A Girl for Sale

[from Daily Telegraph ad 24 Sep 1920]

A girl of good family unable to find a congenial job sends a daring advertisement to a London paper offering "A Girl for Sale." How she is "bought" by a shy, retiring man makes an entertaining story which ends happily, as all good stories should.

[my copy in library binding] A Girl for Sale takes its premise from the plight of "thousands" of girls in Great Britain in 1919, suddenly demobbed after Armistice, who'd tasted independence and "the sweetness and satisfaction of congenial work" (6) and who now found themselves "unneeded...unwanted" by their country and in their homes. One of these is Whiff Woffran, 24 years old, orphan of a Bohemian intellectual father, who attempts to place the newspaper ad of the title. Her plan is to hire out her energy and ingenuity to alleviate some pain point a prospective employer might not even realize they have. As she puts it: "Now you perhaps have something you want done, not urgently, but something that has more or less weighed on your mind for months, but which, owing to the pressure of your business, or some other cause such as fatigue, natural dilatoriness or general slackness, you have allowed to remain undone, and yet if accomplished would give you great satisfaction and relief?" (31) We have all been there, and shy, bookish, pushing-40 bachelor Christopher Quinton, partner in an incandescent stove business, is there in spades. He has a self-centered, domineering, unpleasant introvert of a widowed aunt who'd descended on him at his mother's death 10-years prior and who rules his house and eats his butter ration. He lacks courage to confront & dislodge, impulsively hires the lovely Whiff -- and thence the battle of wills and the unrequited love. The romance isn't especially convincing -- Christopher is, and remains, a bit of a sad sack and Whiff's epiphany, while understandably late, is not super well-motivated. But it's always nice to see a nice guy win and Mabel Barnes-Grundy's writing and characterizations are, as (almost) always, cheerful and charming. This is largely, I think, because of her expansive sympathy for women -- the work they do and the hardships they face. You see in Whiff, in her boarding house landlady, in the girls job-hunting and house-hunting, the intelligence, initiative, kindness, and ability "to raise a smile" even when utterly exhausted that the author clearly sees and respects in the women around her. And that's by no means universal in light vintage women's fiction and always a pleasure to read. Some other points of interest include a plotline devoted to the difficulty of finding rental housing in 1919 -- the market, apparently, woefully underbuilt during the war -- and an extended and highly detailed description of a boarding house Christmas party that feels almost a companion to her children's party in Hazel of Heatherland.

Overall, not an especially swift-moving or exciting story, but a quietly enjoyable one. I really can't get enough of the "make your own career" trope!