Edna Ferber Long Fiction Analysis
Edna Ferber was a feminist, a conservationist, a crusader for minorities and immigrants, and a staunch believer in the work ethic and American culture. Strong women characters rising above the limitations of birth and gender dominate her novels; most men in her works are weak, and many desert their women and children. Ferber’s fiction describes and condemns mistreatment of African Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans. Her novels decry unrestrained capitalism and wasteful exploitation of natural resources while celebrating regional culture and history in an effective and pleasing style that clearly reflects her journalistic background. Her characterization, however, is less effective, and her plots tend toward melodrama and coincidence.
All of Ferber’s novels were commercial successes, and many remained in print for decades after their first publication. Her first novels, Dawn O’Hara and Fanny Herself, are strongly autobiographical. They remain interesting because they show Ferber’s literary growth. The background material in Great Son, a later work, is sketchy, the characters are stereotypical, and the plot is contrived. At the time of that novel’s writing, during World War II, Ferber was preoccupied with writing propaganda to help in the war effort. Her final novel, Ice Palace, is a political tract of little literary merit; Ferber was ill at the time of its writing.
The Girls
Ferber expected The Girls to be a best seller and considered it her best novel. The story recounts six decades of Chicago middle-class history and intergenerational conflict. Charlotte Thrift, forbidden to marry an unsuitable boy, loses him to death in the American Civil War. She never marries. Her unmarried niece, Lottie, under her mother’s domination, keeps house for her mother and aunt. Lottie finally rebels, joins the Red Cross during World War I, has a brief affair, and returns with her illegitimate daughter, whom she passes off as a French orphan. Charly (Charlotte), Lottie’s niece, falls in love with a poet, who is killed in World War I, and moves in with her aunt and great-aunt. All three of these women are strong personalities, whereas their men are either incompetent boors or scoundrels.
So Big
Ferber’s first best seller, So Big, effectively contrasts humble life in the Halstead Street Market with that of pretentious Chicago society. A genteelly reared orphan, Selina Peake, goes to teach school in a community of Dutch market gardeners, where she must adjust to a brutal existence. Her only intellectual companion is thirteen-year-old Roelf, the artistically talented son of the family with whom she lives. After a year, she marries kindly Pervus DeJong, an unimaginative, unenterprising widower. They have a son, Dirk, nicknamed So Big. After Pervus’s death, Selina makes their farm a thriving success. She sacrifices all for So Big, who, after a few years as a struggling architect, shifts to a banking career and high society. In contrast, Selina’s first protégé, Roelf, becomes a famous sculptor. At the end, So Big finally realizes that his life is empty. Although the novel was critically acclaimed, the characterization barely develops beyond stereotypes, and many of the anecdotes presented in the work are clichés.
Show Boat
Show Boat describes life aboard late nineteenth and early twentieth century Mississippi River showboats and addresses the cultural significance of these centers of entertainment. Magnolia Hawkes, daughter of Captain Andy and Parthenia Hawkes of the showboat Cotton Blossom , marries Gaylord Ravenal, a charming professional gambler. After Captain Andy’s death, Magnolia, Gaylord, and their daughter, Kim, move to Chicago, where they squander Magnolia’s inheritance. Magnolia, deserted by her wastrel husband, becomes a successful singer and raises Kim to become a successful serious actor....
(This entire section contains 1343 words.)
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Parthenia inherits and successfully operates the showboat. Parthenia, Magnolia, and Kim are all protofeminist career women. Captain Andy, though competent and wise, defers to Parthenia in almost everything.
In Show Boat, Ferber depicts African Americans as patient, upright, and hardworking people. A tragic incident of miscegenation and the injustice of the laws in the American South balance the romanticized account of showboat life, which is charming.
Cimarron
Cimarron is set in Oklahoma in the period between the 1889 land rush and the 1920’s oil boom. Sabra Cravat begins life as a genteel, impoverished southern girl but ends up an assured newspaperwoman and member of the U.S. Congress. Her husband, Yancey Cravat, a flamboyant lawyer-newspaperman of dubious background, starts grandiose projects, performs heroic acts, and upholds high ideals, but he accomplishes little. Desertion of his family clears the way for Sabra’s rise. These characters exemplify the tension between those who “won” Oklahoma and those who “civilized” it. In addition, in this work interaction between Native Americans and European Americans is perceptively treated.
American Beauty
Ferber rhapsodically describes the Connecticut landscape in American Beauty, in which she also chronicles the abuse of land and resources. She presents Polish immigrant culture sympathetically, whereas she depicts the indigenous New Englanders as played-out aristocrats. Judy Oakes and her niece, Tamar Pring, are strong, stubborn women devoted to their aristocratic background and ancestral home. Their hired man, Ondy Olszak, a kindhearted, hardworking, unimaginative Polish immigrant, maintains the farm at just above subsistence level. Tamar seduces and marries Ondy, and their son Orrange combines Ondy’s peasant vigor and Tamar’s cultural sensibilities. Although Orrange inherits the farm, Ondy’s family forces him to sell. Millionaire True Baldwin, who, as an impoverished farm lad, had aspired to marry Judy Oakes, buys it. Fortunately, Baldwin’s architect daughter, Candy Baldwin, who is sexually attracted to Orrange, hires him to manage the farm.
Come and Get It
Ferber draws heavily on her own background in Come and Get It, a story of resource exploitation, unrestrained capitalism, and social contrast. After lumberjack Barney Glasgow fights his way up to a managerial position at the mill, he marries his boss’s spinsterish daughter. The mill’s timbering and papermaking thrive under his direction, until he is fatally attracted to Lotta Lindaback, granddaughter of his longtime lumberjack pal Swan Bostrom. Barney’s daughter, frustrated by unacknowledged desire for her father, marries a dull young businessman. Bernard, Barney’s son, pursues Lotta when Barney restrains his own passion for her. Barney then fights with Bernard and expels him from the house. Immediately afterward, Barney and his family are killed in an explosion. Bernard marries Lotta and builds an industrial empire in steel and paper. Lotta, meanwhile, enters international high society. The Great Depression forces Lotta’s return to Wisconsin, where her twins come under the influence of Tom Melendy, an idealistic young man from a mill-hand family. Rejecting their parents’ materialism, the twins return to the simple Bostrom ways.
Saratoga Trunk
In Saratoga Trunk, Ferber decries the evils of unrestrained capitalism and the decadent snobbery of New Orleans high society. She also promotes women’s causes and the conservation of natural resources. Illegitimate Clio Dulain and Texas cowboy-gambler Clint Maroon join forces to extort money from Clio’s aristocratic father. They then move to Saratoga, New York, where Clio sets out to snare a rich husband. Although she entraps railroad millionaire Van Steed, she drops him for Clint when Clint is injured fighting for Van Steed’s railroad, the Saratoga Trunk. Thereafter, Clio and Clint become railroad millionaires but idealistically give their wealth to charity. Clio subtly manipulates Clint in all important matters.
Giant
Giant, Ferber’s flamboyant version of Texas history and culture, exemplifies the Texas mythology; upon publication, the novel earned violent protests from Texans. Ferber’s typical strong female central character, Leslie Lynnton, daughter of a world-famous doctor living in genteel shabbiness, is swept off her feet by a visiting Texas rancher. Transported to his gigantic ranch, she finds her husband ruled by his spinster sister, Luz. Luz dies violently, and, with great skill and wisdom, Leslie guides her man through repeated crises as the great cattle and cotton “empires” are hemmed in by vulgar oil billionaires. In this novel, Ferber shows the original Texans, Mexican Americans, as deeply wronged, patient, dignified, and noble. Unfortunately, the book’s ending leaves ongoing problems unsolved.
