The Extra Woman

September 1, 2017
A New-York Historical Society historian examines the impact of 20th-century newspaper columnist and women's self-help guru Marjorie Hillis (1889-1971).Hillis first entered American consciousness with the 1936 publication of her bestselling book, Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. Then single and living and working in Manhattan, she exemplified the glamorous "Live-Aloner." Scutts suggests that Hillis achieved fame during this time because the Depression had opened a space of "possibility and promise" for working women, who saw old certainties about marital security collapse with the economy. Combining the positive-thinking approach espoused by such self-help writers as Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie with a sharp eye for home and personal style, Hillis helped single women see their solitary menages as spaces for "creativity and reinvention." By 1939, she disappeared from the cultural scene into a happy marriage. During the 1940s, women had the opportunity to become an important part of a wartime economy and feel independent as never before. Hillis became a widow in 1949, just as the United States entered a period when the new gender ideal for women emphasized domesticity and subservience to husband and family. Working very much against cultural trends, Hillis published another book, You Can Start All Over, in 1951, which encouraged mature live-aloners to take pride in their accomplishments and to continue engaging with the world through work and other social activities. While the feminist movement of the 1960s challenged the cultural backlash against women, Hillis wrote Keep Going and Like It (1967), which offered retired single women advice on continuing to take pleasure in the world on their own stylish terms. Rich in historical detail, Scutts' book is not just an elegant biography of a neglected protofeminist figure and a vivid exploration of American sociological history; it is also an important homage to a woman's right to choose how to live her life. A sparklingly intelligent and well-researched cultural history.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 11, 2017
In her first book, literary critic Scutts unabashedly celebrates the midcentury single working woman using the life and works of Marjorie Hillis, whose 1936 bestseller, Live Alone and Like It, defined a lifestyle and a brief cultural phenomenon. Scutts follows Hillis through the proceeding decades and the publication of several other books, and a interlude of wedded bliss. She soundly situates her subject within the budding self-help industry during the Depression, the wartime shifts for working women, and the ascendancy of the 1950s model of marriage. Throughout, Scutts provides women’s labor statistics and smart analyses and brings them to life with the stories of other advice mavens and lifestyle gurus, including Martha Fishback, the highest-paid female copywriter in advertising in the 1930s, and Irma Rombauer, author of Joy of Cooking, who shaped the opportunities available to women at that time. Like her protagonist, Scutts has a voice that is zesty, dashing, and full of verve (“Her story showed that nonconformity and living alone could still be desirable options—at least if the trappings were sufficiently glamorous and the heroine safely upper class”). Scutts is also sensitive to the impact of class and race on those opportunities, recognizing that Hillis’s glamorous prescriptions worked best for the wealthy and white. Scutts finds in Hillis a feminist pioneer and a forward thinker, even when “the Live-Aloner,” as she calls her, became a figure of nostalgia. Scutts uncovers the life of a little-known feminist hero in this thoroughly enjoyable romp through 20th-century American history.

November 1, 2017
Before there was a Carrie Bradshaw or a Mary Richards, a Bridget Jones or a Holly Golightly, there was Marjorie Hillis. The daughter of a prominent minister and conservative mother, Hillis was an unlikely spokesperson for the cause of women's independence, but her advice columns and books were beacons of light in an otherwise dismal landscape for women who were single and liked it that way, or at least wanted to. Coining the term live-aloners, Hillis shaped the attitudes and behaviors that would ensure a single woman's success across a vast spectrum of situations, from careers to cocktails, budgets to beaus. Hillis' self-help audience in the 1930s were victims of the Great Depression and fearful of a volatile political landscape. For them, her reassuring voice and encouraging wisdom provided the motivation they needed to survive. Scutts' biography of this Depression-era feminist positions Hillis very much as a woman of her own time, and her thorough scholarship deftly illustrates how Hillis' iconic views continue to make her a woman for all time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2017

In 1936, Marjorie Hillis published the best-selling Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman, the first self-help manual for single women. In her first book, Scutts examines Hillis's life from her childhood as the daughter of a famed Presbyterian minister in Brooklyn to her journalism career as an editor at Vogue. Scutts also covers a history of single working women, particularly in New York, and other popular self-help and cookbooks that rode on Hillis's wave of popularity. Hillis continued to write other advice books including Orchids on Your Budget, Corn Beef and Caviar, and an unsuccessful narrative poem about the careers of seven women, Work Ends at Nightfall. After she married at age 49, to much joking about giving up her single status, Hillis took a hiatus until after the death of her husband when she penned two advice books: one for newly single women, You Can Start All Over and one for older women, Keep Going and Like It. VERDICT Although readers may be over the fad of single women lit, Scutts offers a compelling look at Hillis, a largely forgotten but important figure.--Kate Stewart, American Folklife Ctr., Washington, DC

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.