Try Les Miserables on for size.
Keep good attention to Marius' behavior in that one. There's more than one way to court someone, and apart from the obvious boundaries of consent, it's all fairly subjective. I don't see why I should somehow be disgusted by Marius' keeping Cosette's [sp?] handkerchief for weeks, even though this would be regarded as wildly inappropriate today by American reviewers. It's certainly not a moral opposition that we have to this behavior.
But we're seriously hijacking the OP's thread by now. If you want we can take it to PM?
I don't believe breaking into your intended's house was standard behaviour, even back in the day.
However, none of that is relevant to my point about the 1. massive sexualization of YA literature (Harlequin has a teen line now, I hear
![[barf]](http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/Smileys/default/barf_smiley.gif "Barf!")
) & 2. the current YA trend towards the normalization of serious issues. Nor does it address the fact that the relationship between Bella and Edward in Twilight is stalkerish and abusive, whatever various customs our ancestors may have wrote about.
However, you've made your views on teens as basically adults (which I more or less agree with) and massive sexualization of everyone as awesome (which I don't) pretty clear in a lot of other places on this forum, and I see no need to rehash all that here.
OP: be careful what you let the kid read. A lot of stuff aimed at kids is not a good influence these days. I understand there is only sio much you can do: I read just about every book in our libraries SF/Fantasy section, as well as tons of westerns, horror, detective, general lit, and even the encyclopedia once or twice. I guess I'd just say that not everything marketed towards kids is appropriate for them.
Micro, re classics: I think they are substantially different, but still not the best influence depending on the novel.
