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The Floating Press - Sinclair Lewis

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183 pages

English

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American writer Sinclair Lewis was interested in the social implications of the aggressive brand of capitalism that began to emerge in the U.S. the early twentieth century. In The Job, he focuses on the rising stature of women in the workforce, detailing the triumphs and travails of a young woman named Una Golden, who discovers that she has an inborn talent for real estate -- and that she must fight against the nearly overwhelming chauvinism in the industry to stake her claim.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775456773
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE JOB
AN AMERICAN NOVEL
* * *
SINCLAIR LEWIS

*
The Job An American Novel First published in 1917 ISBN 978-1-77545-677-3 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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PART I - THE CITY Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII PART II - THE OFFICE Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV PART III - MAN AND WOMAN Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII
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To
MY WIFE
WHO HAS MADE "THE JOB" POSSIBLE AND LIFE ITSELF QUITE BEAUTIFULLY IMPROBABLE
PART I - THE CITY
*
Chapter I
*
§ 1
Captain Lew Golden would have saved any foreign observer a great deal oftrouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the pettysmall-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He hadnever been "captain" of anything except the Crescent Volunteer FireCompany, but he owned the title because he collected rents, wroteinsurance, and meddled with lawsuits.
He carried a quite visible mustache-comb and wore a collar, but no tie.On warm days he appeared on the street in his shirt-sleeves, anddiscussed the comparative temperatures of the past thirty years withDoctor Smith and the Mansion House 'bus-driver. He never used the word"beauty" except in reference to a setter dog—beauty of words or music,of faith or rebellion, did not exist for him. He rather fancied large,ambitious, banal, red-and-gold sunsets, but he merely glanced at them ashe straggled home, and remarked that they were "nice." He believed thatall Parisians, artists, millionaires, and socialists were immoral. Hisentire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he neverread, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended; and he desiredno system of economics beyond the current platform of the Republicanparty. He was aimlessly industrious, crotchety but kind, and almostquixotically honest.
He believed that "Panama, Pennsylvania, was good enough for anybody."
This last opinion was not shared by his wife, nor by his daughter Una.
Mrs. Golden was one of the women who aspire just enough to be vaguelydiscontented; not enough to make them toil at the acquisition ofunderstanding and knowledge. She had floated into a comfortablesemi-belief in a semi-Christian Science, and she read novels with aconviction that she would have been a romantic person "if she hadn'tmarried Mr. Golden—not but what he's a fine man and very bright andall, but he hasn't got much imagination or any, well, romance !"
She wrote poetry about spring and neighborhood births, and CaptainGolden admired it so actively that he read it aloud to callers. Sheattended all the meetings of the Panama Study Club, and desired to learnFrench, though she never went beyond borrowing a French grammar from theEpiscopalian rector and learning one conjugation. But in the pioneersuffrage movement she took no part—she didn't "think it was quiteladylike." ... She was a poor cook, and her house always smelled stuffy,but she liked to have flowers about. She was pretty of face, frail ofbody, genuinely gracious of manner. She really did like people, liked togive cookies to the neighborhood boys, and—if you weren't impatientwith her slackness—you found her a wistful and touching figure in herslight youthfulness and in the ambition to be a romantic personage, aMarie Antoinette or a Mrs. Grover Cleveland, which ambition she stillretained at fifty-five.
She was, in appearance, the ideal wife and mother—sympathetic,forgiving, bright-lipped as a May morning. She never demanded; shemerely suggested her desires, and, if they were refused, let her lipsdroop in a manner which only a brute could withstand.
She plaintively admired her efficient daughter Una.
Una Golden was a "good little woman"—not pretty, not noisy, notparticularly articulate, but instinctively on the inside of things;naturally able to size up people and affairs. She had common sense andunkindled passion. She was a matter-of-fact idealist, with a healthywoman's simple longing for love and life. At twenty-four Una had half adozen times fancied herself in love. She had been embraced at a dance,and felt the stirring of a desire for surrender. But always a nativeshrewdness had kept her from agonizing over these affairs.
She was not—and will not be—a misunderstood genius, an undevelopedartist, an embryonic leader in feminism, nor an ugly duckling who wouldput on a Georgette hat and captivate the theatrical world. She was anuntrained, ambitious, thoroughly commonplace, small-town girl. But shewas a natural executive and she secretly controlled the Goldenhousehold; kept Captain Golden from eating with his knife, and hermother from becoming drugged with too much reading of poppy-flavorednovels.
She wanted to learn, learn anything. But the Goldens were toorespectable to permit her to have a job, and too poor to permit her togo to college. From the age of seventeen, when she had graduated fromthe high school—in white ribbons and heavy new boots and tight neworgandy—to twenty-three, she had kept house and gone to gossip-partiesand unmethodically read books from the town library—Walter Scott,Richard Le Gallienne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Humphry Ward, How toKnow the Birds , My Year in the Holy Land , Home Needlework , SartorResartus , and Ships that Pass in the Night . Her residue of knowledgefrom reading them was a disbelief in Panama, Pennsylvania.
She was likely never to be anything more amazing than a mother and wife,who would entertain the Honiton Embroidery Circle twice a year.
Yet, potentially, Una Golden was as glowing as any princess of balladry.She was waiting for the fairy prince, though he seemed likely to benothing more decorative than a salesman in a brown derby. She was fluid;indeterminate as a moving cloud.
Although Una Golden had neither piquant prettiness nor gravehandsomeness, her soft littleness made people call her "Puss," and wantto cuddle her as a child cuddles a kitten. If you noted Una at all, whenyou met her, you first noted her gentle face, her fine-textured hair offaded gold, and her rimless eye-glasses with a gold chain over her ear.These glasses made a business-like center to her face; you felt thatwithout them she would have been too childish. Her mouth was as kind asher spirited eyes, but it drooped. Her body was so femininely soft thatyou regarded her as rather plump. But for all her curving hips, and thethick ankles which she considered "common," she was rather anemic. Hercheeks were round, not rosy, but clear and soft; her lips a pale pink.Her chin was plucky and undimpled; it was usually spotted with one ortwo unimportant eruptions, which she kept so well covered with powderthat they were never noticeable. No one ever thought of them except Unaherself, to whom they were tragic blemishes which she timorouslyexamined in the mirror every time she went to wash her hands. She knewthat they were the result of the indigestible Golden family meals; shetried to take comfort by noticing their prevalence among other girls;but they kept startling her anew; she would secretly touch them with aworried forefinger, and wonder whether men were able to see anythingelse in her face.
You remembered her best as she hurried through the street in her tanmackintosh with its yellow velveteen collar turned high up, and one ofthose modest round hats to which she was addicted. For then you wereaware only of the pale-gold hair fluffing round her school-mistresseye-glasses, her gentle air of respectability, and her undistinguishedlittleness.
She trusted in the village ideal of virginal vacuousness as the type ofbeauty which most captivated men, though every year she was moreshrewdly doubtful of the divine superiority of these men. That a woman'sbusiness in life was to remain respectable and to secure a man, andconsequent security, was her unmeditated faith—till, in 1905, when Unawas twenty-four years old, her father died.
§ 2
Captain Golden left to wife and daughter a good name, a number of debts,and eleven hundred dollars in lodge insurance. The funeral was scarcelyover before neighbors—the furniture man, the grocer, the polite oldhomeopathic doctor—began to come in with bland sympathy and largebills. When the debts were all cleared away the Goldens had only sixhundred dollars and no income beyond the good name. All right-mindedpersons agree that a good name is precious beyond rubies, but Una wouldhave preferred less honor and more rubies.
She was so engaged in comforting her mother that she scarcely grievedfor her father. She took charge of everything—money, house, bills.
Mrs. Golden had been overwhelmed by a realization that, however slackand shallow Captain Golden had been, he had adored her and encouragedher in her gentility, her pawing at culture. With an emerging sincerity,Mrs. Golden mourned him, now, missed his gossipy presence—and at thesame time she was alive to the distinction it added to her slimgracefulness to wear black and look wan. She sobbed on Una's shoulder;she said that she was lonely; and Una sturdily comforted her and lookedfor work.
One of the most familiar human combinations in the world is that ofunemployed daughter and widowed mother. A thousand times you have seenthe jobless daughter devoting all of her curiosity, all of her youth, toa widowed mother of small pleasantries, a small income,