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The Girls
From the best-selling author of Giant and So Big, a sweeping look at the lives of three generations of women on Chicago’s South Side. Part of Belt’s Revivals series and with a new introduction by Kathleen Rooney (Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk).
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, this rediscovered American classic deserves a spot on the shelf next to other great Chicago novels like Sister Carrie and The Adventures of Augie March.
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, this rediscovered American classic deserves a spot on the shelf next to other great Chicago novels like Sister Carrie and The Adventures of Augie March.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1921
About the author
Edna Ferber
259 books308 followersEdna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 19, 2026
This 1921 Edna Ferber title was new to me since it was just released at Project Gutenberg In February of 2025. I had already long ago finished everything that PG had to offer from Ferber so I was happy to see this one. It took me longer than expected to get to (that seems to always happen, doesn't it) but I finally managed it. I enjoyed being back in Ms. Ferber's world. I hadn't realized how much I had missed her writing skills until I got caught up in them again.
The Girls is a story of three women from Chicago. Pioneer stock; the family had settled in Chicago almost before it was a real city. Miss Charlotte Thrift was the oldest daughter of the family, 'past eighteen when the Civil War began', who for various heartbreaking reasons never married.
Sister Carrie was ten yeas younger than Charlotte. She did marry and considered herself the successful woman of the family. But was she really?
Carrie had two daughters, Belle and Lottie (who was named for her Aunt Charlotte but called Lottie). Then Belle married and had a daughter also named Charlotte but called Charley. These five ladies were The Girls. The story involved the way they coped with their lives, with each other, with their dreams. Because they did have dreams, even if so few of them became reality.
They were each the product of their times. These days we might all sneer at the lives they led but they did what we all must do: make the best of the reality we find ourselves living in. And like all Edna Ferber tales, it was (for me at least) beautiful, sincere, and moving.
The only thing I didn't like about it was another reflection of the times, and one which has never completely disappeared. It concerned the reaction by the citizens of Chicago to the post Civil War changes in population and how that affected the South Side of the city.
I remember visiting relatives in Illinois when I was little, and how my cousins told me the family would be moving again soon because 'they' had moved in down the street and my aunt and uncle didn't want to live near any of 'them'. I had no clue what they were talking about. I asked my parents later and when they explained I still didn't understand what possible difference it could make to anyone. I was so innocent. In a way I still am.
The Girls is a story of three women from Chicago. Pioneer stock; the family had settled in Chicago almost before it was a real city. Miss Charlotte Thrift was the oldest daughter of the family, 'past eighteen when the Civil War began', who for various heartbreaking reasons never married.
Sister Carrie was ten yeas younger than Charlotte. She did marry and considered herself the successful woman of the family. But was she really?
Carrie had two daughters, Belle and Lottie (who was named for her Aunt Charlotte but called Lottie). Then Belle married and had a daughter also named Charlotte but called Charley. These five ladies were The Girls. The story involved the way they coped with their lives, with each other, with their dreams. Because they did have dreams, even if so few of them became reality.
They were each the product of their times. These days we might all sneer at the lives they led but they did what we all must do: make the best of the reality we find ourselves living in. And like all Edna Ferber tales, it was (for me at least) beautiful, sincere, and moving.
The only thing I didn't like about it was another reflection of the times, and one which has never completely disappeared. It concerned the reaction by the citizens of Chicago to the post Civil War changes in population and how that affected the South Side of the city.
I remember visiting relatives in Illinois when I was little, and how my cousins told me the family would be moving again soon because 'they' had moved in down the street and my aunt and uncle didn't want to live near any of 'them'. I had no clue what they were talking about. I asked my parents later and when they explained I still didn't understand what possible difference it could make to anyone. I was so innocent. In a way I still am.
January 28, 2018
This novel, written before Ferber's better, more famous work, tells the story of three spinsters in WWI-era Chicago. Great Aunt Charlotte, who had her heart broken by a strict family and the Civil War, her niece Lottie (who struck me as a possible lesbian for the majority of the book), and her niece Charley, who's young and still has a chance for love. Most of the action takes place in the large Prairie Avenue house occupied by Charlotte, her sister Carrie, and Lottie, and I imagine it would be an entertaining read for any Chicago natives or current dwellers, to see how the city has changed in the past century.
As with a lot of books written nearly one hundred years ago, the reader should be prepared to encounter some casual racism and other backward thinking, but this book is otherwise surprisingly feminist and progressive in its depiction of women making their way in society.
As with a lot of books written nearly one hundred years ago, the reader should be prepared to encounter some casual racism and other backward thinking, but this book is otherwise surprisingly feminist and progressive in its depiction of women making their way in society.
April 28, 2023
I enjoy Edna Ferber’s writing. In this novel she follows three Chicago women, an aunt, her niece, and this niece’s niece, following generational changes in customs and fashions, and in the way women live. Yet all three having to live through war and loss that shape their lives in a way they had not planned.
May 15, 2015
I LOVED this book. (I seem to have a thing for OOP stuff that hardly anyone else would be able to find a copy of.....) Anyway - this book was written in 1921, and is about 3 old maids in Chicago: an old maiden aunt, her 30-something niece, and *her* 18-year-old niece (who isn't exactly an old maid yet). The first part of the book is flashbacks to the abortive Civil War romance of the oldest woman, and then moves forward to the fin-de-siecle youth of the 30-something niece. Then everything moves into "modern" times - 1916, on the cusp of the War - and goes forward from there. Basic theme here was Live your own life for yourself, and don't let other people control you. Fabulous detail of life in those eras, funny bits, great characterization.
January 21, 2024
Ooooh, I love stumbling across a great novel like this! Giant is one of my favorite movies and I adore the movies Stage Door and Dinner at Eight(both of which she also wrote) so for years I've been meaning to read Ferber. I mean, dang, she won the Pulitzer. She was a member of the Algonquin Round Table so you know she was sharp and witty. Yet I never hear about her either from friends who read or in the online book groups I am in. She isn't taught in school either, not like Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Orwell. Is it because of her horribly dated name haha? I mean, ooof, it's on the level of a Bertha or a Eunice. Not a name that will be coming back in fashion anytime soon. I hate to cry sexism but I honestly think that is a big part of it. She focused on female characters who were people in their own right, not the supporting wife/girlfriend/mother character that is in many books of her generation.
I found this quote on JSTOR that explains better than I can the lack of respect she got.
Ferber was scorned both for being a woman and for being a Jew. A chorus of critical voices, most of them male dismissed Ferber’s crowd-pleasing plots as well as her hyperbolic, though accessible, writing style. F. Scott Fitzgerald refused even to read her wildly popular stories, derisively labeling her one of the ‘Yiddish descendants of O. Henry.’ In his 1960 Partisan Review essay “Masscult and Midcult,” Dwight Macdonald offered his notorious assessment of middlebrow writers, stating that their work “really isn’t culture at all” but “a parody of High Culture;” he placed Ferber at the top of his list of writers who should not be taken seriously. One hopes that these men, if they were still alive, would be embarrassed at having made such fatuous statements.
In this novel published in 1921, Ferber writes a sympathetic portrayal of three "spinsters" spanning three generations of one family. The women take center stage with the male characters playing the supportive roles that are usually held by female characters. The action takes place between 1860 and 1918 in Chicago. Chicago is really another character in the book. I don't really know the city well but if you do, then I imagine what a pleasure it would be getting glimpses of the city's development and growth.
I found the plot easy to follow and well paced. I read the book in 3 days, I kept looking for times to read it. The characters and their issues were very believable. I cared about the three leads and also thought Ferber did a good job of humanizing even the jerky characters like the controlling mothers and weasely suitors.
The dynamic of family life, where one daughter is doomed to stay single and caretake the older family members, is one I do not often see in novels. I guess that it is too "middlebrow" and unimportant for male writers and their focus on bullfighting and battles and booze. However, I found the subject matter so refreshing to read about and very relatable.
I was sure that Lottie, the middle aged spinster character, was a lesbian and the entire time was wondering if Farber would go there. Imagine my surprise when at the end of the novel she instead has Lottie give birth to an illegitimate baby! And the women in the family accept her and the baby! And she is not punished! Color me shocked. Seems pretty scandalous for back then. I do not see a male author of that generation writing that ending. She would die in childbirth. Or the baby would. Or she'd become a prostitute or die of TB or something. No way would it end with the three spinsters and the baby living happily ever after lol.
I wonder if Mother will want to go ... I do hope this once ...Here Lottie drew a deep breath; the kind of breathing that relieves stomach nerves. She was so sure that Mother would want to go. She almost always did.
We are prone to be impatient of black-silk figures, quite forgetting that they once were slim and eager white, young figures in hoopskirts that sometimes tilted perilously up behind, displaying an unseemly length of frilled pantalette.
Fifty-five years had yellowed the photograph of the wasp-waisted girl in the billowing riding skirt when her grand-niece, Charley Kemp, appeared before her in twentieth-century riding clothes: sleeveless jacket ending a little below the hips; breeches baggy in the seat but gripping the knees.
Chicago today is full of resentful grandsons and granddaughters who will tell you that if their grandsire had bought the southwest corner of State and Madison Streets for $2,050 in cash, as he could have, they would be worth their millions today.
The names of Chicago's firemen of 1838 or '40, if read aloud today, would sound like the annual list of boxholders at the opera. The streets of the town were frequently impassable; servants almost unknown; quiltings and church sociables noteworthy events.
Mrs. Thrift always wore a worried frown between her eyes. She took wife-and-motherhood hard. She would have thought herself unwifely and unmotherly to take them otherwise. She wore her frown about the house as she did her cap-badge of housewifeliness.
Lottie had too much humor and humaneness for the drab routine of schoolteaching; not enough hardness and aggressiveness for business; none of the creative spark that marks the genius in art. She was sympathetic without being sentimental; just and fair without being at all stern or forbidding.
Above all, she had the gift of listening. The kind of woman who is better looking at thirty-five than at twenty. The kind of woman who learns with living and who marries early or never.
Celia, who had been rather a haggard and faded fiancee of thirty-six, was now, by some magic process, a well-preserved and attractive young matron of thirty-six.
She represented a certain thwarted type of unwed woman in whom the sensual is expressed, pitifully enough, in terms of silk and lacy lingerie; in innuendo; in a hungry roving eye; in a little droop at the corners of the mouth; in an over-generous display of plump arms, or bosom, or even knees. Beck's married friends often took her with them in the evenings as a welcome third to relieve the tedium of a wedded tête-à-tête.
Look at me and my mother. We're always going around to summer resorts together. Just two pals!
'Don't tell me you're the mother of a big girl like that! Why, you look like sisters!' Big girl-me! That ought to have five chil-not that I want 'em ... now. But whenever I see one of those young mothers with her old daughter on a summer resort veranda, I want to go up to the tired old daughter and say, 'Listen, gal. Run away with the iceman, or join a circus, or take up barelegged dancing -anything to express yourself before it's too late.""
I said we were failures and we are because we've allowed some one or something to get the best of us-to pile up obstacles that we weren't big enough to tear down. We've all gone in for suffrage, and bleeding Belgium, and no petticoats, and uplift work, and we think we're modern. Well, we're not. We're a past generation. We're the unselfish softies. Watch the eighteen-year-olds. They've got the method. They're not afraid."
Sometimes she would realize that the three of them had sat almost through the meal without speaking. Lottie struggled to keep up the table talk. There was something sodden and deadly about these conversationless dinners.
You practically never do anything you really want to do. You're so nobly self-sacrificing that it's sickening. It's a weakness. It's a vice."
The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to families whose members see each other too often and know one another too well.
they came down the hall and into the living room, these two young things;these two beautiful young things. And suddenly the others in the room felt old - old and fat and futile and done with life.The very texture of their skin; the vitality of their vigorous hair as it sprang away in a fine line from their fore-heads; the liquid blue-white clearness of the eyeball; the poise of their slim bodies -was youth.
Gussie was of the class that never quite achieves one hundred dollars. Seventy-eighty-eighty-five-and then the dentist or doctor.
Her dead-and-gone great-grandmother-that hoopskirted, iron-stayed, Victorian lady all encased in linings, buckram, wool, wire, merino, and starch-would have swooned at the sight. Charley's garments were so few and scant. She wore, usually, three wispy garments, not counting shoes and stockings. She proceeded to don them now. First she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just below the knee. Above this a pair of scant knickers of jersey silk or muslin; a straight little shirt with straps over the shoulders or, sometimes, just a brassiere that bound the young breasts. Over this slight foundation went a slim scant frock of cloth. That was all.
They were well up on the small talk of the younger set-labor, socialism, sex, baseball, Freud, psychiatry, dancing and-just now-the war.
She knew the Jennie kind; Jennie in rebellion against a treadmill of working and eating and sleeping. Jennie, the grub, vainly trying to transform herself into Jeannette the butterfly. Excitement, life, admiration, pretty clothes, "a chance." That was what the Jeannettes vaguely desired: a chance.
"Fifty's the age! At fifty you haven't a figger any more than you have legs-except, of course, for purposes of locomotion. At fifty you can eat and drink what you like. Chocolate with whipped cream at four in the afternoon. Who cares! A second helping of dessert. It's a grand time of life. At fifty you don't wait for the telephone to ring. Will he call me! Won't he call me! A telephone's just a telephone at fifty-a convenience without a thrill to it. Nothing more can happen to you at fifty- if you've lived your life as you should. Here I sit, stays loosened, savoring life. I wouldn't change places with any young sprat I know."
The men I know are snuffy bachelors nearing fifty, or widowers with three children. I suppose there are men of about my own age who like the things I like; whose viewpoint is mine. But attractive men of thirty-five marry girls of twenty.
Girls. Sullen girls, bold girls, frightened girls. Girls who had never heard of the Ten Commandments and who had broken most of them. Girls who had not waited for the apple of life to drop ripe into their laps but had twisted it off the tree and bitten deep into the fruit and found the taste of gall in their mouths. Tear-stained, bedraggled, wretched girls; defiant girls; silk-clad, contemptuous, staring girls. Girls who had rehearsed their roles, prepared for stern justice in uniform. Girls who bristled with resentment against life, against law, against maternal authority. Between the girls in their sleazy silk stockings and the mothers in their shapeless shawls lay the rotten root of the trouble. New America and the Old World, out of sympathy with each other, uncomprehending, resentful.
I found this quote on JSTOR that explains better than I can the lack of respect she got.
Ferber was scorned both for being a woman and for being a Jew. A chorus of critical voices, most of them male dismissed Ferber’s crowd-pleasing plots as well as her hyperbolic, though accessible, writing style. F. Scott Fitzgerald refused even to read her wildly popular stories, derisively labeling her one of the ‘Yiddish descendants of O. Henry.’ In his 1960 Partisan Review essay “Masscult and Midcult,” Dwight Macdonald offered his notorious assessment of middlebrow writers, stating that their work “really isn’t culture at all” but “a parody of High Culture;” he placed Ferber at the top of his list of writers who should not be taken seriously. One hopes that these men, if they were still alive, would be embarrassed at having made such fatuous statements.
In this novel published in 1921, Ferber writes a sympathetic portrayal of three "spinsters" spanning three generations of one family. The women take center stage with the male characters playing the supportive roles that are usually held by female characters. The action takes place between 1860 and 1918 in Chicago. Chicago is really another character in the book. I don't really know the city well but if you do, then I imagine what a pleasure it would be getting glimpses of the city's development and growth.
I found the plot easy to follow and well paced. I read the book in 3 days, I kept looking for times to read it. The characters and their issues were very believable. I cared about the three leads and also thought Ferber did a good job of humanizing even the jerky characters like the controlling mothers and weasely suitors.
The dynamic of family life, where one daughter is doomed to stay single and caretake the older family members, is one I do not often see in novels. I guess that it is too "middlebrow" and unimportant for male writers and their focus on bullfighting and battles and booze. However, I found the subject matter so refreshing to read about and very relatable.
I was sure that Lottie, the middle aged spinster character, was a lesbian and the entire time was wondering if Farber would go there. Imagine my surprise when at the end of the novel she instead has Lottie give birth to an illegitimate baby! And the women in the family accept her and the baby! And she is not punished! Color me shocked. Seems pretty scandalous for back then. I do not see a male author of that generation writing that ending. She would die in childbirth. Or the baby would. Or she'd become a prostitute or die of TB or something. No way would it end with the three spinsters and the baby living happily ever after lol.
I wonder if Mother will want to go ... I do hope this once ...Here Lottie drew a deep breath; the kind of breathing that relieves stomach nerves. She was so sure that Mother would want to go. She almost always did.
We are prone to be impatient of black-silk figures, quite forgetting that they once were slim and eager white, young figures in hoopskirts that sometimes tilted perilously up behind, displaying an unseemly length of frilled pantalette.
Fifty-five years had yellowed the photograph of the wasp-waisted girl in the billowing riding skirt when her grand-niece, Charley Kemp, appeared before her in twentieth-century riding clothes: sleeveless jacket ending a little below the hips; breeches baggy in the seat but gripping the knees.
Chicago today is full of resentful grandsons and granddaughters who will tell you that if their grandsire had bought the southwest corner of State and Madison Streets for $2,050 in cash, as he could have, they would be worth their millions today.
The names of Chicago's firemen of 1838 or '40, if read aloud today, would sound like the annual list of boxholders at the opera. The streets of the town were frequently impassable; servants almost unknown; quiltings and church sociables noteworthy events.
Mrs. Thrift always wore a worried frown between her eyes. She took wife-and-motherhood hard. She would have thought herself unwifely and unmotherly to take them otherwise. She wore her frown about the house as she did her cap-badge of housewifeliness.
Lottie had too much humor and humaneness for the drab routine of schoolteaching; not enough hardness and aggressiveness for business; none of the creative spark that marks the genius in art. She was sympathetic without being sentimental; just and fair without being at all stern or forbidding.
Above all, she had the gift of listening. The kind of woman who is better looking at thirty-five than at twenty. The kind of woman who learns with living and who marries early or never.
Celia, who had been rather a haggard and faded fiancee of thirty-six, was now, by some magic process, a well-preserved and attractive young matron of thirty-six.
She represented a certain thwarted type of unwed woman in whom the sensual is expressed, pitifully enough, in terms of silk and lacy lingerie; in innuendo; in a hungry roving eye; in a little droop at the corners of the mouth; in an over-generous display of plump arms, or bosom, or even knees. Beck's married friends often took her with them in the evenings as a welcome third to relieve the tedium of a wedded tête-à-tête.
Look at me and my mother. We're always going around to summer resorts together. Just two pals!
'Don't tell me you're the mother of a big girl like that! Why, you look like sisters!' Big girl-me! That ought to have five chil-not that I want 'em ... now. But whenever I see one of those young mothers with her old daughter on a summer resort veranda, I want to go up to the tired old daughter and say, 'Listen, gal. Run away with the iceman, or join a circus, or take up barelegged dancing -anything to express yourself before it's too late.""
I said we were failures and we are because we've allowed some one or something to get the best of us-to pile up obstacles that we weren't big enough to tear down. We've all gone in for suffrage, and bleeding Belgium, and no petticoats, and uplift work, and we think we're modern. Well, we're not. We're a past generation. We're the unselfish softies. Watch the eighteen-year-olds. They've got the method. They're not afraid."
Sometimes she would realize that the three of them had sat almost through the meal without speaking. Lottie struggled to keep up the table talk. There was something sodden and deadly about these conversationless dinners.
You practically never do anything you really want to do. You're so nobly self-sacrificing that it's sickening. It's a weakness. It's a vice."
The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to families whose members see each other too often and know one another too well.
they came down the hall and into the living room, these two young things;these two beautiful young things. And suddenly the others in the room felt old - old and fat and futile and done with life.The very texture of their skin; the vitality of their vigorous hair as it sprang away in a fine line from their fore-heads; the liquid blue-white clearness of the eyeball; the poise of their slim bodies -was youth.
Gussie was of the class that never quite achieves one hundred dollars. Seventy-eighty-eighty-five-and then the dentist or doctor.
Her dead-and-gone great-grandmother-that hoopskirted, iron-stayed, Victorian lady all encased in linings, buckram, wool, wire, merino, and starch-would have swooned at the sight. Charley's garments were so few and scant. She wore, usually, three wispy garments, not counting shoes and stockings. She proceeded to don them now. First she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just below the knee. Above this a pair of scant knickers of jersey silk or muslin; a straight little shirt with straps over the shoulders or, sometimes, just a brassiere that bound the young breasts. Over this slight foundation went a slim scant frock of cloth. That was all.
They were well up on the small talk of the younger set-labor, socialism, sex, baseball, Freud, psychiatry, dancing and-just now-the war.
She knew the Jennie kind; Jennie in rebellion against a treadmill of working and eating and sleeping. Jennie, the grub, vainly trying to transform herself into Jeannette the butterfly. Excitement, life, admiration, pretty clothes, "a chance." That was what the Jeannettes vaguely desired: a chance.
"Fifty's the age! At fifty you haven't a figger any more than you have legs-except, of course, for purposes of locomotion. At fifty you can eat and drink what you like. Chocolate with whipped cream at four in the afternoon. Who cares! A second helping of dessert. It's a grand time of life. At fifty you don't wait for the telephone to ring. Will he call me! Won't he call me! A telephone's just a telephone at fifty-a convenience without a thrill to it. Nothing more can happen to you at fifty- if you've lived your life as you should. Here I sit, stays loosened, savoring life. I wouldn't change places with any young sprat I know."
The men I know are snuffy bachelors nearing fifty, or widowers with three children. I suppose there are men of about my own age who like the things I like; whose viewpoint is mine. But attractive men of thirty-five marry girls of twenty.
Girls. Sullen girls, bold girls, frightened girls. Girls who had never heard of the Ten Commandments and who had broken most of them. Girls who had not waited for the apple of life to drop ripe into their laps but had twisted it off the tree and bitten deep into the fruit and found the taste of gall in their mouths. Tear-stained, bedraggled, wretched girls; defiant girls; silk-clad, contemptuous, staring girls. Girls who had rehearsed their roles, prepared for stern justice in uniform. Girls who bristled with resentment against life, against law, against maternal authority. Between the girls in their sleazy silk stockings and the mothers in their shapeless shawls lay the rotten root of the trouble. New America and the Old World, out of sympathy with each other, uncomprehending, resentful.
April 7, 2013
This book was published in 1921 and I found it an amazing work of art by novelist Edna Ferber. It is a simple yet epic tale of three generations of Thrift women living in south Chicago and spans the era from the Civil War through World War I. It is a straight forward depiction of family dynamics with superb character development; nothing convoluted or contrived, nothing unbelieveable, no gratuitous sex or language.
Great Aunt Charlotte, sister to Lottie's mother, aunt to Lottie and great aunt to Charley; Lottie, sister to Charley's mother, Charley's aunt; and Charley, niece of Lottie and great niece of Charlotte are all spinsters who struggle with domineering mothers who rule or try to control their lives. Three women who each discover love, but war or a medling mother puts an end to their romance and each must learn to live with their heartache. Three women who care for and support one another with a love that neither binds nor demands.
Yet, more than a tale of three family members all named Charlotte, it's the universal truth of that time and culture. Ferber includes the racial, religious and gender bias of the period in addition to the demanding, demeaning and disabling actions of formidable mothers. She explores the fine line between daughters who are afraid, unwilling, or disabled in taking control of their own lives and the epectations of family duty: daughter's sacrificing their hopes and dreams to remain at home to care for other family members, an expectation so prevalent at this time.
The Girls is one of the best books I've read in some time.
January 15, 2023
2.5 stars. Edna Ferber wrote or co-wrote some really classic plays and movies years ago such as Showboat, Giant, Stage Door, Saratoga & Dinner At eight. I’ve watched many of these multiple times and loved them.
There’s a new edition being released of this novel, THE GIRLS, and I felt now was the time to read it. I was not prepared for the really uncomfortable, cringey, racist tropes spread throughout the book. This was unacceptable to me. I had initially given this book 3 stars for the strong writing but I’m changing that to a 2. Despicable!
There’s a new edition being released of this novel, THE GIRLS, and I felt now was the time to read it. I was not prepared for the really uncomfortable, cringey, racist tropes spread throughout the book. This was unacceptable to me. I had initially given this book 3 stars for the strong writing but I’m changing that to a 2. Despicable!
June 6, 2023
@beltpub out of #Cleveland reissues what might be considered "missed classics." Here is The Girls by Edna Ferber (1885-1968) who is more known for her books "So Big" and "Giant."
This is a Chicago Book, told from the POVs of three generations of women named Charlotte. They are outspoken and fiercely individual, and this book is rolling its eyes and laughing in the corner at all the attention that goes to "The Adventures of Augie March." Here is where all the women have been. And guess what? Even in 1917, when the book is set, women lived and spoke and thought their own way.
This is a Chicago Book, told from the POVs of three generations of women named Charlotte. They are outspoken and fiercely individual, and this book is rolling its eyes and laughing in the corner at all the attention that goes to "The Adventures of Augie March." Here is where all the women have been. And guess what? Even in 1917, when the book is set, women lived and spoke and thought their own way.
May 5, 2025
So good. Written over 100 years ago but still has a very modern voice. I felt this way about So Big too. Three unmarried women of different generations, spanning the Civil War to World War I.
February 4, 2023
Outstanding. Barely dated even though published in 1921. Wonderful writing and excellent strong female characters.
April 6, 2023
I hunted down a lovely 1921 hardcover copy of The Girls after reading a delightful piece about Edna Ferber in JSTOR. In this lovely tale of three Charlottes- Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and her niece Charley- Ferber shows us the slowly-progressing attitudes about 'old maids' from the Civil War through WWI, while telling us a lot about life in Chicago during the same period. Casual misogyny is a given, and the equally casual racism and classism, though painful, shine a glaring light on the period. What truly shines, though, is the wit and strength of these three women, each finding some level of joy within their socially-shunned singledom. I really enjoyed this, and think it's a book of quiet power for all the single ladies who are perfectly happy with their lot. Cheers to the Charlottes!
Favorite excerpts:
"Lottie, hospitable by nature, welcomed dinner guests; but she rather dreaded these Friday nights. There was so little spontaneity about them, and so much of family frankness."
"When they don't know what else to do they pull your teeth. They pull your teeth for everything from backache to diabetes, And when it doesn't help they say 'Pardon me. My mistake,' and there you are without your teeth and with your aches. Fads!"
"...a trim, well set-up figure, neatly articulated, hips flat and well back; bust and low and firm; legs sturdy and serviceable, and calf high and not too prominent."
"You saw that her stockings were rolled neatly and expertly just below knees as bare and hardy as a Highlander's." "First she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just below the knee. This cuff she then twisted deftly round, caught the slack of it, twisted that rope-like, caught the twist neatly under the fold, rolled the fold down tight and hard three inches below the knee and left it there, an ingenious silken bracelet." [I have pictures of my grandmother wearing this style!]
"Reading a newspaper after you've finished with it is like getting the news three days stale. No flavor to it."
"She always did flappy things in a room where you happened to be breakfasting, or writing, or reading; things at which you could not express annoyance and yet which annoyed you to the point of frenzy."
"She was seen daily at hotel tea rooms in company with pallid and incredibly slim youths of the lizard type, their hair as glittering as their boots; lynx-eyed; exhaling a last hasty puff of cigarette smoke as they rose from the table for the next dance..."
"'What do you need to make you happy, Lottie?'
Lottie did not hesitate a moment.
'Work that's congenial; books; music occasionally; a picnic in the woods a five-mile hike; a well-fitted suit; a thirteen-dollar corset..."
"Bairnsfather's drawings had already achieved a popularity in America. Charley hung between laughter and tears when Jesse struck a pose and said, 'Alf.'"
"She knew, too, that the instinct that made her want to send her man to war was a thing of low derivation and yet terribly human."
"Proximity proved him moist, soft, and protuberant."
"Mail Man was a chromic individual, his grayish hair blending into the grayish uniform above which his grayish face rose almost indefinably. He was lopsided from much service."
Favorite excerpts:
"Lottie, hospitable by nature, welcomed dinner guests; but she rather dreaded these Friday nights. There was so little spontaneity about them, and so much of family frankness."
"When they don't know what else to do they pull your teeth. They pull your teeth for everything from backache to diabetes, And when it doesn't help they say 'Pardon me. My mistake,' and there you are without your teeth and with your aches. Fads!"
"...a trim, well set-up figure, neatly articulated, hips flat and well back; bust and low and firm; legs sturdy and serviceable, and calf high and not too prominent."
"You saw that her stockings were rolled neatly and expertly just below knees as bare and hardy as a Highlander's." "First she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just below the knee. This cuff she then twisted deftly round, caught the slack of it, twisted that rope-like, caught the twist neatly under the fold, rolled the fold down tight and hard three inches below the knee and left it there, an ingenious silken bracelet." [I have pictures of my grandmother wearing this style!]
"Reading a newspaper after you've finished with it is like getting the news three days stale. No flavor to it."
"She always did flappy things in a room where you happened to be breakfasting, or writing, or reading; things at which you could not express annoyance and yet which annoyed you to the point of frenzy."
"She was seen daily at hotel tea rooms in company with pallid and incredibly slim youths of the lizard type, their hair as glittering as their boots; lynx-eyed; exhaling a last hasty puff of cigarette smoke as they rose from the table for the next dance..."
"'What do you need to make you happy, Lottie?'
Lottie did not hesitate a moment.
'Work that's congenial; books; music occasionally; a picnic in the woods a five-mile hike; a well-fitted suit; a thirteen-dollar corset..."
"Bairnsfather's drawings had already achieved a popularity in America. Charley hung between laughter and tears when Jesse struck a pose and said, 'Alf.'"
"She knew, too, that the instinct that made her want to send her man to war was a thing of low derivation and yet terribly human."
"Proximity proved him moist, soft, and protuberant."
"Mail Man was a chromic individual, his grayish hair blending into the grayish uniform above which his grayish face rose almost indefinably. He was lopsided from much service."
October 4, 2024
What a wonderful look at Chicago's history from the fictional family of the Thrifts. The relationships between the maiden Great-Aunt, Aunt, and Niece are wonderful. There is a feminist element as it examines the role of women and especially women remain unmarried. The dialog is sharp and funny and there are wonderful quotable lines. It shows how much Ferber knew the southside and that she kept in touch with Chicago throughout her career. Our group really loved the book and appreciated the clear narrative and engaging characters.
February 13, 2025
This is my first Edna Ferber novel and it won't be the last. I really enjoy early-twentieth century classics. This one is set in Chicago and ranges from the Civil War era to just after the Great War. It focuses on three women, all named Charlotte. The themes are all about loyalty to self, loyalty to others, and how to find yourself amid all the expectations around you. I plan to read more by this author.
October 17, 2023
I wanted to like this more than I did. I think it’s because sometimes I struggle with reading books not written in contemporary times. The sentence structures, etc. have a hard time bringing me in. Though I did really enjoy the premise of the three Charlottes, and their relationship as great-aunt, aunt, and niece. It was a good picture into life of unmarried women in the early 20th century.
Want to Read
March 13, 2023I learned of this book via
https://bookjotter.com/2023/03/11/win...
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-girl...
https://bookjotter.com/2023/03/11/win...
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-girl...
April 9, 2023
I didnt realize this book was published around 1920 💀but it was cool to see similar themes to modern america but got a little slow
August 19, 2024
there came a soft look into the dark eyes beneath the heavy black brows. from the vantage point of her years and experience she pronounced upon her sex. "women are wonderful, lottie," she said. "just wonderful. a good thing for the race that men aren't like 'em. in self-control, i mean, and that. wouldn't be any race, reckon."
the perfect book exists and it's the 1921 novel the girls by edna ferber <333 going to be recommending this one to every girl and woman i know for the rest of my life!
the perfect book exists and it's the 1921 novel the girls by edna ferber <333 going to be recommending this one to every girl and woman i know for the rest of my life!
April 6, 2016
So far the books I've read by this author haven't disappointed me yet.
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