"Cabbages are beautiful"

Yesterday evening I finished reading So Big by Edna Ferber. I found it in Chicago, in a bookshelf of Women and Children First, my favourite feminist bookshop in town. You can't find these things browsing on the web, you need a proper bookshop to find them.

So Big was a great read. The book is about many things.

The telluric power of women:
Selina, the heroine of the story, is a strong, creative, earthy woman, with dreams of getting to know the world, all of it. She ends up marrying young to a Dutch farmer in High Prairie, to the West of Chicago. Selina becomes Mrs DeJong. When her husband dies, leaving her alone with their son, Selina has finally the opportunity to put into practice all her shrewd ideas for developing the farm. Her asparagus become all the rage in Chicago. The rounder, more intense characters are all independent women, by choice or by circumstance. They seem to be the only ones who know what real life is all about. The other women are mocked in their dependence to men, fashion, money, status, convention. Dallas, the female art student that shows up at the end of the book, embodies the power of nature, of feeling, of art, of beauty, of being true to oneself (and succeeding in life precisely because of that).

The spiritual power of beauty:
Selina sees beauty in everything, even in cabbages. The Dutch farmers in High Prairie, where she first goes to be a teacher after her father dies in a shooting accident (he was a successful casino gambler!), don't get this. They like her, but find her "special". Selina likes books. She likes to see the fields bursting with life. Farm produce is more than that, it is the vital energy of the sun and the earth transformed. She understands that what comes from the soil is what gives people their food, and in the process what sustains that great urban enterprise called Chicago at the turn of the XIX century.

The power of following your heart:
Dirk, Selina's son, goes to university to become an architect (with the profit Selina makes from selling her farm produce, including the hogs, of which Dirk is ashamed). But he quits the profession and joins the banking world to sell bonds. Dirk soon becomes very wealthy and part of the jeunesse dorée of Chicago. Selina is disappointed. Dirk sold his soul to the "green devil", the dollar, and abandoned his vocation for beauty, for art. Selina wants Dirk to be curious, to see the world, to open his eyes and ears to its diversity, its colours, its smells, its rites, its peoples. She wants her son to be genuine, authentic, real. Selina wants Dirk to be successful, but also to follow his heart. His heart will empower him and bring him to a place of fulfillment. Eventually Dirk understands this when he meets Dallas, but could it have been too late? One hopes not.

Although written in 1924, the book spoke to me as if it had been written today. It disparages the pursuit of money for the sake of being rich. Success is good, wealth is good, but only when obtained through honest, productive means, and used for our personal growth and that of others around us. In the book, Ferber criticises the quick wealth obtained through financial manipulation as being devoid of humanity, solidity, realness. And it's interesting that she wrote this book just a few years before the great depression of 1929, caused by a financial market that had grown too big and artificial to be sustainable. Sounds like the current crisis we are going through...

So Big won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925. It was a best-seller in those days and was published in many European languages. Ferber is also the author of Show Boat (1926) - the novel became a huge success when adapted to the Broadway musical of 1927 - and of Giant (1952), which also became quite famous when made into a film (1956), the last one in which James Dean appeared before dying in a car accident.

I think Ms Ferber, who never married (wink, wink!) was a Thoroughly Modern Milly Girl! Just the way I like.

And I agree with Selina, cabbages are beautiful!