The Sheltered Life by Ellen Glasgow (1932). Glasgow’s signature themes—the place of women and the crumbling Old South—reached a high point in three comedies of manners set in the fictional city of Queenborough—The Romantic Comedians (1926), They Stooped to Folly (1929), and The Sheltered Life (1932). Here, Glasgow depicts the declining fortunes of two tradition-bound Virginia families, the Archibalds and the Birdsongs. Through young Jenny Blair Archibald, she represents the possibility of feminine independence in this penetrating account of southerners being forced into the modern era.
Total Points: 8 (LS 8)