picked a handful of violets in my name

I kind of dislike the flow of "He was only as tall as she was"; the repeated "was" is the problem. I think "her" is more than fine, given this context.

Also, I would assume you're writing fiction? Fuck prescriptivism and go with what sounds right. Pronoun case and ellipsis in English is a giant mess and the linguists don't really have an answer for what's up, anyway. I would only worry if this was supposed to be in a very formal register.