Spoilers for Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster

1. Judy ends up in love with her roommate’s wealthy uncle, who turns out to be, surprise, surprise, her mysterious benefactor.  I wasn’t so comfortable with Judy calling her future husband Daddy through the whole book and thanking him for clothes, gifts of money, bouquets of roses, etc.  Sugar Daddy, more like.

2. It’s true that Judy does want to be independent and earn enough eventually to repay what DLL has spent on her, but he does the best he can to frustrate her ambitions and also a romance he thinks is developing between her and another roommate’s brother.  To this end he stops her from spending a vacation at summer camp even though she desperately wants to go.  I couldn’t forgive him for that and even though he allows Judy more latitude later on, I just didn’t like him.  Besides which, his failure to reveal his true identity, once he is actually in her life, is plain manipulative.  It makes him privy, through her letters, to a lot of things she might not otherwise have told him (such as just exactly what she thinks of him and his family).  Of course this leads to their eventual union and Judy doesn’t seem a bit annoyed by the deception – one of the examples of how Jean Webster lets plotlines just fizzle out – but I was annoyed on her behalf.