So Big - Part 2
Exploring the Laureates - The Pulitzers
Week Two of Edna Ferber’s 1925 Pulitzer Award Winning Novel So Big.
Notes:
For the moment, I have access to a college library database for research. I was fortunate to be able to do some research on Edna Ferber and So Big for this portion of my exploration of this Pulitzer winner. To be honest, I am sure more exists on Ferber, which I could spend days researching. But I wanted to get this to you this week. Please consider leaving a heart or a comment just to prove to the algorithm monster that your were here.
Sorry it’s a day late according to my schedule!
First, research confirmed the information I shared in Part One about Ferber assigning short-term film contracts to her books. The first film rights for So Big were sold to First National Pictures for the silent movie version.Then Warner Brothers scooped up First National Pictures and decided they would make another version of So Big using the newest in film technology - sound. After some legal wrangling, Warner Brothers had to pay Ferber another $20,000 for film rights to the novel. Ferber’s business sense, along with some fairly sharp attorneys, changed the way film rights were sold then, forcing the studios to negotiate with authors.
One of the lovely pieces I found during this week’s research was a book review published in Time on So Big. The review was published on March 10, 1924. I promise you that my heart went pitter-patter because the review showed me what people a hundred years ago thought about this work. This kind of find will be my future fantasy for all Pulitzer works.
While the review contained many interesting bits, I cannot move forward without sharing these two quotes with you.
“Edna Ferber has been impelled by the spirit of the times into attempting something ‘serious.’ So Big is the result - a novel with a theme.”
My first reaction was to consider the reviewer a big ninny. Of course, Ferber wrote seriously. Of course, the novel has a theme. And then I remembered that this is one of the earlier works of Ferber, so the reviewer is actually giving her credit for becoming a more valuable writer. (Sorry for the “ninny” response, unnamed reviewer.) So Big contains many themes and should be considered a serious work of art because of Ferber’s ability to pull the reader into the many thematic worlds she builds.
Again -
“Edna Ferber’s So Big is an unusually fine novel. A portrait of a boy and his mother, with a finely sketched background of Chicago and a fundamental theme which shows the development of various attitudes toward the beauty of life - it stands out as unforgettable.”
Agreed.
Academic Helpers:
Ferber clearly paints the settings for us. Select one of the settings and build a model or paint a replica.
Select one of the many themes (life, art, motherhood, love) and consider what message Ferber wants the reader to get from So Big. Write an essay concerning the theme you select.
Find a film copy of So Big and write a Comparison and Contrast essay.
Ferber’s novel was not the first choice of the Pulitzer committee. Joseph Hergesheimer’s Balisand had been selected until one of the jurors (and a friend of Ferber’s), William Alan White, petitioned the administrator of the Pulitzer to consider So Big. After the selection had been changed, one of the jurors returned his honorarium because he vehemently disagreed with this decision. Write a play or short story to dramatize the situation. Be sure to include possible reactions from the authors.
Is it worth the eye strain?
Yes. I’m reading one of the Pulitzers that I’m not loving (won’t say which one in case it gets better), and I keep thinking how much I would rather reread So Big.
As always, I struggle with this next bit - the summary. I want so very badly to tell you the whole novel, but I also want to only tell you enough to move forward in my discussion of the value of the book. Hopefully, you will read the book even if there are too many spoilers in this section.
So Big tells the story of Selina Peake DeJong and her son, Dirk, aka “SoBig.” In the beginning, Selina travelled the country with her father, a professional gambler. A short paragraph or two tells the reader that her mother died when Selina was nine, resulting in her father sending her to live with his sisters in his childhood home. Her “three dark years,” which ended with a desperate letter to her father.
Selina reads, attends school, adores the theater, and lives a comfortable life for the most part, especially in Chicago. Her earliest friendship with Julie Hempel, daughter of August Hempel the famous and wealthy butcher/meat packer, happened in Chicago, a result of attendance at Miss Fister’s school.
When a horrible tragedy kills her father, Selina decides to teach for her living rather than become “a withered and sapless dried apple, with black fuzz and mould at her heart, like her aunts.” August Hempel helps her secure a position in a Dutch school in High Prairie for $30 a month as well as a place to board. She places her small inheritance from her father in the bank and sets off for her new life.
In my copy of the novel, all of this occurs before page twenty-one. Selina and Dirk’s story stretches for another two hundred and seventy pages. Since I try to limit these explorations to ten reading minutes or less, I thought I would spare you the many, many details of her life (although completely wonderful to read). and share some of my favorite moments. Selina’s relationships with other characters. Ferber could teach a master class in relationship building.
In those first happy twenty-one pages, Ferber builds a relationship between Selina and her father that allows the reader to forgive him for being a gambler and risking her future with his life choices. As Selina marvels the mystery in plays and books and her joy that just anything can happen, her father responds with a philosophy on life that follows Selina throughout her story.
“No different from life,” Simeon Peake assured her. “You’ve no idea the things that happen to you if you just relax and take them as they come… I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show…The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they’re not pleasant things. That’s living” (10 - 11).
(Please forgive the truncated passage and use of ellipses. I only want to give you the McNuggets here.)
Another important relationship in Selina’s life is her friendship with Julie Hempe that begins during childhood at school in Chicago and continues on throughout their adult lives. Ferber deftly weaves together the lives of these schoolgirls without resorting to the melodramatic moments often found for female friends.
Initially, Julie does not feel like a character with depth. It felt like she might be a flouncy, spoiled friend that we see in so many stories of women. Julie surprises me, though, when she defies her mother and remains Selina’s friend after the death of Mr. Peake. Over the years, the women lose touch, which might be just as well for Selina. However, Julie proves to be a true friend to Selina.
After Pervus’ death (Selina’s husband), Selina takes Dirk, along with her small vegetable harvest, and attempts to sell them in Chicago. With little success selling to the market, Selina decides to try to sell the vegetables by going door-to-door in the richer neighborhoods. Unfortunately, she finds a policeman at her side asking for her peddler’s licence. He decides to try to physically remove her from the neighborhood, provoking an angry reaction from Selina, when Julie finds her again.
“Take your hand off me!” Her speech was clipped, vibrant. “How dare you touch me!” The blazing eyes in the white mask. He took his hand from her shoulder. The red surged into her face. A tanned weather-beaten toil-worn woman, her abundant hair skewered into a know and held by a long gray-black hairpin, her full skirt grimed with the mud of the wagon wheel, a pair of old side-boots on her slim feet, a grotesquely battered old felt hat (her husband’s) on her head, her arms full of ears of sweet corn, and carrots, and radishes and bunches of beets; a woman with bad teeth, flat breasts - even then Julie had known her by her eyes. And she had stared and then run to her in her silk dress and her plumed hat, crying, “Oh, Selina! My dear! My dear!” with a sob of horror and pity. “My Dear!” And had taken Selina, carrots, beets, corn, and radishes in her arms. The vegetables lay scattered all about them in front of Julie Hempel Arnold’s great stone house on Prairie Avenue. But strangely enough it had been Selina who had done the comforting, patting Julie’s plump silken shoulder… (163-164).
Once this reunion occurs, Julie finds ways to help Selina, whether Selina wants the help or not. I love that Ferber keeps the women connected, even when Dirk (“SoBig”) seems to be falling in love with Paula, Julie’s daughter.
Other relationships add to Selina’s character and the quiet beauty of the novel. Because I must limit the discussion somewhat, let me just say that her friendship with Roelf and her marriage to Pervus are worthwhile considerations if you are looking at thematic elements for So Big.
Of course, a discussion of this novel would be nothing without an exploration of Selina’s relationship with her son, Dirk - affectionately named “SoBig” as a child - a nickname he wishes to shed quickly as he gets older. My mimi heart identified with Selina and her love for her child. She wants the very best and beautiful for him, possibly something she had not been able to attain.
As she discusses the future with Julie and her father, August, she tells them
“My life doesn’t count, except as something for Dirk to use. I’m done with anything else … I’m here to keep Dirk from making the same mistakes I made.” Here Aug Hempel, lounging largely in his chair and eyeing Selina intently, turned his gaze absently through the window … His tone was one of meditation, not of argument. “It don’t work out that way, seems. About mistakes it’s funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs, they get mad.”
“It’s beauty!” Selina said then, almost passionately … “I used to think that if you wanted beauty - if your wanted it hard enough and hopefully enough - it came to you … All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People - all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth - growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to - to make something fine come of it … That’s what I mean by beauty. I want Dirk to have it” (170 - 171).
In this speech - missing some bits of emphasis that I thought I might skip to save a few seconds of reading time - in this speech, Selina outlines the thing that every mother wants for her child. If I’m honest with you, I cried a bit reading this. She sums up everything I’ve ever wanted for my sons and everything I want for their children.
Sadly, our Ferber narrator shares a brief moment many years in the future between Dirk and Selina that might bring you to tears again. As Selina is going through her trunk of saved memories and sharing her thoughts with Dirk of what is in the trunk, including an early drawing by Roelf that might be worth some money, he tells her
“Oh, well, that - yes. But the rest of the stuff you’ve got there - funny how people will treasure old stuff like that. Useless stuff. It isn’t even beautiful.”
“Beautiful!” said Selina, and shut the lid of the old chest. “Why, Dirk - Dirk! You don’t even know what beauty is. You never will know.”
We see that, on some level, Selina acknowledges that she has failed to teach her son about beauty. Dirk has a glimmer of understanding when Dallas, the lovely artist he loses, tell him she would love to paint his mother’s portrait because of her beauty:
“With that fine splendid face all lit up with the light that comes from inside; and the jaw-line like that of the women who came over in the Mayflower; or crossed the continent in a covered wagon; and her eyes! And that battered funny gorgeous bum old hat and the white shirtwaist - and her hands! She’s beautiful…”
As Dirk stares at Selina trying to understand what Dallas could mean, Selina is having a joyful reunion with her old student Roelf, now a famous painter in Paris. They share a powerful moment.
“And you’ve done all the famous men of Europe, haven’t you, Roelf! To think of it! You’ve seen the world, and you’ve got it in your hand. Little Roelf Pool. And you did it all alone. In spite of everything.”
Roelf leaned toward her. He put his hand over her rough one. “Cabbages are beautiful,” he said. Then they both laughed as at some exquisite joke. Then, seriously: “What a fine life you’ve had too, Selina. A full life, and a rich one and successful.”
“I!” exclaimed Selina. “Why, Roeld, I’ve been here all these years, just where you left me when you were a boy. I think the very hat and dress I’m wearing might be the same I wore then. I’ve been nowhere, done nothing, seen nothing. When I think of all the places I was going to see! All the things I was going to do!”
“You’ve been everywhere in the world,” said Roelf. “You’ve seen all the places of great beauty and light. You remember you told me that your father had once said, when you were a little girl, that there were only two kinds of people who really mattered in the world. One kind was wheat and the other kind emeralds. You’re wheat, Selina.”
“And you’re emerald,” said Selina quickly.
This may be the moment where Selina believes that she may have lived the best life she could as she tried to raise Dirk, something that not all mothers feel. In a bit of a gut punch to the reader, Dirk returns to his life that night, but it feels hollow and plain to him. Nevertheless, he lets his manservant remind him to get up for his bath before the dinner party. The reader can only hope that Dirk takes the time to learn these valuable lessons from his mother.
So Big touched my heart in a way not experienced yet in my journey through the Pulitzers. Please try to read it if you can. You won’t even notice the eye strain.
Sources:
Clere, Sarah. “Willa Cather and the Sisterhood of the Pulitzer.” Willa Cather Review, Fall 2023, p. 11 - 17. EBSCO.
Ferber, Edna. So Big. Gunston Classics & Lyons Head Publishing, 2023.
“How Big Is My Baby? Life in High Prairie - A Novel With a Theme.” Book review of So Big. Time, Mar. 10, 1924. EBSCO.
Moulton, Erica L. “The Motion-Picture Rights Contract: Legal Foundations and Trade Practices in the Studio Era.” Film History, 35.1, 2023, pp. 104-127. EBSCO.