Stella Dallas*

Sweat-Shop Employee, She Looks on from the Street at Her Daughter's Debut

The Story. Stephen Dallas had been brought up to consider himself decidedly Somebody--one of the Redington Dallases--an old and respected family. When his father, having embezzled, committed suicide --it rather knocked out the underpinning from Stephen. Being twentythree, he decided to bury himself in a Massachusetts factory-town, Milhampton. He was through with life.

Stella Martin was one of the Milhampton Martins--in polite language, nobody. Her people were " impossible "--she was the small-time belle of the factory district. She spent her time in doing her best to imitate in dress, manners and looks the fashionable ladies she read about in the society columns. She even managed to build an imitation pergola in the back yard and swung there, in a Gloucester hammock, hoping, for a duke. She had an insatiable instinct for what people with private incomes like to call "nice things." When Stephen came along, he checked completely with all her aspirations. They fell in love and were married.

But it didn't go. Stella just was " impossible." She loved noise and flamboyant clothes and musical comedies and giggling semi-flirtations. Stephen liked symphony-concerts and improving books and quiet. They produced one daughter, Laurel, at first to Stella's loudly expressed distaste. Then Stephen took a job in New York. They drifted apart--at last were separated. Stella herself was getting commoner and commoner. Meanwhile Stephen had resumed a strictly intellectual acquaintance with a highly refined first-love, now widowed--and had become well-to-do.

A few natural accidents--a sudden " crush " of Laurel's on the widowed first-love--the revival of an ancient and baseless scandal about Stella herself--made the issue plain. Stella saw that Laurel wasn't her kind-- that she herself was the handicap on Laurel's becoming "nice." So she gave Laurel up in the only way that could bring a definite breach between them--let Stephen divorce her and married the wreck of an ex-society-riding-master, a worthy whom Laurel couldn't bear. She smashed Laurel's faith in her, and told her she was going to South America with her new husband. But she didn't. The novel ends where, an employee in a sweatshop, she looks on from the street at Laurel's successful debut in New York Society.

The Significance. Stella Dallas is an excellently written novel dealing with a genuine problem--the problem of the woman who marries, as the Victorians called it, " above her station," and does her best to fit into her new environment but cannot, while her children can. The central character of Stella is exceedingly well drawn, without obvious propagandizing or a straining for flashy effect. Stella is first of all a human being, not a type, and the same is almost as true of the other principal characters -- even the somewhat pluperfect and superaesthetic Mrs. Morrison.

The Critics. The New York Herald: "A novel of absolutely first-rate importance."

The New York Times: "There is no reason why Stella Dallas should not place Mrs. Prouty immediately amid such writers as Zona Gale and Willa Cather."

New York Tribune: "The ending is a trifle sentimental but this does not detract from the strength and beauty of Stella Dallas as a whole."

The Author. Olive Higgins Prouty describes herself as being a thorough New Englander. She was born in Worcester, Mass., and went to Smith College (Class of 1-904). Her husband is a Boston business man. " Housekeeping she considers her real job and writing her recreation."

* STELLA DALLAS--Olive Higgins Prouty --Houghton Mlfflln ($2.00).