FERBER, Edna

Born 15 August 1887, Kalamazoo, Michigan; died 16 April 1968, New York, New York

Daughter of Jacob C. and Julia Neuman Ferber

Edna Ferber began her writing career as a newspaper reporter in Appleton, Wisconsin, as well as in Milwaukee, and Chicago, but wrote her first novel, Dawn O'Hara (1911), during a prolonged illness. She earned sudden success and great popularity with her stories of Emma McChesney, a traveling saleswoman.

In 1925 Ferber won the Pulitzer Prize for So Big (1924), her best novel, and a few years later saw her novel Show Boat (1926) transformed into a classic American musical. Her love of the theater was further indulged through her successful collaboration with George S. Kaufman, with whom she wrote such popular plays as Royal Family (1928), Dinner at Eight (1932), and Stage Door (with G. S. Kaufman, 1936, film version 1937). Royal Family was successfully revived in 1975. Ferber was seriously disillusioned by World War II; her postwar novels were more idea-laden and contrived, although she remained a popular novelist to her death.

In So Big, Selina Peake, the properly raised daughter of a gambler, is forced to make her own way in the world after her father is accidentally killed. She takes a teaching position in High Prairie, a Dutch farming community outside Chicago, and spends the rest of her life there. After the death of her husband, Selina struggles by herself to run their truck farm and to raise her son, Dirk, nicknamed "So Big." Dirk's youth is the counterpoint in every respect of Selina's. Where she cherishes life, he cherishes success; where she reveres beauty, he reveres money. By the novel's end, Dirk is an immensely wealthy, successful, miserable young man.

Show Boat deals with three generations of women—Parthenia Ann Hawks, Magnolia Hawks Ravenal, and Kim Ravenal—but the novel centers on Magnolia, her bizarre childhood on her father's showboat, her idyllic love affair with Gaylord Ravenal, her marital difficulties as she learns that her husband is a confirmed gambler, and her determination to provide for her daughter after Gaylord's desertion. As in many Ferber novels, the heroine's daughter is not nearly her mother's equal. Also as in most Ferber novels, there is a subplot concerned with racist attitudes, here about the mulatto showboat actress Julie, whose role was expanded in the musical.

Cimarron (1929) is Ferber's most overtly feminist novel. Sabra Venable Cravat moves with her husband Yancey to the recently opened territory of Oklahoma. Despite his many talents, Yancey is impractical and irresponsible and seems unable to stay in one place longer than five years at a time. In addition to the housework and the raising of her children, Sabra finds herself helping with Yancey's newspaper—the first in Oklahoma—and, on those occasions when Yancey abandons her, running it herself. Yancey is the dreamer; Sabra the doer. She becomes Oklahoma's first U.S. congresswoman.

Clio Dulaine Maroon, the protagonist of Saratoga Trunk (1941, film version 1945), is as close as Ferber ever came to creating an antiheroine. Clio, the illegitimate daughter of an established Creole family (the Dulaines) on her father's side and a series of "loose" women (including a free woman of color) on her mother's, returns from France to New Orleans to avenge herself on the Dulaines and to make her fortune by marrying a millionaire. Clio realizes at the last minute that love is more important than money, but luckily Clint Maroon, a Texan adventurer who has been making his fortune among the detested railroad men while Clio tries to marry one of them, can now provide both love and money.

Giant (1952) is much like Cimarron in its treatment of place: Texas. Leslie Lynnton Benedict, genteel Virginian, who must adapt to her amazing husband Bick (a male of mythic proportions), is believable and engaging, particularly as a young bride in rebellion against the Texan gentry's lifestyle. But she matures too quickly, and Ferber switches the conflict from Virginian vs. Texan lifestyles to a conflict between cattle and oil. Giant contains devastating portraits of wealthy Texans and acid social criticism of their treatment of Mexican Americans.

Ferber's writing remained untouched by the innovations of her contemporaries. She was neither responsible for any innovations of her own, nor did her own work appreciably evolve in terms of style, content, or structure. Still, her work deserves serious consideration for her treatment of the land, her feminism, and her egalitarianism.

Even when Ferber writes about the land, her novels are first and foremost about women—strong women, pioneer women, women determined to hold on to the land and to keep their families together. The women always triumph and often survive their men; the visionaries see their dreams come true, and the practical ones see the present inexorably improving toward the future. Although Ferber is not in the tradition of the great American literary experimenters, she is a solid member of another tradition, that of the celebrators of America.

Other Works:

Buttered Side Down (1912, recording, 1995). Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney (1913). Personality Plus: Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock (1914). Emma McChesney and Co. (1915). Fanny Herself (1917, recording, 1995). Cheerful by Request (1918, recording, 1995). Half Portions (1920). $1200 a Year (with N. Levy, 1920). The Girls (1921). Gigolo (1922, film version, 1926). Eldest (1925). Minick (with G. S. Kaufman, 1925; film versions, 1925, 1932). Mother Knows Best: A Fiction Book (1927, film version, 1928). American Beauty (1931, reissue, 1997). They Brought Their Women: A Book of Short Stories (1933, Braille, 1998). Come and Get It (1935, film version, 1936, recording, 1998). Nobody's in Town (1938). A Peculiar Treasure (1939). The Land is Bright (with G. S. Kaufman, 1941). Great Son (1945). One Basket: Thirty-One Short Stories (1947). Bravo (with G. S. Kaufman, 1949). Ice Palace (1958, film version, 1960). A Kind of Magic (1963). Saratoga: Roman (1993). Edna Ferber: Stories (1996). One Basket, 31 Short Stories (1996). Personality Plus (recording, 1997).

Bibliography:

Anderson, G. T., Edna Ferber's "Showboat": As Literature and as Film (1991). Freytag, B. A., The Tip of the Iceberg (1988). Shaughnessy, M. R., Women and Success in American Society in the Works of Edna Ferber (1976).

Reference works:

CA (1969, 1971). TCA, TCAS. Wisconsin Writers: Sketches and Studies (1974).

Other references:

A Christmas Sampler: Classic Stories of the Season, from Twain to Cheever (1992). Chicago's Authors Celebrate Chicago (cassette, 1988). Chicago Jewish Forum 13. MTJ 13. NYTBR (5 Oct. 1952). Six Prairie Authors Biographies (audiovisual, 1991).

—CYNTHIA L. WALKER