TGFM Is Suddenly In Another Book
When Elizabeth lay down to rest that night, with Lizzie still chattering by her side, she found that there was one source of intense pleasure in anticipation, and that was the prospect of going to God's house to Christian Endeavor.
But that's not what we get, which is kinda too bad since I could take another chance for GLH to engage in writing about church services in exchange for some action. What we get is Elizabeth getting an old dress fitted over and borrowing some clothes and getting a job at a department store.
WHAT.
The novel-reading, theatre-going girls rallied around her to a girl; and the young men in the store were not far behind. Elizabeth was popular from the first. Moreover, as she settled down into the routine of life, and had three meals every day, her cheeks began to round out just a little; and it became apparent that she was unusually beautiful in spite of her dark skin, which whitened gradually under the electric light and high-pressure life of the store.
I think this is interesting because high pressure is making her paler. GLH thinks it makes her more attractive. But it's not regarded as, completely, a good thing. Also GLH knows another little touch I want to know: what happened with the horse?
Robin, poor beast, was well housed and well fed; but he worked for his living as did his mistress. He was a grocer's delivery horse, worked from Monday morning early till Saturday night at ten o'clock, subject to curses and kicks from the grocery boy, expected to stand meekly at the curbstones, snuffing the dusty brick pavements while the boy delivered a box of goods, and while trolleys and beer-wagons and automobiles slammed and rumbled and tooted by him, and then to start on the double-quick to the next stopping-place.
I'd freak about about the Monday-morning-to-Saturday-night thing, but quite honestly I think this horse can gallop laps of the city in its sleep. But since TGFM whipped across a number of states in a way that left the villains of this piece in the distance, we're in a familiar dreary stretch: the plot appears to have puttered out and someone is going to have to do something bad in order to kick off the next bit. So... um... anyone at hand will do, really.
One day, one dreadful day, the manager of the ten-cent store came to Elizabeth with a look in his eyes that reminded her of the man in Montana from whom she had fled. He was smiling, and his words were unduly pleasant. He wanted her to go with him to the theatre that evening, and he complimented her on her appearance. He stated that he admired her exceedingly, and wanted to give her pleasure. But somehow Elizabeth had fallen into the habit ever since she left the prairies of comparing all men with George Trescott Benedict; and this man, although he dressed well, and was every bit as handsome, did not compare well. There was a sinister, selfish glitter in his eyes that made Elizabeth think of the serpent on the plain just before she shot it. Therefore Elizabeth declined the invitation.
Undue pleasantries! Help!
It happened that there was a missionary meeting at the church that evening. All the Christian Endeavorers had been urged to attend. Elizabeth gave this as an excuse; but the manager quickly swept that away, saying she could go to church any night, but she could not go to this particular play with him always. The girl eyed him calmly with much the same attitude with which she might have pointed her pistol at his head, and said gravely, "But I do not want to go with you."
Woah, it's a good thing that she doesn't have those pistols. Still a leeetle trigger-happy there, Bess.
After that the manager hated her. He always hated girls who resisted him. He hated her, and wanted to do her harm. But he fairly persecuted her to receive his attentions.
So now we get another offhand reveal of a great demon of the time: workplace sexual harassment. It really does get kind of harrowing how GLH mentions "oh, and something like this would happen to women and there's nothing to be done about it" so casually.
She grew paler and paler, and more and more desperate. She had run away from one man; she had run away from a woman; but here was a man from whom she could not run away unless she gave up her position. If it had not been for her grandmother, she would have done so at once; but, if she gave up her position, she would be thrown upon her grandmother for support, and that must not be.
GLH underestimates her heroine, I think. The woman can relocate her life from Montana to Philadelphia with less effort than it takes some people to redecorate a room. Anyway, GLH also dithers about why Elizabeth hasn't managed to get any classes yet, which she dearly wants. And then we get more workplace sexual harassment:
One morning-it was little more than a week before Christmas-Elizabeth had been sent to the cellar to get seven little red tin pails and shovels for a woman who wanted them for Christmas gifts for some Sunday-school class. She had just counted out the requisite number and turned to go up-stairs when she heard some one step near her, and, as she looked up in the dim light, there stood the manager.
"At last I've got you alone, Bessie, my dear!" He said it with suave triumph in his tones. He caught Elizabeth by the wrists, and before she could wrench herself away he had kissed her.
I can't decide if I want HELLO! back yet or not. Well, it's up to Elizabeth to handle this:
With a scream Elizabeth dropped the seven tin pails and the seven tin shovels, and with one mighty wrench took her hands from his grasp. Instinctively her hand went to her belt, where were now no pistols. If one had been there she certainly would have shot him in her horror and fury. But, as she had no other weapon, she seized a little shovel, and struck him in the face. Then with the frenzy of the desert back upon her she rushed up the stairs, out through the crowded store, and into the street, hatless and coatless in the cold December air.
Well, she's now brought her Romance Heroine Ponders Shooting Man count to three. If we open the field a little more and count the women in Chicago, she's got a tally of eight people she's thought about blowing right out of their shoes. However, I don't know what she's doing hitting him with a toy shovel. I would have thought she'd heave up and swing a whole display stand or something. If they'd been in Gardening he'd be dead. She is now without her money, so she jogs three miles home.
She paused not, but fled on in a steady run, for which her years on the mountain had given her breath. Three miles it was to Flora Street, and she scarcely slackened her pace after she had settled into that steady half-run, half-walk. Only at the corner of Flora Street she paused, and allowed herself to glance back once
But the manager is not a mountain man and has not pursued her. So off she goes to tell her grandmother she can no longer work in that store, worrying as she does that she's also gotten Lizzie fired.
This chapter is suddenly titled ELIZABETH'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE so it had better take an uptick.
"It's that awful man, grandmother!" Elizabeth sobbed out.
"What man? That feller in Montana you run away from?" The grandmother sat up with snapping eyes. She was not afraid of a man, even if he did shoot people. She would call in the police and protect her own flesh and blood. Let him come. Mrs. Brady was ready for him.
"No, no, grandmother, the man-man-manager at the ten-cent store," sobbed the girl; "he kissed me! Oh!" and she shuddered as if the memory was the most terrible thing that ever came to her.
She started out the book being intensely physically threatened in a long interview with her brother's murderer, who she talked into going away. I'm feeling kind of let down here.
"Fer the land sakes! Is that all?" said the woman with much relief and a degree of satisfaction. "Why, that's nothing. You ought to be proud. Many a girl would go boasting round about that. What are you crying for? He didn't hurt you, did he? Why, Lizzie seems to think he's fine. I tell you Lizzie wouldn't cry if he was to kiss her, I'm sure. She'd just laugh, and ask him fer a holiday. Here, sit up, child, and wash your face, and go back to your work. You've evidently struck the manager on the right side, and you're bound to get a rise in your wages. Every girl he takes a notion to gets up and does well..."
That helps a little, because it reminds me that her big problem is a world that's still functionally against her. But not quite enough. So the grandmother pushes her to go back and make nice with the manager, since somehow Elizabeth left out the part where she took a jolly good try at braining him.
"Grandmother!" said Elizabeth. "Don't! I can never go back to that awful place and that man. I would rather go back to Montana. I would rather be dead."
"Hoity-toity!" said the easy-going grandmother, sitting down to her task, for she perceived some wholesome discipline was necessary. "You can't talk that way, Bess. You got to go to your work. We ain't got money to keep you in idleness, and land knows where you'd get another place as good's this one. Ef you stay home all day, you might make him awful mad; and then it would be no use goin' back, and you might lose Lizzie her place too."
But something she has said (she's said a lot of things, I've been trimming,) catches Bess' attention.
"Is my grandmother living yet?" asked Elizabeth. She was sorry for this grandmother, but did not know what to say. She was afraid to comfort her lest she take it for yielding.
"Yes, they say she is," said Mrs. Brady, sitting up with a show of interest. She was always ready for a bit of gossip. "Her husband's dead, and her other son's dead, and she's all alone. She lives in a big house on Rittenhouse Square. If she was any 'count, she'd ought to provide fer you. I never thought about it. But I don't suppose it would be any use to try. You might ask her. Perhaps she'd help you go to school. You've got a claim on her. She ought to give you her son's share of his father's property, though I've heard she disowned him when he married our Bess. You might fix up in some of Lizzie's best things, and go up there and try. She might give you some money."
"I don't want her money," said Elizabeth stiffly. "I guess there's work somewhere in the world I can do without begging even of grandmothers. But I think I ought to go and see her. She might want to know about father."
There is a temporary lull. Lizzie comes home:
Elizabeth felt disapproval in the air. Aunt Nan came, and sat down beside her, and talked very coldly about expenses and being dependent upon one's relatives, and let her understand thoroughly that she could not sit around and do nothing; but Elizabeth answered by telling her how the manager had been treating her. The aunt then gave her a dose of worldly wisdom, which made the girl shrink into herself. It needed only Lizzie's loud-voiced exhortations to add to her misery and make her feel ready to do anything. Supper was a most unpleasant meal. At last the grandmother spoke up.
"Well, Bessie," she said firmly, "we've decided, all of us, that, if you are going to be stubborn about this, something will have to be done; and I think the best thing is for you to go to Mrs. Bailey and see what she'll do for you. It's her business, anyway."
If you think about it, she's sort of fallen into another den of prostitution, here. They're basically telling her to go back and pretend to like being forced to accept a man's attentions and courtship so she can get paid for it. I don't think it's dawned on GLH, probably because it's too big a problem.
Lizzie was up early the next morning. She had agreed to put Elizabeth in battle-array for her visit... Elizabeth submitted meekly to her borrowed adornings. Her hair was brushed over her face, and curled on a hot iron, and brushed backward in a perfect mat, and then puffed out in a bigger pompadour than usual. The silk waist was put on with Lizzie's best skirt, and she was adjured not to let that drag. Then the best hat with the cheap pink plumes was set atop the elaborate coiffure; the jacket was put on; and a pair of Lizzie's long silk gloves were struggled into. They were a trite large when on, but to the hands unaccustomed to gloves they were like being run into a mould.
So I have no idea what this looks like, but it sounds "overdressed." Lizzie hits with one more bit of news:
She said she had heard there was a variety show in town where they wanted a girl who could shoot. If she didn't succeed with her grandmother, they would try and get her in at the show. The girls at the store knew a man who had charge of it. They said he liked pretty girls, and they thought would be glad to get her.
WHY WERE WE AT THE DEPARTMENT-STORE ALL THAT TIME. LOOK HOW INTERESTING THAT SOUNDS. I actually was near an anguished wail when I hit that. Bess would be a star, she'd get more money, and she'd actually have her guns around. Everything is more interesting when Bess has her guns. That could be more sexual harasssment on the horizon, but a pretty girl would be more likely to get a part n a show than a plain one, so it could have been worth a shot. (And shot he would be if he harasses her while she's armed.) Anyway, Elizabeth rearrays herself by taking off all the weird stuff, putting on her travel clothes, putting on her guns, putting her hair in a braid, and going off to see her other grandmother.
And then she goes and gets her horse back so she can ride instead of walking.
So basically, we just spent a chapter fixing where this book broke down. Are we now back in awesome?
But that's not what we get, which is kinda too bad since I could take another chance for GLH to engage in writing about church services in exchange for some action. What we get is Elizabeth getting an old dress fitted over and borrowing some clothes and getting a job at a department store.
WHAT.
The novel-reading, theatre-going girls rallied around her to a girl; and the young men in the store were not far behind. Elizabeth was popular from the first. Moreover, as she settled down into the routine of life, and had three meals every day, her cheeks began to round out just a little; and it became apparent that she was unusually beautiful in spite of her dark skin, which whitened gradually under the electric light and high-pressure life of the store.
I think this is interesting because high pressure is making her paler. GLH thinks it makes her more attractive. But it's not regarded as, completely, a good thing. Also GLH knows another little touch I want to know: what happened with the horse?
Robin, poor beast, was well housed and well fed; but he worked for his living as did his mistress. He was a grocer's delivery horse, worked from Monday morning early till Saturday night at ten o'clock, subject to curses and kicks from the grocery boy, expected to stand meekly at the curbstones, snuffing the dusty brick pavements while the boy delivered a box of goods, and while trolleys and beer-wagons and automobiles slammed and rumbled and tooted by him, and then to start on the double-quick to the next stopping-place.
I'd freak about about the Monday-morning-to-Saturday-night thing, but quite honestly I think this horse can gallop laps of the city in its sleep. But since TGFM whipped across a number of states in a way that left the villains of this piece in the distance, we're in a familiar dreary stretch: the plot appears to have puttered out and someone is going to have to do something bad in order to kick off the next bit. So... um... anyone at hand will do, really.
One day, one dreadful day, the manager of the ten-cent store came to Elizabeth with a look in his eyes that reminded her of the man in Montana from whom she had fled. He was smiling, and his words were unduly pleasant. He wanted her to go with him to the theatre that evening, and he complimented her on her appearance. He stated that he admired her exceedingly, and wanted to give her pleasure. But somehow Elizabeth had fallen into the habit ever since she left the prairies of comparing all men with George Trescott Benedict; and this man, although he dressed well, and was every bit as handsome, did not compare well. There was a sinister, selfish glitter in his eyes that made Elizabeth think of the serpent on the plain just before she shot it. Therefore Elizabeth declined the invitation.
Undue pleasantries! Help!
It happened that there was a missionary meeting at the church that evening. All the Christian Endeavorers had been urged to attend. Elizabeth gave this as an excuse; but the manager quickly swept that away, saying she could go to church any night, but she could not go to this particular play with him always. The girl eyed him calmly with much the same attitude with which she might have pointed her pistol at his head, and said gravely, "But I do not want to go with you."
Woah, it's a good thing that she doesn't have those pistols. Still a leeetle trigger-happy there, Bess.
After that the manager hated her. He always hated girls who resisted him. He hated her, and wanted to do her harm. But he fairly persecuted her to receive his attentions.
So now we get another offhand reveal of a great demon of the time: workplace sexual harassment. It really does get kind of harrowing how GLH mentions "oh, and something like this would happen to women and there's nothing to be done about it" so casually.
She grew paler and paler, and more and more desperate. She had run away from one man; she had run away from a woman; but here was a man from whom she could not run away unless she gave up her position. If it had not been for her grandmother, she would have done so at once; but, if she gave up her position, she would be thrown upon her grandmother for support, and that must not be.
GLH underestimates her heroine, I think. The woman can relocate her life from Montana to Philadelphia with less effort than it takes some people to redecorate a room. Anyway, GLH also dithers about why Elizabeth hasn't managed to get any classes yet, which she dearly wants. And then we get more workplace sexual harassment:
One morning-it was little more than a week before Christmas-Elizabeth had been sent to the cellar to get seven little red tin pails and shovels for a woman who wanted them for Christmas gifts for some Sunday-school class. She had just counted out the requisite number and turned to go up-stairs when she heard some one step near her, and, as she looked up in the dim light, there stood the manager.
"At last I've got you alone, Bessie, my dear!" He said it with suave triumph in his tones. He caught Elizabeth by the wrists, and before she could wrench herself away he had kissed her.
I can't decide if I want HELLO! back yet or not. Well, it's up to Elizabeth to handle this:
With a scream Elizabeth dropped the seven tin pails and the seven tin shovels, and with one mighty wrench took her hands from his grasp. Instinctively her hand went to her belt, where were now no pistols. If one had been there she certainly would have shot him in her horror and fury. But, as she had no other weapon, she seized a little shovel, and struck him in the face. Then with the frenzy of the desert back upon her she rushed up the stairs, out through the crowded store, and into the street, hatless and coatless in the cold December air.
Well, she's now brought her Romance Heroine Ponders Shooting Man count to three. If we open the field a little more and count the women in Chicago, she's got a tally of eight people she's thought about blowing right out of their shoes. However, I don't know what she's doing hitting him with a toy shovel. I would have thought she'd heave up and swing a whole display stand or something. If they'd been in Gardening he'd be dead. She is now without her money, so she jogs three miles home.
She paused not, but fled on in a steady run, for which her years on the mountain had given her breath. Three miles it was to Flora Street, and she scarcely slackened her pace after she had settled into that steady half-run, half-walk. Only at the corner of Flora Street she paused, and allowed herself to glance back once
But the manager is not a mountain man and has not pursued her. So off she goes to tell her grandmother she can no longer work in that store, worrying as she does that she's also gotten Lizzie fired.
This chapter is suddenly titled ELIZABETH'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE so it had better take an uptick.
"It's that awful man, grandmother!" Elizabeth sobbed out.
"What man? That feller in Montana you run away from?" The grandmother sat up with snapping eyes. She was not afraid of a man, even if he did shoot people. She would call in the police and protect her own flesh and blood. Let him come. Mrs. Brady was ready for him.
"No, no, grandmother, the man-man-manager at the ten-cent store," sobbed the girl; "he kissed me! Oh!" and she shuddered as if the memory was the most terrible thing that ever came to her.
She started out the book being intensely physically threatened in a long interview with her brother's murderer, who she talked into going away. I'm feeling kind of let down here.
"Fer the land sakes! Is that all?" said the woman with much relief and a degree of satisfaction. "Why, that's nothing. You ought to be proud. Many a girl would go boasting round about that. What are you crying for? He didn't hurt you, did he? Why, Lizzie seems to think he's fine. I tell you Lizzie wouldn't cry if he was to kiss her, I'm sure. She'd just laugh, and ask him fer a holiday. Here, sit up, child, and wash your face, and go back to your work. You've evidently struck the manager on the right side, and you're bound to get a rise in your wages. Every girl he takes a notion to gets up and does well..."
That helps a little, because it reminds me that her big problem is a world that's still functionally against her. But not quite enough. So the grandmother pushes her to go back and make nice with the manager, since somehow Elizabeth left out the part where she took a jolly good try at braining him.
"Grandmother!" said Elizabeth. "Don't! I can never go back to that awful place and that man. I would rather go back to Montana. I would rather be dead."
"Hoity-toity!" said the easy-going grandmother, sitting down to her task, for she perceived some wholesome discipline was necessary. "You can't talk that way, Bess. You got to go to your work. We ain't got money to keep you in idleness, and land knows where you'd get another place as good's this one. Ef you stay home all day, you might make him awful mad; and then it would be no use goin' back, and you might lose Lizzie her place too."
But something she has said (she's said a lot of things, I've been trimming,) catches Bess' attention.
"Is my grandmother living yet?" asked Elizabeth. She was sorry for this grandmother, but did not know what to say. She was afraid to comfort her lest she take it for yielding.
"Yes, they say she is," said Mrs. Brady, sitting up with a show of interest. She was always ready for a bit of gossip. "Her husband's dead, and her other son's dead, and she's all alone. She lives in a big house on Rittenhouse Square. If she was any 'count, she'd ought to provide fer you. I never thought about it. But I don't suppose it would be any use to try. You might ask her. Perhaps she'd help you go to school. You've got a claim on her. She ought to give you her son's share of his father's property, though I've heard she disowned him when he married our Bess. You might fix up in some of Lizzie's best things, and go up there and try. She might give you some money."
"I don't want her money," said Elizabeth stiffly. "I guess there's work somewhere in the world I can do without begging even of grandmothers. But I think I ought to go and see her. She might want to know about father."
There is a temporary lull. Lizzie comes home:
Elizabeth felt disapproval in the air. Aunt Nan came, and sat down beside her, and talked very coldly about expenses and being dependent upon one's relatives, and let her understand thoroughly that she could not sit around and do nothing; but Elizabeth answered by telling her how the manager had been treating her. The aunt then gave her a dose of worldly wisdom, which made the girl shrink into herself. It needed only Lizzie's loud-voiced exhortations to add to her misery and make her feel ready to do anything. Supper was a most unpleasant meal. At last the grandmother spoke up.
"Well, Bessie," she said firmly, "we've decided, all of us, that, if you are going to be stubborn about this, something will have to be done; and I think the best thing is for you to go to Mrs. Bailey and see what she'll do for you. It's her business, anyway."
If you think about it, she's sort of fallen into another den of prostitution, here. They're basically telling her to go back and pretend to like being forced to accept a man's attentions and courtship so she can get paid for it. I don't think it's dawned on GLH, probably because it's too big a problem.
Lizzie was up early the next morning. She had agreed to put Elizabeth in battle-array for her visit... Elizabeth submitted meekly to her borrowed adornings. Her hair was brushed over her face, and curled on a hot iron, and brushed backward in a perfect mat, and then puffed out in a bigger pompadour than usual. The silk waist was put on with Lizzie's best skirt, and she was adjured not to let that drag. Then the best hat with the cheap pink plumes was set atop the elaborate coiffure; the jacket was put on; and a pair of Lizzie's long silk gloves were struggled into. They were a trite large when on, but to the hands unaccustomed to gloves they were like being run into a mould.
So I have no idea what this looks like, but it sounds "overdressed." Lizzie hits with one more bit of news:
She said she had heard there was a variety show in town where they wanted a girl who could shoot. If she didn't succeed with her grandmother, they would try and get her in at the show. The girls at the store knew a man who had charge of it. They said he liked pretty girls, and they thought would be glad to get her.
WHY WERE WE AT THE DEPARTMENT-STORE ALL THAT TIME. LOOK HOW INTERESTING THAT SOUNDS. I actually was near an anguished wail when I hit that. Bess would be a star, she'd get more money, and she'd actually have her guns around. Everything is more interesting when Bess has her guns. That could be more sexual harasssment on the horizon, but a pretty girl would be more likely to get a part n a show than a plain one, so it could have been worth a shot. (And shot he would be if he harasses her while she's armed.) Anyway, Elizabeth rearrays herself by taking off all the weird stuff, putting on her travel clothes, putting on her guns, putting her hair in a braid, and going off to see her other grandmother.
And then she goes and gets her horse back so she can ride instead of walking.
So basically, we just spent a chapter fixing where this book broke down. Are we now back in awesome?