Audiobook10 hours
The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It
Written by Joanna Scutts
Narrated by C. S. E. Cooney
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Despite multiple waves of feminist revolution, today's single woman is still mired in judgment or, worse, pity. But for one brief exclamatory period in the 1930s, she was all the rage.
Marjorie Hillis was working at Vogue when she published the radical self-help book Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. With Dorothy Parker-esque wit, she urged spinsters, divorcees, and old maids to shed derogatory labels, and her philosophy became a phenomenon. From the importance of a peignoir to the joy of breakfast in bed (alone), Hillis's tips made single life desirable and chic.
Now, historian and critic Joanna Scutts reclaims Hillis as the queen of the "Live-Aloners" and explores the turbulent decades that followed, when the status of these "brazen ladies" peaked and then collapsed. The Extra Woman follows Hillis and others like her who forged their independent paths before the 1950s saw them trapped behind picket fences yet again.
Marjorie Hillis was working at Vogue when she published the radical self-help book Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. With Dorothy Parker-esque wit, she urged spinsters, divorcees, and old maids to shed derogatory labels, and her philosophy became a phenomenon. From the importance of a peignoir to the joy of breakfast in bed (alone), Hillis's tips made single life desirable and chic.
Now, historian and critic Joanna Scutts reclaims Hillis as the queen of the "Live-Aloners" and explores the turbulent decades that followed, when the status of these "brazen ladies" peaked and then collapsed. The Extra Woman follows Hillis and others like her who forged their independent paths before the 1950s saw them trapped behind picket fences yet again.
Related to The Extra Woman
Related audiobooks
Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters” Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Season: A Social History of the Debutante Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unabashed Women: The Fascinating Biographies of Bad Girls, Seductresses, Rebels and One-of-a-Kind Women Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Miss Fortune: Fresh Perspectives on Having It All from Someone Who Is Not Okay Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSkirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She Matters: A Life in Friendships Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5What Would Cleopatra Do?: Life Lessons from 50 of History's Most Extraordinary Women Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5WASPS: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCan You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Lost My Girlish Laughter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Let Me Be Frank: A Book About Women Who Dressed Like Men to Do Shit They Weren't Supposed to Do Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Criticism For You
1984 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow": A Macat Analysis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5C. S. Lewis: Encountering God's Truth through Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fahrenheit 451 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing (and Writers): A Miscellany of Advice and Opinions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brave New World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lord of the Flies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thalia Book Club: Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Common Sense Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thalia Book Club: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird 50th Anniversary Celebration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thalia Book Club: Neil Gaiman: The Ocean at the End of the Lane Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outsiders Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Meet Me in the Margins Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Extra Woman
Rating: 3.5833333916666668 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
12 ratings0 reviews