Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
The Extra Woman
- How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It
- Narrated by: C. S. E. Cooney
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
The Extra Woman
Buy Now for £18.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Summary
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.
Listeners also enjoyed...
