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The extra woman : how Marjorie Hillis led a generation of women to live alone and like it / Joanna Scutts.

by Scutts, Joanna.

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Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Roulston, Marjorie Hillis

Roulston, Marjorie Hillis. Live alone and like it.

Single women -- United States -- History.

Living alone -- United States -- History.

Feminism -- United States -- History.

9781631492730 (hc.)

335 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 22 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Solitary splendor -- "Something to get your teeth into" -- (Not) a question of money -- Setting for a solo act -- Work ends at nightfall -- Mad about New York -- Rosie and Mrs. Roulston -- Starting all over -- Epilogue.

You've met the extra woman: she's sophisticated, she lives comfortably alone, she pursues her passions unabashedly, and contrary to society's suspicions, she really is happy. Despite multiple waves of feminist revolution, today's single woman is still mired in judgment or, worse, pity. But for a brief, exclamatory period in the late 1930s, she was all the rage. A delicious cocktail of cultural history and literary biography, the author transports us to the turbulent and transformative years between suffrage and the sixties, when, thanks to the glamorous grit of one Marjorie Hillis, single women boldly claimed and enjoyed their independence. Marjorie Hillis, pragmatic daughter of a Brooklyn preacher, was poised for reinvention when she moved to the big city to start a life of her own. Gone were the days of the flirty flapper; ladies of Depression-era New York embraced a new icon: the independent working woman. Hillis was already a success at Vogue when she published a radical self-help book in 1936: Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. With Dorothy Parker-esque wit, she urged spinsters, divorcées, and "old maids" to shed derogatory labels and take control of their lives, 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. Joanna Scutts explores the revolutionary years following the Live-Alone movement, when the status of these "brazen ladies" peaked and then collapsed.

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