam fest conversation when we realized we'd both read it recently. She couldn't get past how relatively easy it was for the main character to bypass social norms and have a professional life as an unwed mother. "It just wasn't like that," she said.
THANK YOU. I couldn't believe how many of my friends were deeply moved by this wish-fulfillment fluff. As a teacher licensed in teaching academically gifted students, I can't get over the misguided and unrealistic portrayal of Mad (the main character's daughter) and her extreme precocity, which is supposedly owed to her mother's assumption that she can reason like an adult.
My aunt, who was a working woman in the sixties, and I shared an "I hate this book" slam fest conversation when we realized we'd both read it recently. She couldn't get past how relatively easy it was for the main character to bypass social norms and have a professional life as an unwed mother. "It just wasn't like that," she said.