Yet many narratives play to modern sensibilities. Their protagonists experience their own societies as though they were time-travelers, noting racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and outmoded belief as outsiders, not as people of and in their cultures. So Birdie, though she approaches her first experience of Jews with all the outlandish prejudices of her society, overcomes them instantly. So Sarah insists on wearing overalls when it suits her, and her future husband accepts not only this, but all her nonconformities, without question, let alone objection. No sympathetic character in this novel really believes in witches, though many seventeenth-century people did.
Didacticism dies hard in children's literature.
Bending historical narrative to modern models of social behavior, however, makes for bad history, and the more specific the model, the harder it is to avoid distorting historical reality. If the only way a female protagonist can be portrayed is as strong, independent, and outspoken, or, to take a different example, if slaves must always be shown as resistant to authority, and if these qualities have to be overt, distortion becomes inevitable. Her picture of slavery, however, is less easily reconciled with history. The odds against such a situation in Virginia on the eve of the Civil War were considerable. More important, however politically acceptable it is, this kind of idealization glosses over the real price slaves paid for slavery.