‘The Rising Tide,’ by Margaret DelandImageThis novel by Margaret Deland follows the life of Frederica Payton, a young woman in the Ohio Valley intent on an independent existence. She opens a real estate office, shocking her friends and family, and engages, as our reviewer wrote in 1916, in all sorts of scandalous behavior: “She smokes cigarettes, sits on tables and desks, uses much slang and talks straightforwardly to men and women alike.” But the novel's biggest transgression? The liquor lobby, they argued, played a pivotal role in delaying the cause. Our reviewer doubted this charge, and expressed incredulity at the significant hurdles faced by the suffrage movement, arguing they ought to let bygones be bygones. A woman’s ultimate desire for a man, wrote our reviewer, is “a road from which there is no turning.”

Source: New York Times August 14, 2020 15:56 UTC