Book Review: The Hired Girl
Jul. 15th, 2022 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI liked Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! so much that I picked up her book The Hired Girl more or less sight unseen.
Fortunately it turned out to be wonderful, too. Our heroine, Joan Skraggs, is a bright but imperfected educated fourteen-year-old farmgirl, whose favorite teacher has given her three books for her personal library: Jane Eyre, Ivanhoe, and Dombey and Sons. The book is in the form of Joan’s diary, and she writes exactly the kind of breathless, occasionally-attempting-to-be-hifalutin style that you would expect for a girl who has practically lived in those three books.
After her father forces her to quit school, Joan runs away from home and ends up as a hired girl in a Jewish household in Baltimore. Joan herself is Catholic, and everything she knows about Jews comes from Ivanhoe. The book does a wonderful job exploring Joan’s increasing knowledge of the Jewish world of early twentieth-century America (her employers, the Rosenbachs, are Reform Jews who sometimes serve oysters, but draw the line at pork), as well as her own Catholic faith. Detailed, nuanced, never info-dumpy: really an excellent example of historical fiction engaging with religion in an engaging and respectful way.
Likewise, everything Joan knows about service comes from Jane Eyre. (She even introduces herself under the false name “Janet,” a pet name Rochester sometimes uses for Jane. She also informs them that she is eighteen.) Inevitably, she gets a little crush on Solly, the eldest son who first brought her to the house, then Moritz, the master of the house, and then finally on David, the youngest son, a budding artist, who wants her to model for a painting of Joan of Arc.
The religious and romantic plotlines collide after David kisses Joan, at which point Joan (deeply sheltered) thinks they are basically engaged, except!! He is Jewish, and she is Catholic, and neither of them can convert (she goes to church and prays really hard about it and gets the answer she does not want), so they can never marry!
This culminates in Joan going to David’s room, at midnight, sobbing, to explain to him that they can never wed! But NEVER FEAR, she has found a way forward for their love! Since he is going to France to study Art, she can run away to Paris with him so they can live in sin!!!
David, a cad, but not that much of a cad: Oh no.
At which point the ENTIRE FAMILY wakes up. They stand around outside of David’s bedroom struggling to decide whether they are madder at Joan or David, until the youngest daughter Mirele (who has been reading Joan’s diary for Vengeance ever since Joan told Mr. Rosenbach that Mirele was nearsighted, which meant vain Mirele had to get glasses) informs them that Joan is in fact fourteen, at which point the family coalesces on Team Joan and packs David off to relatives in New York to Think About What He Did. (He does end up going to Paris afterward, where he probably causes problems for some grisettes but is at least out of Joan’s hair.)
Meanwhile, Joan, whose brilliance everyone has noticed, gets a scholarship to the new school that Moritz Rosenbach and friends have founded. It’s supposed to be fifty-fifty Jewish-Gentile and they’re short Gentiles, and here Joan is! Just standing around being a Gentile and brilliant and everything! Happy end for everyone. Really just a delightful book.
Fortunately it turned out to be wonderful, too. Our heroine, Joan Skraggs, is a bright but imperfected educated fourteen-year-old farmgirl, whose favorite teacher has given her three books for her personal library: Jane Eyre, Ivanhoe, and Dombey and Sons. The book is in the form of Joan’s diary, and she writes exactly the kind of breathless, occasionally-attempting-to-be-hifalutin style that you would expect for a girl who has practically lived in those three books.
After her father forces her to quit school, Joan runs away from home and ends up as a hired girl in a Jewish household in Baltimore. Joan herself is Catholic, and everything she knows about Jews comes from Ivanhoe. The book does a wonderful job exploring Joan’s increasing knowledge of the Jewish world of early twentieth-century America (her employers, the Rosenbachs, are Reform Jews who sometimes serve oysters, but draw the line at pork), as well as her own Catholic faith. Detailed, nuanced, never info-dumpy: really an excellent example of historical fiction engaging with religion in an engaging and respectful way.
Likewise, everything Joan knows about service comes from Jane Eyre. (She even introduces herself under the false name “Janet,” a pet name Rochester sometimes uses for Jane. She also informs them that she is eighteen.) Inevitably, she gets a little crush on Solly, the eldest son who first brought her to the house, then Moritz, the master of the house, and then finally on David, the youngest son, a budding artist, who wants her to model for a painting of Joan of Arc.
The religious and romantic plotlines collide after David kisses Joan, at which point Joan (deeply sheltered) thinks they are basically engaged, except!! He is Jewish, and she is Catholic, and neither of them can convert (she goes to church and prays really hard about it and gets the answer she does not want), so they can never marry!
This culminates in Joan going to David’s room, at midnight, sobbing, to explain to him that they can never wed! But NEVER FEAR, she has found a way forward for their love! Since he is going to France to study Art, she can run away to Paris with him so they can live in sin!!!
David, a cad, but not that much of a cad: Oh no.
At which point the ENTIRE FAMILY wakes up. They stand around outside of David’s bedroom struggling to decide whether they are madder at Joan or David, until the youngest daughter Mirele (who has been reading Joan’s diary for Vengeance ever since Joan told Mr. Rosenbach that Mirele was nearsighted, which meant vain Mirele had to get glasses) informs them that Joan is in fact fourteen, at which point the family coalesces on Team Joan and packs David off to relatives in New York to Think About What He Did. (He does end up going to Paris afterward, where he probably causes problems for some grisettes but is at least out of Joan’s hair.)
Meanwhile, Joan, whose brilliance everyone has noticed, gets a scholarship to the new school that Moritz Rosenbach and friends have founded. It’s supposed to be fifty-fifty Jewish-Gentile and they’re short Gentiles, and here Joan is! Just standing around being a Gentile and brilliant and everything! Happy end for everyone. Really just a delightful book.
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Date: 2022-07-15 12:08 pm (UTC)(Also aww, I remember reading Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! as a kid.)
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Date: 2022-07-15 03:57 pm (UTC)I was cringing so hard over the David plotline, but mainly because I saw my fourteen-year-old self in Joan!
I think you would also love Schlitz's A Drowned Maiden's Hair, and look forward to seeing what you have to say about if you read it!
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Date: 2022-07-15 04:36 pm (UTC)I am very slowly working my way through Schlitz's work, so I will read it eventually... but there are a lot of things ahead of it on the list.
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Date: 2022-07-16 01:36 pm (UTC)How old is David? I recently finished a novel that I liked a lot, but I had problems with a couple of aspects of it, and one was something involving an older youth--probably nineteen or so? Having Sexy Thoughts about a fifteen-year-old. And I mean. That's just real life; I know it happens! But it made me kind of uncomfortable. ... I don't know, boundaries are weird and arbitrary ... but not entirely arbitrary.
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