SO BIG (Edna Ferber)

Edna Ferber's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel left me with mixed feelings. I love historical fiction.  What better way is there to learn about our ancestors, our country, and our customs than well-researched fiction?

I really enjoyed Ferber's descriptions of Selina's life at various stages.  After the death of her father, a gambler who provided erratically for his motherless daughter, Selina is eventually forced to make her own way in life, choosing to become a teacher in the poor farming community of High Plains, just outside Chicago.  Despite her intention to gain credentials and eventually move into a more prestigious teaching position, she ends up marrying a farmer (she fell in love with his hands) and embarking on a bone-wearying, spirit-crushing existence as wife to a man who does not share her enlightened ideas or ambitions for his business.  The real love of her life is Dirk, also know as So Big, her only child with Pervus DeJong.  While it is obvious that Selina loves and supports her husband, she has sacrificed her dreams for him and this hardscrabble life, placing all of her hopes for the future with So Big.  When Pervus dies unexpectedly, Selina takes on running the farm by herself, meeting obstacle after obstacle because of her gender, but trying to make a life in a turn-of-the -century world that does not take kindly to a woman trying to do a man's work.

What bothered me about the novel were four things. (1) Why would Selina, in marrying Pervus, give up dreams, her love of art, beauty, and knowledge, so quickly and thoughtlessly, immersing herself in a life completely foreign to any of her previous aspirations?  (2) Why has Ferber written what seem to be two entirely different books, moving swiftly from a story focused primarily on Selina, a strong and creative woman who single-handedly defies society and becomes a successful business woman, to the story of Dirk, whose life choices leave something to be desired (think wimp), leaving Selina as a minor background character?  (3)  Publisher William Allen White campaigned vigorously for So Big to be chosen for the Pulitzer Prize and, despite the fact that the other two judges preferred other novels, she won. (4)  I wonder why Ferber called the novel So Big?  It should have been called Selina!

Despite my many questions and issues with what has been described as Ferber's most important novel, it is well worth reading for the historical value alone.