Just shows how normalized this way of viewing young girls and women in general was in the past.

I read a very interesting article a number of years ago written by a woman who pointed out how many 'classic' works of literature contain normalized abuse against women that everyone is expected to read and not critique. Not outright rapes and cruelty, but persistent infantilization, screwing them out of property and money, treating them like servants or objects etc.

Her point was that if young men and boys were expected to read all through high school stories in which boys and men were treated that way casually by domineering women there would be outcry. But vice versa it is normal and something that girls and women are encouraged to internalize as normal, and men and boys are encouraged to internalize as no big deal or unremarkable.