Daddy-Long-Legs - The Thing!?

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I'm still pursuing my hermeneutic of suspicion toward Jean Webster's epistolary novel Daddy-Long-Legs, and see what I've found:

26th March

Mr. D.-L.-L. Smith,

SIR: You never answer any questions; you never show the slightest interest in anything I do. You are probably the horridest one of all those horrid Trustees, and the reason you are educating me is, not because you care a bit about me, but from a sense of Duty.

I don't know a single thing about you. I don't even know your name. It is very uninspiring writing to a Thing. I haven't a doubt but that you throw my letters into the waste-basket without reading them. Hereafter I shall write only about work. My re-examinations in Latin and geometry came last week. I passed them both and am now free from conditions.

Yours truly,

Jerusha Abbott

Jerusha calls her benefactor a "Thing," even capitalizing the term! What does she mean by this objectification?

Some reflections tomorrow . . .