I have spent a lot of time going back and forth between my two minds with this book, for so many of the reasons:
In defense of this book: The thing is I read and loved this book as a very young child before all the issues with the book were even considered issues, plus I come from a culture that still has a lot of old-fashioned values even now, so even up until much of my adulthood, none of these were issues to me. It's only been in the last decade or so that I started looking at it as problematic, but I can't help loving it still because nostalgia!
I also feel that although there are some things that are considered problematic today, it's not necessarily fair to criticize the book for things that are considered the norm at the time. I did feel very conflicted about the age gap and power imbalance for a long time, but the more I thought about it, I feel like it's true for most relationships that happened at the time, so I'm somewhat willing to let it go.
In attack criticism of this book: However, there are definitely some things that are much more difficult to ignore, which you've also mentioned, and I cringe when I read those parts. Once you find out that Daddy Long Legs is Master Jervis, and you realize that he, using his Daddy Long Legs persona, has multiple times tried to court Judy by manipulating where she goes and who she spends time with; like not letting her visit with the McBrides and spending time with Sally's brother, but instead forcing her to hang out at the farm instead so that Jervis could visit her there. Cringe, cringe, cringe! And other examples I'm not remembering.
The sad thing is that if Daddy Long Legs hadn't turned out to be Jervis, the romance that blossomed between them could've been sweet, especially with how Judy writes about him. But also, trying not to be hypocritical here, the reveal at the end was part of what I loved about the book when I was young and naive. I loved that reveal, I was blown away by it - "Omg, it was him all along! That's so romantic!" and I cringe about that now too. But I think about the times it was written in, and I think about the values of the time, and if I as a child thought this was romantic, it must've been considered much more so back then!
I still get very conflicted when I read this book now. So I'm just quietly loving Judy and everything about her, and letting myself cringe at the manipulative Jervis parts but like also pretending they don't exist and inserting a more appropriate imaginative scenario in my head.
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