The Letter

Why would Gertrude make Sylvia address the letter "To Mr. and Mrs. Likens?" Didn't she know that no one addresses their parents in such a formal manner? Or was she just stupid?

The police could tell right off the bat that it was a fake forced written letter because even the police know that no one addresses their parents that way. Gertrude must've seriously been stupid if she didn't realize that anyone would be able to tell that Sylvia was forced to write that letter simply because of how it was addressed.

I also wondered about this many times.
I wonder if Gertie simply wanted to be sure that anyone who read the letter to believe that it was addressed to Sylvia's parents. But she did not realize that it also seemed very odd that Sylvia would appeal to her own parents in this way. The word choice must have been made by stupidity, it's the only explanation I can think of.

They werent the smartest people by any means. Gertrude and Paula were extremely jealous of Sylvia. She was pretty, and had a very sweet disposition, plus she was smart. It also seemed that she had a very strong faith. Plus she wasnt already used goods like those two were. You could see it in both of them. I mean Paula was pregnant, and already looked used up. She was also pregnant by a married man. What young teenage woman wants to hook up with a married man unless that is all she knows or has seen her whole life? It looked like Gertrude was trying to compete with her daughters for younger mens attention. Gertrude was so abusive and that was all her kids saw there whole miserable lives. I hope that the younger ones were able to get help . But what really blew me away was how many kids in that area were ok with the abuse, as well as abusing, that poor pretty young girl? What was that "Sociopath Hollow"? They all seemed to think that it was ok. I grew up in the city, and people always talk about how bad city people are, and this was a small town, and I grew up during these same years, and if we knew that any kid was getting treated like this by anybody, we would have told our parents, and they would have done something about it. And we stuck up for our friends. Were all these people crazy? And why would Sylvia's parents think it was ok to leave their two daughters with a frazzled, asthmatic, woman with six kids of her own? I mean for a few days, ok, but months on end? And never have another family member check up on them? If that would have happened today, all the parents would have ended up in jail. Just looking at her picture you could tell something was not right with her. I raised 6 kids by myself as a single mom and worked two jobs, and I never left my kids with anyone I did not know personally.