"Elaine" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the March-April, 1945 issue of Story .
At this point in the story Elaine is introduced to sexuality when Mr. Freelander, their landlord, touches her leg during the movie.
Throughout the story Elaine is unable to pick up on social cues and participate in conversations, suggesting she has a learning disability of some kind.
During the ceremony her mother challenges Teddy, calling him a "sissy" and refuses to let her daughter take part in the wedding.
[2][3] In late 1943, when Salinger was preparing to depart with the 12th Infantry Regiment for combat duty in Europe, he was informed that three of his works of short fiction had been accepted by The Saturday Evening Post for publication.
[11]Elaine and her family come into contact with a “Hollywood- and radio-promoted world populated with star newspaper reporters, crackerjack young city editors, young brain surgeons…all of her men speak in deep, trained voices that sometimes swooped pleasantly through a sixteen-year-old girl’s legs.” Among these social types she meets, and is quickly seduced, by Theodore “Teddy” Schimdt.
[15] Wenke observes that the story “concludes with Salinger’s comic reassertion of Elaine’s safe world of movie love.”[16]