Stella Dallas / Olivia Higgins Prouty / pp240 / 1937 (?)

Don't have the book here so can't see the publication date. there as a movie version made in 1937 so i'll use that as a placeholder date. this book was great; like an edith wharton transplanted into the 1920s. stella dallas is a social climber who makes the ultimate sacrifice (in her eyes): marrying a man she loathes, in order to force her daughter to hate her, in order to force her daughter to have a life of priviledge, the likes of which stella always wanted for herself but that she was unable to construct. stella blames this on her family's lack of support of her dream of 'being somebody,' but Prouty shows us enough of stella's life that the reader may well question whether this is true. some especially telling scenes, like the description of the summer-house she built and her artful (perhaps-- or seen through?) habit of bringing every date back to the place and sitting in the exact, pre-calculated spot to look the most cunning, or her lack of understanding of the difference between company and good company in the case of the slimy Mr. Harris, lead me to believe that perhaps stella tried too hard; i can definitely feel sympathy for her outcast status and see echoes of my own behavior in her sometimes-painful attempts to ingratiate herself and her child into the lives of the aimless rich.

lots of great themes at play here: mother-daughter-stepmother, rejection/love, construct of one's self versus what others perceive, how social forces invade our lives and force us to shape our lives to fit them (and find ourselves in interesting places, where hate can be the ultimate expression of love). women struggling with liberation and feminism thrust upon them when they did not want it vs. the women who want to be liberated but cannot be; what is the nature of liberation (submittal to unknown expectations or fulfilling stated expectations?). it was pulpy and silly and flirty and lite, but when examined, has a lot more going on beneath the surface.