Oh, I read very widely and had feminist parents, but this stuff still had such a pernicious influence on my formative ideals that that's why I'm so cautious about letting my kids read them. It took me years to even realize how much it had sunk in.
I still have most of my childhood favorites and a son who's turning 3 soon, and I plan to reread a lot of them and decide whether I really want to give them to him. For me it's not even so much the overt problems as the subtle unspoken things; that the colonization of the western United States was exciting and necessary (Little House books), that the colonization of India was perfectly fine (Secret Garden), the expectations of female people (the books we're discussing above). On the one hand reading a lot of children's classics gave me an excellent sense of cultural history, but there was so much I had to unlearn as I got older, compounded by being the last generation of children to learn about things like the conquistadores as unquestioned heroes (I'm 35). My parents' generation rolls their eyes when I talk about this stuff, and I don't know modern kids' lit past Harry Potter at all, but I don't want to give him an unexamined idea of western civ like I grew up with.
Honestly, upon reflection I don't think those Victorian ideals are really that different from today; I still feel weird because I talk too much, am not good at mimicking the culture's beauty ideals, and don't keep a perfect house/parent perfectly. We're just expected to excel in careers now too...
My biggest complaint is nobody except my mother thought getting my period was as big a deal as I did, and all my friends clearly thought I was weird for getting excited about it at the start of 8th grade (both those who had and hadn't gotten theirs). Can definitely chalk that up to Are You There God?, which I will probably also not be giving to any theoretical daughters, just because I don't think I would've made it into such a big deal on my own.
Yep, and identified with Meg March. It's odd because the stories are all from the perspectives of the more interesting younger sisters, but I couldn't help but feel bad for their older sisters.
Honestly I was so messed up by all the Victorian girls lit I read, I plan to actually not share it with my kid(s). Between LMM, Alcott, and Hodgson Burnett, I fully drank the Angel in the House Kool-Aid, to the point I liked Mary Ingalls better than Laura! I felt bad about not being Christian (I tried but my non-religious upbringing kept winning out), or pretty, quiet, and neat, because even though all those books have a heroine who doesn't fit the ideals of the time she's constantly made to feel bad about it, and strives to keep her temper and imagination in check. So even all the lovely dresses and tea parties and poetry didn't stick with me as much as the ideals of Victorian Womanhood, which remain somewhere in my subconscious no matter how hard I've rejected them.
They stream the games on YouTube! That's how I watched my Rivs from CA this season. :)
I love Teri Garr! She's adorable and she ends up with my lifelong crush Gene Wilder. Occasionally I just long to be a Madeline.
My parents are incapable of discussing Ovaltine without Cloris's accent.
The best way to describe me is that when I first saw this at 10 I knew instantly I was a Teri Garr and would never be a Madeline Kahn; I could only marvel from afar.
Yeah, it was hard for me to be honest and I almost deleted my comment right away. Being poor has so much shame attached to it.
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sophia_h 
Brainchild