The Perfect Girl

I have been reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" recently, and although I have been enjoying it to an extent, there are certain little things in Harriet Stowe's writing style that annoy me. Unfortunately, I am neither analytical enough to figure out what elements in her book bother me nor eloquent enough to write down why they bother me. However, this passage describing a girl "between five and six years of age" might be a bit of a help:

Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating and aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and allegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty of feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression, which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the dullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why. The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust was peculiarly noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of brown,--all marked her out from other children, and made every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thither on the boat.

Oh...my...WORD!!!! This is a FIVE YEAR OLD GIRL FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!