Bread*

The Woman in Modern Business--No Solution

The Story. Mrs. Sturgis, widowed music-teacher with two growing daughters, Jeannette and Alice, could not make both ends meet, no matter how hard she tried. So Jeannette, at 18, weary of poverty and shabbiness. set out to find a job--in the days when nearly all women gave up their jobs when they married. She found one, and fell in love with young Roy Beardsley at the same time. Then the struggle began, as she rose in the business world and became private secretary to the head of her firm. She was earning as much as Roy; she loved her work. Could she give up adventure and independence for Roy and a dingy little house in Flatbush? Not on your weekly pay-envelope! So she wished Roy off on her domestic sister Alice and went on her way triumphant, while Roy and Alice (who had never heard of birth-control) at once began raising a family out of all proportion to their means.

Lucky escape. Then Martin Devlin came along. He looked like Eugene O'Brien; (cinema idol); his "masterful wooing" just swept her off her feet. The jealous wife of her boss made her business position impossible. She married Martin. The marriage lasted four years. Martin was extravagant--too good a spender --his ideas of marriage and Jeannette's didn't jibe--he wanted children--she said they couldn't afford them--she missed her independence. The break came, when, at last, she went back to her job.

Fifteen years later Jeannette, successful, has risen as high in her firm as a woman could. She is getting $50 a week--nearly half as much as her successor would start in at if that successor were a man. She is lady bountiful to Alice's children. But the spice has gone out of her work, for sex-discrimination keeps her from the higher rungs of the ladder and her only human contacts are the vicarious ones with Alice's family, with her roommate, with Mitxi, her cat. Stung by an impulse she does not wholly understand, she attempts to resume contact with Martin--now a successful business man in Philadelphia--only to find that he has divorced her and married again. She returns to New York. She has her job, but nothing else, and she is growing old.

The Significance. An interesting, sincere and timely study of the woman in modern business, and the struggle that goes on in such a woman when, once having tasted financial independence, she marries. A solution is hinted at rather than asserted; but the implication is (as it was in This Freedom), "Back to the home!" But Bread succeeds where This Freedom failed: in its fidelity to the actual conditions of life and its lack of sweetie-sweetiness. A long book, crammed with detail, written without grace, without style, with little humor --but highly readable.

The Critics. New York Tribune: " Mr. Norris is not so much an artist as a reporter. ... He is saved from being tedious by his almost appalling exactitude; his novels have the same interest as a catalogue."

The New York Times: " As Norris the novelist increases in wisdom and stature, Norris the preacher shrinks and shrivels. . . . He is not and perhaps never will be a good writer, but he has made himself a good novelist."

The Author. Charles G. Norris, known first as "Frank Norris's brother" and then as "Kathleen Norris's husband," has in the last few years made a most decided place in the! literary world for himself, sans qualifying relatives. A graduate of the University of California, he has reported dog-shows, written Hints for Tulip Raisers, worked on The Christian Herald, Country Life, The American Magazine, served in the late War, and written two best sellers, Brass and Salt. He likes monosyllabic titles, the State of California, loud neckties.

*BREAD-- Charles G. Norris -- Dutton ($2.00).