Female Role Models in Literature: Lillian Moller Gilbreth

There’s a long tradition in literature of having a tomboy juxtaposed with a feminine girl. In the late 1800’s there was a series for little girls about Ruby and Ruth, where Ruby was the one getting into trouble all the time and Ruth was the good girl doing her needlepoint. By then, Louisa May Alcott had written Little Women, with Jo the tomboy and Beth the good girl. Trixie Belden was a tomboy but her best friend was the girly-girl.

There are also books with a strong female protagonist without much of a feminine girl as a foil, but usually those strong females are surrounded by males or thrust into a formerly male role. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is all tomboy and her father’s fine with that. Calpurnia tries to civilize her a bit, but with little luck. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has been thrust into her father’s role as provider and protector.

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Cheaper by the Dozen, published in 1949. It is based on the real Gilbreth family – written by two of the twelve. Per the Foreword: “Mother and Dad, Lillian Moller Gilbreth and Frank Bunker Gilbreth, were industrial engineers. They were among the first in the scientific management field and the very first in motion study. From 1910 to 1924, their firm of Gilbreth, Inc. was employed as ‘efficiency expert’ by many of the major industrial plants in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Dad died in 1924. After that, Mother carried the load by herself and became perhaps the foremost woman industrial engineer.”

Their efficiency methods carried over into their parenting by necessity – with twelve children to manage and two parents working. Surrounded by adults as a child, I was always enamored by the idea of being part of a large family, but the concept of conserving time and energy through efficient habits is what really stayed with me from the book… and subliminally, the understanding there were no restrictions on what I might become.

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#TheHungerGames #CheaperbytheDozen #motionstudy #literature #LouisaMayAlcott #womeninliterature #ToKillaMockingbird #RubyandRuth #LittleWomen #LillianMillerGilbreth #strongwomen #FemaleRoleModels #Katniss

Me Too & Writing Romance: Happy Single

While I plan the release of Peg’s Story: In Search of Self, I’m still writing. I have several short stories that I’m turning into romance novels. I want to make sure nothing I write undermines women. Therefore, I’m looking at myths and making myself some rules. The fourth one is that single women can’t have meaningful lives and be happy.

Myth #4 – Women are incomplete without a partner.

Funny thing…married women will invite single men or single fathers for dinner, but they don’t invite single women unless there’s a suitable single match coming.

When my kids were little, I thought it might be just us – they were pretty rambunctious. Then we got invited for a barbeque by the mother of my youngest son’s friend – not a big party, just the two families, not a single man in sight. And she told me why she’d offered the invitation: She and her husband had grown up in that small town, had had the same group of friends for decades, and when her husband recovered from a life-threatening heart attack, one of those women told her “I’m so glad he got better. I’d have missed having you as a friend.” If her husband had died, they would not have continued including her in their gatherings! Unfortunately, this was not a unique situation.

We’re encouraging young girls to take STEM classes, we keep fighting for equal wages for equal pay, we’ve gotten more men involved in caring for their children, but socially married women still exclude single women. Based on conversations with married friends, I don’t think this is a planned action. It makes some sense that couples would gravitate towards couples for socializing.

But why are single men included more often than single women?

I suspect it’s because a single man is traditionally more likely to be career-centered, while a single woman must be looking for a partner, which makes her a potential threat. And a married woman is traditionally less likely to risk that relationship than a man (because she needs it), and she’s more likely to be the one doing the inviting. Note I used the word “traditionally”. We often continue behaviors that no longer apply to current circumstances, because they’ve been ingrained over generations.

Of course the expectation in a romance novel is that there’s a happily-ever-after or at least a happy beginning for a couple. However, it’s okay for men to be happy single. There’s no reason single women can’t be happy and have fulfilling lives. They’re actually in a better position to have a good partnership than if they go into one needy.

Me Too Connection

The idea that a woman needs to be attached harkens back to the bad old days when women were the property of their fathers, until they became the property of their husbands. That links to the attitude that men can do whatever they want with women and that once a woman’s been used, she’s inferior.

Rule #4 – My heroines will have meaningful lives.

My heroines will include suddenly and perpetually single women who are developing or already have meaningful activities in their lives beyond the traditional nurturing roles. They will talk with other women about things other than sex, relationships, fashion, and appearances. They will have non-romantic relationships with both men and women.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

#writingromance #Romance #romancenovels #metoo #MeToo #Writing