Two little-known American early novels about working women

[MsAmerica]

I think society has changed so much, in terms of what women are “allowed” to do, that sometimes we forget that it’s not so long ago that women were not generally expected to have a job outside the home, much less to own a business or hold political office. Anything written NOW has a different slant, maybe a revisionist slant, in comparison to what was written THEN. So I’m mentioning two for anyone who is curious.

The Job is by Nobelist Sinclair Lewis, an early novel before he became famous. It’s a simple story about a young woman who feels stifled in her home town in the 1920s, with no attractive marital prospects, so when her father suddenly dies, she convinces her lethargic widowed mother that they should move to New York City, and she launches herself out to find a job. And she slowly tries to make a life for herself and climb the financial ladder. It’s not a thrillingly dramatic book, but you get the feeling that it’s pretty accurate, which is what makes it interesting, a bit of an artifact.

The Home-Maker is by Dorothy Canfield, who I’d never heard of, but she was a very popular author in the first half of the 20th century, having earned a PhD at a time when most women didn’t go to college at all. This doesn’t have the place in literary history that a Lewis book does, but this is much the livelier of the two, in terms of style. A married couple with three children is getting by, but not happily, as the husband is a low-earner and the wife has become a tyrannical perfectionist running of the household, also in the 1920s. Then chance intervenes, and she is forced to be a bread-winner while the husband tends the home-fires.

Have any of you read either of them?

A Tree Goes in Brooklyn is fairly autobiographical and of its time (early 1909s). The vast majority of women work and those who don’t are either starving or abused. A word to the wise for those who hark to the good old days. Fascinating book.

I’ve read The Home-Maker - it’s a fascinating book. Persephone reprints it in the UK.

It's a very, very false idea that women didn't work outside their own home. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a good shout. But also behind the scenes of every novel about young, wealthy unmarried women are a whole cast of working women getting meals on tables, cleaning, caring, secretaries etc.
Rarer are books that mention the factories completely staffed by women - No Surrender by Constance Maud starts in a mill but is mostly about the UK suffragette movement.
Then you also have the successful men in the arts who happen to be married to more talented but less well known women. Always suspicious that it might not be all their own manly work.
We're lucky to have Persephone Book in the UK, reprinting interesting books that have slipped out of view. They include American authors and The Deepening Stream by Fisher.

The Homemaker was discussed at the recent Persephone Day. It was a very quick hour and I felt there was so much left to cover (never satisfied).
Being trapped in the wrong role is such a source of frustration and takes a toll on one's health. But we all noted how men and women are held to completely different standards even still in terms of wifework and help from the community. I often wonder if characters would pop up on Mumsnet 'AIBU to do all the household heavy lifting and provide mental health support on zero money whilst my DH wants to write poetry'

I have a great book called Minding Her Own Business by Catherine Bishop about women running businesses in early Sydney.

From 1879: Ella Cheever Thayer's Wired Love, about American telegraph operators, is lively and funny.

Work by Louisa May Alcott is interesting - she wrote it for adults, although her works for younger readers often have working women too.

Another Persephone book worth reading is High Wages - woman builds a career in haberdashery in early 20th century Lancashire. Some parts frustrated me, but it is one of my favourites.

I've read Betsy by Dorothy Canfield, a wonderful children's book about a spoiled sheltered girl who has to go and live with her distant family on a farm and learns both what education is for and how to do all kinds of practical skills at home. The best chapter of all is about earning her own money and there's a strong economic streak through it all. I think Canfield was an enthusiast for the Montessori method.

It is noticeable that books like Anne of Green Gables and Daddy Long Legs, as well as An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott, are all about women growing up expecting to train and then to work. They are going to do jobs that require brain power and which have middle class status.

True, but that book is actually ABOUT a child growing up, not about a woman trying to make her way in a man's world.

Oh, nice!

What's Persephone Day? Sounds intriguing.

I read it - and I thought, Wow, no wonder that it's Little Women that's remembered, and not this.

Well ... sort of... I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in Judy's dream of being a writer in Daddy Long Legs.

LOL. It's certainly not got the joie de vivre. I think it could be a really interesting film adaptation though.

One thing that sticks in my memory is the African American woman the heroine works with at one point, who is saving every spare penny to eventually buy her elderly mum out of slavery. LMA was a (voluntary?) nurse during the Civil War herself.

The Best of Everything is brilliant!

Could you elaborate?