Reverse Bildungsroman?

I have been thinking about our discussion of A Girl of the Limberlost as Bildungsroman, and I'm wondering if it isn't just the reverse.

Kate Comstock is, as Travis pointed out, is certainly pathologized for her refusal to participate in commodity culture - but she is also pathologized as a parent for failing to conform to newer,  more "civilized" standards of how one should raise a child - a failure that appears to have saved Elnora from insignificance by making her everything she is. There is a way in which Kate is not a monster, therefore, but merely an outmoded  model for motherhood. Kate's treatment of Elnora appears reprehensible to us primarily because it is placed in contrast with burgeoning city life and its new "civilized" standards - but in what way is Elnora permanently damaged by it? I would argue that she is vastly benefited, and Margaret Sinton agrees with me:

"S'pose we'd got Elnora when she was a baby, and we'd heaped on her all the love we can't on our own, and we'd coddled, petted, and shielded her, would she have made the woman that living along, learning to think for herself, and taking all the knocks Kate Comstock could give, have made of her?" (74).

The answer, though Wesley objects, is of course "no." Kate Comstock is thus figured as a more natural kind of mother. Margaret persists: "Maybe Kate Comstock know what she's doing. Sure as you live, Elnora has grown bigger on knocks than she would on love" (75). So perhaps S-P is directing our attention to a "civilized error" we're making in these more advanced (less "natural") times?

This is also the case with Billy, whom every character acknowledges as more deeply good than most other children: "He minds what you tell him, and doesn't do anything he is told not to. He thinks of his brother and sister right away when anything pleases him. He took that stinging medicine with the grit of a bulldog. He is  just a bully little chap" (141).

These things, doubtless, would not have so had Billy not been forced to shift for himself - there is even a suggestion in this passage that a "naturally" harsh upbringing like this one forges stronger, deeper connections between people (i.e.: Billy's brother and sister, who share a bond unlike anybody else in the novel). This puts me in mind of Charley from Bleak House - another "old" child who became morally exemplary through an upbringing that is "natural" in the same way, though in London.

In this case, there is a way in which Billy and Elnora, like the swamp and its creatures, are on the verge of extinction themselves - that their acceptance into "culture" is somewhat of a reverse Bildungsroman in which they unlearn, somewhat, how to be. I can't help but read Elnora's tantrum about her dress in this light, as well as her accumulating desire for "stuff."

I wonder what others think of this...