Elsie and charity

[larisa57]

Still reading Elsie. They've now advanced far enough in time that they have telephones! There was no big deal about getting them, though -- just, in one chapter they obviously didn't have them, and in the next chapter they did. Odd

Comments

[riani1]

The doing of good works was very important then, especially the public doing of good works. It was very much a tradition of wealthier families to go out, especially at Christmas, to spread bounty to the less fortunate. There's a lot of noblesse oblige involved, and I don't the idea of doing it in secret ever occurred to them. I think the poor were supposed to be inspired by the generosity of the rich and be grateful.

[larisa57]

Interesting. I guess I can see that, but there were a few lines in this scene that really threw me. Especially at the end, when they were getting back into their carriage, and Lulu said that it looked like the poor children wanted a ride, and her father said that it did look that way, but the children were so dirty that, if they got into the carriage, then it wouldn't be fit for their mother to ride in anymore afterwards. It also seemed somewhat inappropriate to tell an 11-year-old kid that these people were poor because their father spent all their money on alcohol.

...I just realized what's bothering me about this scene. When I was a little kid in Hebrew school, the classroom where I was for first and second grade had a poster with a kid-friendly explanation and pictures of Maimonides Eight Degrees of Charity. I don't recall ever studying that formally, and I'd nearly forgotten about it until I was trying to figure out what was bothering me so much here. Guess I absorbed it into somewhere.