Daddy Long Legs

Written in an epistolary style, Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster is a young-adult fiction novel. I haven’t read an epistolary novel before so I found it quite amusing and full of fun.

Jean Webster has written those letters in such a way that while reading the letters of Judy it feels like the reader is actually reading a letter of some living and breathing girl of yesterday’s world. These letters are like a window through which the reader can peep inside Judy’s simple and trouble-free life. Another best feature of Judy’s letters is that they are also ornamented with the small doodles of Judy which are quite pleasing.

As the title suggests this is not at all about a spider. Instead it is about a free-spirited orphan girl, Jerusha Abbott. Though reading about orphans always remind me of Charles Dickens novels and his gloomy and unprivileged protagonists but this book is in complete contrast to the world of Dickens. Jerusha aka Judy is an orphan, lives in orphanage but funny, enthusiastic about life and ambitious.

Despite the fact that Judy is a central character on whose letters the whole novel is based, Daddy Long Legs remains in the lime light.

One day Judy gets the news of her freedom from the orphanage. Some trustee of the orphanage, without revealing his identity, offers higher studies to Judy as a benefactor on a condition that Judy would write him letters.

And from there, the whole series of letters start through which the readers witnesses the love and compassion she has for her benefactor. Judy calls her benefactor Daddy Long Legs considering that he must have long legs. Through her letters she tells what she is studying and how it is to meet with new girls and sharing space with them.

When Judy realizes that Mr. Daddy Long Legs is not going to reply her, she breaks some rules, sometimes goes astray from her track and deliberately tells all this to her benefactor so that he might give her a small warning through replying her letters. But Mr. Benefactor was wiser than her. Judy’s all efforts go in vain when instead of him his secretary calls and gives his message to behave. During her studies she also meets with Jervis Pendleton (an uncle of Julia Pendleton and Judy’s classmate and roommate). When Judy writes to Mr. Daddy Long Legs, he speaks high of Master Jervie, which gives a hint to the reader that there might be something fishy between the two.    

In the end of the book the mystery of Daddy Long Legs is revealed. How it came? Who was he? Why he didn’t reply? And, what about Master Jervie and Judy? I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of reading by giving the complete details. Please read it yourself and let me have your feedback.