Campy Books for Girls, mid-1950s

Image: Cascade Books

While I was in Baton Rouge I popped in at a local library hoping to find a wireless internet connection. No luck with that, but I did stumble on a used book sale.

There’s something to be said for reading books older than oneself, isn’t there? Works that have stood the test of time and reflect the wisdom of the ages may have so much more to offer us than whatever trendy fluff is selling well at the moment.

But I am not writing to promote the classics, at least not today. The two I picked up for $.25 apiece were, rather, the trendy stuff of their own day. Want to go there with me? Let us assume you will not later read these books and will not mind me spoiling the plot a bit.

The Pink Rose:

The Pink Rose, by Elspeth Woodward and Edward Roberts (1955) begins in the summer of 1902. Margaret Lloyd, recently graduated from an exclusive finishing academy, is struggling with the knowledge that her education is over. She must now pursue the most important job of her life: finding a husband. In a moment of pique – she exclaims to her young friends that she has decided to go to college, like some of the boys.

Shocking! Her mother, a scene or two later, scolds her: “A girl of your station and prospects – an ordinary college drudge? Have you seen the girls who go to college?” Horrors!

Peg is expected, in fact, required, to “come out” in the fall. To be a credit to her upbringing she should make a good match within the first year after her debut – to be safely married before she is 20. And Peg does, indeed, back down on the college question. To fight her parents on this or even raise her voice to them is not to be thought of.

I did think the description of her “debut” was interesting. All the best families were invited and sent the most gorgeous bouquets in advance; she had to memorize who sent what, and the next day finds her frantically writing her thank-you notes. Every unmarried man who attended her debut is required to “call” on the young lady within the next year. Isn’t that handy?

Of course, Peg has to do her part, too. She may never be seen with her clothes or hair in disarray, she must flirt as much as propriety allows. And she is now old enough to attend the dinner parties her mother throws three times a week. Until this point she has been dining on a tray in her old nursery. Mrs. Lloyd has made a list of 200 homes at which her daughter should make a 20-minute call in the months to come. So, all of a sudden, she who was a child is now a woman seeking a match.

Was it really like that, for wealthy upper-class American girls at the turn of the century? Maybe; maybe not. I suspect the book holds as many clues to the mores of the fifties as to those of the time in which it is set. Our socialite does find secret ways to rebel, with the full sympathy of her readers. One of the servants in Peg’s house is married to a man who has just started a business selling seafood. Peg sees how he is doing business and decides to put her hand in as well; she tells him how to open an account at her father’s bank, and, sending away for a correspondence course in business sets up and manages a bookkeeping system for him as well as suggesting new recipes and suggesting orders from her wealthy friends – all as a silent partner. She even manages to master the operation of a typewriting machine! In some ways Peg is much like her mother – having learned management and organization skills from her – but also is well on her way to becoming a modern woman, it seems.

On the social front, Peg manages to get herself engaged to her long-time favorite boy, otherwise a young man with few really exemplary characteristics. The match is much opposed by her parents. Dick is, after all, as young as she is and has in fact chosen to go to law school. So he is in no position to support Peg in the fashion to which she is accustomed – as would only be fair, according to her parents and all others. You can’t live on love, can you? Peg thinks you can – love, and a little initiative. She seems to think marriage ought to be a partnership.

The end of the book finds her gliding down the staircase in her parents’ stately mansion to wed Dick. The phone rings, as she is descending, and instinctively she stops mid-wedding-march and answers, solving a business problem for the seafood business. Then she traipses into the parlor and gets married. Shortly after she has thrown her bouquet to her best friend, Peg announced to her parents and new husband that they will not, in fact, be returning to the town after their honeymoon will be heading to Boston so Dick can finish school. Dick had agreed to her father’s insistence that he drop out and get a job, but Peg won’t have that. She in fact has accepted a position with a catering business in Boston and intends to pay for her own handkerchiefs and elbow gloves so Dick can pursue his dreams and become a lawyer. After all, if he’s going to support her for the rest of their lives, why can’t she contribute financially at the beginning, just for a year or two?

In the back of the car on the way to their honeymoon, Peg wonders what life will be like for her own daughter – will she have evolved into the kind of creature who will feel free to do things that shock Peg and Dick just as much as her own behavior has shocked her parents?

I think our author knows the answer; Peg Lloyd may be about the right age to have been the author’s grandmother. In our day, the author (if she is still around) likely has grandchildren of her own.

The More the Merrier:

The second book I read was less of a melodrama, but still pretty campy. I may try to learn a bit more about the author; she lived in Denver and wrote for women’s magazines as well as producing a great many stories for girls, the most popular of which featured our heroine today, the teenaged “Beany” Malone.

The More the Merrier, by Lenora Mattingly Weber (1958), begins with Beany’s father (a journalist) and stepmother (an artist whom we quickly learn came into their lives respectably, six years after the death of Beany’s mother) departing on a long business trip to Mexico. An older sister had taken a job working on a dude ranch. This leaves Beany and her 19-year-old brother to hold down the fort on their own for the summer. Beany decides to take in boarders. (This, I thought, is just the sort of behavior in which our other heroine, Peg Lloyd, might have anticipated her children or grandchildren would indulge.)

I may still have some readers sticking with me through this very long post; I will not make it longer by spelling out the whole plot on this one. But of course all does not go well. Our relatively modern and somewhat harum-scarum young woman is concerned about getting dates and being a model hostess, and as a matter of course she’s a great cook and reasonably successful seamstress. At first she is unhappy about the chaperon a protective neighbor insists move in to keep the four young people in line (Beany, her brother, and the two boarders also under 21) but she submits with reasonable grace. She’s quite happy to have the priest Father Hugh drop in frequently, as well. All comes more or less right in the end, and Beany’s young man (who had joined the Marines) wrangles some leave and shows up at the house on the night of a big party, where he is bold enough to kiss her soundly on the cheek.

I wouldn’t want to go back to the turn of the century, but the fifties don’t sound so bad. What do you think? Sometimes life in our day can seem so confusing. What is expected? What is acceptable? We have so much freedom; our society seems to have no norms at all. Feels dangerous. I don’t want to over-romanticize the past, though. I know enough about my own family to know better than that. But would you want to go back to a simpler (?) time, or not?

The World of the 1950s:

Well, some of my readers remember for themselves what the fifties were like. Wikipedia reports, “The 1950s in the developed western world are generally considered socially conservative and highly materialistic in nature. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States played out through the entire decade.”

Being conservative and materialistic has a cost. The article adds this discouraging line: “The Library of Congress has dubbed the 1950s as the decade with the least musical innovation.” Apparently the fifties were not so good for creativity.

See also:

Wikipedia on 1950s literature (presumably someone’s estimate of the “best” stuff)

Bestselling books of the 1950s (what people actually read. Any you’d recommend?)