“Your education will prepare your to be splendid wives and mothers, and your reward might be to marry Harvard men.” Wilbur Kitchener Jordan, president of Radcliffe College, in his welcoming addresses to incoming students, 1950’s.”
That’s one of the quotes that open the historical novel The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman. I share that one with you because it’s one of two major issues that are addressed in this novel: the commonly held belief that women were meant to marry and stay at home caring for their families. The other issue is McCarthy’s blacklisting activities during that same time period.
In the beginning of the book, Fanny Fabricant welcomes home her husband Max from the war only to have him drop dead at home. Her rebel aunt Rose helps her to find a job working as a secretary for a studio that produces three weekly radio shows. Fanny decides to put her college degree to use by trying her hand at writing scripts.
As she struggles to perfect her craft one of the other writers, Charlie, is blacklisted on trumped up charges and asks her to be his front in order to continue to earn a living. And then she meets Ezra, a doctor who, after proposing, expects Fanny to stop working once they’re married.
Fanny struggles with how working women are looked down on and her attraction to Charlie, a blacklisted writer whose association might hurt her life with her daughter. This book is an interesting peek into the censorship of the 1950’s and how working women were perceived.
If you want to know how the story ends, then you must read The Trouble with You by Ellen Feldman.
