Elsie Dinsmore’s New Problem
A Sea Between.
by Lavinia R. Davis.
New York, Doubleday, Doran, 1945. 266 pp. $2.00.
This Item belongs to those sub-literary “girls’ books” which year in and year out roll quietly off the assembly lines. Written for the late ‘teens, Mrs. Davis’ novel makes the usual gestures in the direction of plot, characterization and setting, with perhaps a little more restraint and less sentimentality than some of her fellow craftsmen. Judging the book by its real aim, which is didactic, one might rate it well, for it is replete with “wholesome” precept and instance, and its adolescent heroine exemplifies in her character and actions many of the values generally held suitable for inculcation in the youthful feminine mind.
Thus far, A Sea Between displays no characteristics that would qualify it for discussion by a journal of Jewish interest. However, among the virtues tacitly approved as worthy of emulation by American young womanhood—self-reliance, self-respect, a sound sense of values, a scorn for shallow snobbery, the choice of a man with character as a husband rather than one without it, patience with little children, and chastity even in the desperation of wartime—there appears a new and unusual attribute: a four-square stand against anti-Semitism. The heroine encounters the dragon of anti-Semitic prejudice early in the story during a visit to her fiancé’s family in a locality resembling Cape Cod. After some preliminary soul searchings, she throws down the gauntlet to the beast, engages it in combat and finally routs it, at least from the neighborhood and for the time being.
Consistently helpful to her heroine’s cause, Mrs. Davis stacks the cards from the beginning in favor of the calumniated group. The Jewish character, a young man named Simon Rose, described as having a “thin, intelligent face” and “thick glasses,” is sympathetically portrayed. Although not the hero—that role is taken by a youth of French-English stock, more romantic and socially acceptable—he is one of the hero’s best and oldest friends. Comments such as this help tip the balance: “She realized now that his intuitive tenderness, like his keen mind, were part of his Jewish heritage.” A touching parallel is also drawn in the heroine’s mind between the plight of the Jew Simon and that of Jimmy, an orphan child, who “has come to expect unfairness everywhere.”
For the problem of anti-Semitic prejudice, long underground in American life, to have forced its way through the pasteboard walls of a story for girls probably indicates that its pros and cons are more largely discussed today than many of us realize. It is comforting to learn even from a young ladies’ handbook that our society’s mores still denounce discrimination against Jews as unfair and undemocratic.
