Bread by Charles Norris

Mixed messages for working women

Charles Gilman Norris was a well-respected literary figure in his day, but nowadays he is probably best known for being the little brother of Frank Norris, whose novels (McTeague, The Octopus, The Pit) hold an esteemed place in American literature while Charles’s books have mostly faded into obscurity. In addition, Charles was the husband of Kathleen Norris, also a successful novelist. Like Frank, Charles was a realist and a bit of a muckraker who often wrote fiction exploring social issues. His novel Bread was published in 1923. (Charles had a penchant for one-word titles.)

The meaning behind the title does not remain a mystery for long. In the opening scene, Mrs. Sturgis, a widow and piano teacher living in a New York City apartment with her two daughters, has to borrow a dime from one of her students in order to buy a loaf of bread. Though a middle-class family, the Sturgis women often have trouble making ends meet. Jeannette, the elder daughter, decides she’s had enough of scraping by and decides to go to work. She undergoes training as a stenographer and takes a position with the Corey Publishing Company. Beyond the mere pleasure of a paycheck, Jeannette actually enjoys working. She proves herself a model employee, and her diligent work ethic soon makes her indispensable to the company. When she falls in love with one of her coworkers, however, Jeannette is faced with the dilemma of whether to give up her career to become a wife and homemaker (a foregone conclusion in those days) or to stick with her exciting, independent life as a businesswoman.

That brief plot sketch may sound like the premise for many a formulaic Victorian romance novel, but Bread is a more sophisticated examination of working women’s woes than the typical spunky working-girl tale. Norris delivers a realistic portrait of a working woman’s life in 1920s America, both in and out of the office. Jeannette has to deal with male colleagues who don’t take her seriously, female coworkers who resent her ability, occasional unwanted advances from clients, and the unfair reality of lower pay for women. She also struggles to balance her work and home life while her mother, sister, and boyfriends all continually encourage her to get married, quit her job, and start making babies.

Ultimately, Norris sets up a dichotomy between the lives of a married woman and a working woman, weighing the pros and cons of both, so as to ascertain which is the life better lived. Maybe that argument might be handled better by somebody other than a dude, but this was 1923, long before the term “mansplaining” was coined. To his credit, Norris has written probably the most dignified and authentic look at a working woman that I can recall from the first few decades of the twentieth century. Jeannette is not a cookie cutter heroine—at times she’s not even a sympathetic character—and the book is mostly free of clichés. When push comes to shove, however, Norris reaches pretty much the same conclusions about the role and needs of women as those romance novelists of the Victorian era. He just presents those conclusions in a more realistic and depressing way. Bread is a fine peace of writing, and admirably feminist for its time, but this was a century ago, and feminism still had a long ways to go, at least in the eyes of male writers.

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Frank Norris, 1870–1902 by Charles Gilman Norris

A brother’s eulogy

Frank Norris

Prior to his untimely death at the age of 32, Frank Norris was hailed by some critics as one of America’s greatest novelists. Old Books by Dead Guys has already reviewed Norris’s complete works, but there are still a few pieces of Norrisiana out there that fans of this great author might find interesting, such as this booklet published by Doubleday circa 1914.

Norris’s brother Charles Gilman Norris was a successful novelist in his own right. Charles is best known for the novel Salt, which was highly praised by no less than F. Scott Fitzgerald. As stated on the first page of this booklet of roughly 30 pages, here Charles provides, “An intimate sketch of the man who was universally acclaimed the greatest American writer of his generation.” In addition to eulogizing his brother, Charles’s purpose for publishing this booklet was likely to draw attention to the posthumous publication in 1914 of Frank’s previously lost novel Vandover and the Brute. 

In this brief biographical sketch, Charles doesn’t just restate Frank’s literary accomplishments. He also provides personal recollections from the brothers’ youth. Those who know Frank as the king of American naturalism might be surprised at the extent to which he was once obsessed with Sir Walter Scott’s brand of medieval adventure. Charles shares fond memories of the two playing with lead soldiers. The younger Charles would marvel at the characters and stories his older brother Frank would construct with the tiny figures. Just as kids of my generation might have drawn superhero comics to share with each other, Frank would write out entire novels about knights and chivalry and give them to his brother to read.

Some interesting details on the writing of Frank’s published novels, in particular McTeague and The Octopus, are also revealed. In addition, Charles mentions a proposed trilogy on the battle of Gettysburg that Frank planned to write but never started. Little known details such as these make this booklet worth reading for Frank Norris fans, even though Charles’s essay is only 13 pages long. The narrative is interspersed with photographs, most of them dark and murky with age, and one drawing by Frank, who considered a career in art before turning to literature. The book closes with an admirably complete 10-page bibliography of Frank’s work, which includes all of his newspaper articles and short stories, almost all of which can be found in the two-volume collection The Apprenticeship Writings of Frank Norris, 1896-1898, edited by Joseph R. McElrath Jr. and Douglas K. Burgess.

If you want to read a complete biography of Frank Norris, turn to the comprehensive account Frank Norris: A Life by McElrath and Jesse S. Crisler. Even if you are well-versed in Frank’s life, or you just want the brief synopsis, this short work is worth a download from HathiTrust, or maybe a trip to your local university library. If you find this booklet useful, McElrath and Crisler have edited an entire volume of remembrances such as these, entitled Frank Norris Remembered, which will surely provide deeper insight into Norris’s life and work.