The Abbey Girls Win Through was published by Collins in 1928 and is tenth in the First Generation set. It takes place “Abbey Time” between April and May of 1923,slightly overlapping its predecessor installment. For those of you who are new to this blog, we are reading these books in reading order (meaning how the stories make sense with time and the ages of the characters) which is not the same as publication order.
Some readers feel or have felt that there is too much pi-jaw [“pi” = “pious”; “jaw” = “talk”) in EJO’s novels and The Abbey Girls Win Through is one of the books that strongly exhibit this trait—for bad, if you find it didactic, or for good if you find her words comforting. Generally, in these books God is not explicitly invoked—a girl simply looks for “help” and then feels that she has found it—but here there are quite a few religious discussions. The off-stage deaths have to be understood as either part of God’s plan or the reverse, although the reverse takes us into Manichaean heresy of believing that there is an active agent of evil. [Read more…]