The Girls

by Edna Ferber, Kathleen Rooney (Introduction)

Overview

With “much humor” and “awareness of family dynamics” this classic novel “stands as an enduring portrait of women torn between duty and self-fulfillment”(Publishers Weekly).
 
First published in 1921, Edna Ferber’s The Girls revolves around the “three Charlottes” of the Thrift family—Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and Lottie’s niece Charley. All single “old maids,” as the narrator describes them, their lives weave together as they deal with issues involving money, work, friendship, family, and love as they strive to join Chicago’s growing middle class in the early twentieth century.

With a historic span that travels from the Civil War to World War I, Ferber highlights how the three generations of Charlottes lead very different lives. But we also see the ways their experiences rhyme with one another and how, despite the social advances in America, as Kathleen Rooney writes in her introduction, all three have to confront “a sexist and claustrophobic societal atmosphere in which any little act of self-assertion can feel like a leap from a precipice.”
Told through Ferber’s assured and generous style, and full of her signature strong female characters, The Girls is an American classic.
 
“This is one of those books that nails setting and character so well that plot is mostly beside the point. . . . Ferber splits the difference with clearer prose and keener insight than [Sister Carrie author Theodore] Dreiser managed, while incorporating some of the same dry humor that [Babbitt author Sinclair] Lewis used to describe midwestern strivers.” —Dmitry Samarov, Chicago Reader

“Written with such verve and insight that it could be a piece of historical fiction produced last week.” —Patrick T. Reardon, Third Coast Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781953368508
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	05/01/2024
Series:	Belt Revivals
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	285
File size:	982 KB

About the Author

Edna Ferber was born in 1885 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. After a short career in journalism, she turned to writing novels, short stories, and plays. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for her novel, So Big, and subsequent works went on to

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was a novelist, short-story writer, and playwright whose work served as the inspiration for numerous Broadway plays and Hollywood films, including Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant, Saratoga Trunk, and Ice Palace. She co-wrote the plays The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, and Stage Door with George S. Kaufman and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big.

Editorial Reviews

03/06/2023

Ferber (Giant) follows the lives of three Chicago women in the first two decades of the 20th century in this sprawling 1921 novel, revived as part of a series of fiction about middle America. Charlotte Thrift, who was 18 when the Civil War broke out, is now 74 and the older daughter of pioneers from New York State. Her niece, Lottie, 32, lives at home but is restless, spending her days taking care of Charlotte along with Lottie’s mother, Carrie. Lottie would much prefer to work in the social welfare system like her friend, a juvenile court judge. In contrast, Lottie’s 18-year-old niece, Charley, is a free-spirited flapper, though her search for love is thwarted after her suitor dies in WWI. Lottie finds purpose in helping a maid’s sister get out of legal trouble and by volunteering with the Red Cross in France during WWI, which affords her a chance to get away from the domineering Carrie. Charley also leaves Chicago to join a dance troupe. There is much humor, particularly in comic descriptions of boorish suitors and hapless or disgraced husbands, and Ferber’s awareness of family dynamics and the midwestern metropolis comes alive on the page. It stands as an enduring portrait of women torn between duty and self-fulfillment. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"There is much humor, particularly in comic descriptions of boorish suitors and hapless or disgraced husbands, and Ferber’s awareness of family dynamics and the midwestern metropolis comes alive on the page. It stands as an enduring portrait of women torn between duty and self-fulfillment." –Publishers Weekly

"This is one of those books that nails setting and character so well that plot is mostly beside the point. [. . .]Ferber splits the difference with clearer prose and keener insight than [Sister Carrie author Theodore] Dreiser managed, while incorporating some of the same dry humor that [Babbitt author Sinclair] Lewis used to describe midwestern strivers." –Dmitry Samarov, Chicago Reader

“Written with such verve and insight that it could be a piece of historical fiction produced last week.” –Patrick T. Reardon, Third Coast Review

From the Publisher