Examining popular women’s novels of the 1930s, this study explores how middlebrow literature imagined gender and class identity during one of the most economically devastating times in U.S.
history. These forgotten writers - Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, Margaret Ayer Barnes, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Katharine Brush, and others - portrayed women’s lives and a
great variety of issues that affected them, including marriage, motherhood, professionalism, violence, and racism. Through adept close readings, Jennifer Haytock demonstrates that
Depression-era realist fiction portrays a range of changes in daily life and draws new conclusion about the American Dream.
