Miss Lulu Bett and Selected Stories

by Zona Gale

Lulu Bett lives in a small town with her sister Ina and Ina’s husband Dwight–a dentist who rules his household with self-righteous smugness. The unmarried Lulu has learned that she cannot question her role as chief cook, housekeeper, and gracious presence. But when Dwight’s sophisticated brother Ninian comes to visit, Lulu finds in herself a surprising wit–and the boldness to accept his playful proposal of marriage.
Through her appealing, determined heroine, Zona Gale satirically dispatches a sheaf of the social assumptions of her day, from male supremacy to the security of marriage. First published in 1920, Miss Lulu Bett was immediately acclaimed, and went on to become one of two bestselling novels of the year. Together with four of Gale’s short stories–including the O. Henry award-winning “Bridal Pond”– Miss Lulu Bett reflects Gale’s broad progressive interests and the fast-paced, affecting prose which made her one of the most popular writers of her time and a classic American storteller.

“A great book . . . the telling is almost incomparable” —Robert Benchley, The World

“Eloquent. . . . Miss Lulu Bett is without flaw” — The Atlantic Monthly

“It has a narrowly limned beauty. . . . The book stands as a signal accomplishment in American letters” — The New Republic

Genres: Fiction, Plays, Classics, Short Stories, Drama, Modern Classics, Womens

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

American author, playwright, and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 1921 for Miss Lulu Bett , her dramatic adaptation of her novel of the same name.

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was first impressed by the work of journalist, playwright, and author Zona Gale as I listened to a Librivox recording of her second novel, Christmas A Story (1912) (capably read by one of my favourite Librivox readers, Christine Dufour, aka "Jacquerie"). This unorthodox tale of the festive season was, to me, the breath of fresh air that I had sought, the one seasonal story (among numerous syrupy novels touted as "Christmas-themed") which embodies the truth of love.

While looking for another recording by "Jacquerie", I happened upon Gale's sixth novel, Miss Lulu Bett, written some eight years later in 1920. According to Wikipedia, Zona Gale was a well-educated and progressive thinker, a politically-active supporter of the cause of women's rights, active in the National Women's Party and the Lucy Stone League (which lobbied for the right of a woman to continue to use her birth-surname after marriage). Reportedly, a favourite theme of her novels was "women's frustration at their lack of opportunities" [Wikipedia reference to source is a dead link].

Miss Lulu Bett is a 33-year-old single woman who (along with her mother) lives with her sister and brother-in-law and their family, and "earns her keep" by serving them as housekeeper. She is the stereotypical timid spinster - ridiculed and bullied by her brother-in-law and treated more like a maid than a family member - and rarely speaks up for herself. However, as events unfold, the reader watches Lulu, in her understated manner, gradually gain the confidence and courage to break free.

Soon after the publication of the novel, Zona Gale wrote a stage adaptation of the story. As explained in this Wikipedia article, the ending was altered twice for the stage production. (A fourth ending was written for the silent film produced in 1921 by William C. deMille). After a successful 198-show run at the Belmont Theatre in New York City (from December 27, 1920 to June 18, 1921), the play toured the USA and won for Zona Gale in 1921 the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the first time it had been awarded to a woman. (This was also the year that Edith Wharton received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The Age of Innocence.)

It appears from this bibliographic record prepared by Dr. Donna Campbell, Professor of English at Washington State University, that Zona Gale was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, and plays. Although her work is no longer well-known, it remains relevant today. Much of it is available online (some at Project Gutenberg and many others linked at The University of Pennsylvania Online Books Page).

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a forgotten novel from a professional American writer who was extremely popular early in the twentieth century. Her fictional territory was the upper midwest. Gale earned a very good living from her stories, having abandoned an early journalism career in New York City when she could make it writing fiction. She had published other novels, but this one won her the admiration of the leading reviewers of serious fiction. She later worked it into a play, which won the Pulitzer prize, the first awarded to a woman dramatist.

It is the story of a spinster who emerges from the domination of her brother-in-law. The book is wholly mid-western, with reviewers commending it for its authentic speech patterns of middle-class small town folks of 1920. The style is interesting, if mixed; the speech patterns only exist in dialogue, and don’t permeate the thoughts of Lulu and the other characters. But the style was compared, in its protrayal of provincial America, with the plain realism of Sinclair Lewis. Gale set herself a task, to convince the reader that a woman of 34 who has been cowed into being a nonenity and basically a servant in her sister’s household can gradually respond to overtures from sympathetic strangers and see emerge from her own subconcience a woman capable of comebacks and rebellions. The author does carry it off, for the most part. She also portrays a bumptious booster type in the brother in law, akin to Babbit, and two other women caught in their traditional roles, Lulu’s sister and her neice. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Gale was certainly an independent creature, extremely active in the suffragette movement. She became a feminist, a pacifist, a liberal, a supporter of the Progressive Wisconsin senator Robert LaFollette, and she pursued civic improvement with the same passion she devoted to her writing...A dedicated advocate of women’s rights, Gale helped to draft and successfully campaigned for passage of the Wisconsin Equal Rights Law She was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin, and belonged to the NAACP. (A story portraying a midwestern town’s encounter with a newly arrived, highly educated Black family is included in this collection. ) Conservation and healthy eating, children’s issues, humane treatment of animals, opposition to capital punishment...; you name it, she was active on the liberal side.

[Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burnt out on Zelda, I decided to go Zona and take on a semi-forgotten book better known for its 1921 theater adaptation, which won its author a Pulitzer, making her the first woman ever in the Drama category to receive it. Miss Lulu Bett is a clever spin on village realism with a heroine who seems like a doormat until she decides to wipe the floor with her family. Read it alongside Sherwood Anderson and you get a nice appreciation of the differences between social and Freudian psychology: if Anderson in Winesburg is all about inner dissatisfaction turning folks into grotesques, Gale is interested in the hypocrisy of etiquette and social propriety, exploring how the desire to be recognized as "good folk" will twist a soul. The style is mainly dialogue-driven, with the descriptive passages effective in conveying how bland Warbleton is. Nice subplot that parallels and weaves into Lulu's story. Nowhere near as exuberantly satiric as Main Street or Babbitt, which is why it's easy to overlook just how subversive its message about women's freedom is (despite an obligatory marriage plot). Don't let the surface hominess fool ya; Gale was a barnburner in many ways.

Bonus fun: the silent movie version is a rare early 20s flick that still exists: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ptNMURK8Spc

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.

This novella that was rewritten as a play is a throwback to a different era but feels modern enough. There are strong woman characters, particularly Lulu, who navigate a male dominated world in Wyoming. The story is one part Main Street by Sinclair Lewis and one part Doll House by Henrik Ibsen.

Lulu Bett, our protagonist, is the cook and housekeeper for her sister Ina Deacon and her husband Dwight. Dwight is a dentist and a bit of an ass. The two Deacon children and Ida and Lulu’s mother live with them as well.

When Dwight’s ne’er-do-well but charming brother Ninian comes to town he naturally falls for the unmarried Lulu. They soon get married but Ninian’s dark past quickly comes to light. How the family deals with the news and embarrassment are the central theme of the story. It is masterfully wrought.

One of Dwight’s acquaintances in town, Mr. Cornish, falls for the “divorced” Lulu after meeting her at a dinner hosted by Dwight. Dwight was hoping that Mr. Cornish might fall for Diana his eighteen year old daughter who is dating a boy of her age. The boyfriend is a bit of a dolt. But Mr. Cornish, who is the same age as Lulu, is attracted to Lulu and correctly perceives that she is the moral bedrock of the Deacon household. He soon learns from Lulu what happened to her previous marriage and is impressed by her honesty in the face of the scandal. Dwight is very concerned that his brother’s secret not come to light however.

4.5 stars. Miss Lulu Bett may not be as epic as Main Street or as dark as the Dollhouse but Gale’s character development around both Lulu and Dwight are exceptional. The tone and arc of the story are surprisingly positive. I wanted Lulu to win the day.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick. Name one of the bestselling novels in 1920.

If you guessed Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale, I’m assuming you checked out Wikipedia before answering.

Later turned into a Pulitzer-prize winning play, Miss Lulu Bett was, when published, a commercial and critical success. The novel is mostly forgotten now, which is a shame, because it’s lovely and features some phenomenal writing.

Lulu Bett is a single woman living with her married sister and family. She’s treated as the hired help rather than a family member: she does the cooking and the cleaning and is rarely included in social events. Frankly, hired help has more freedom than Lulu. When a single man comes to town, however, it appears that Lulu’s entire life might change.

That’s only the first half of the novel. It’s followed by a twist that springboards the story into the second and stronger half of the novel. To be fair, the twist is somewhat ridiculous and might even be part of why the book faded in the intervening decades: in a somewhat serious book, the twist comes straight from “bad romantic comedy tropes.” Having thought it over, though, I like the ridiculousness of it and what it says about some of the characters’ motivations (although, as a warning, I also love screwball comedies, which also view reality as a malleable chew toy).

Miss Lulu Betts is a relatively short novel, however, and this edition includes a few of Ms. Gale’s short stories. While they’re all good, The Dream stood out for me as the strongest. Also, the book’s introduction is useful in providing the right amount of history and literary criticism, although I’d recommend avoiding it until after reading the rest of the book.

I’m so glad I discovered this little book. This edition served as a great introduction to an American writer who has been mostly forgotten. That’s a shame, because I think other readers would be as enchanted by Ms. Gale’s writing and skill as I was. Highly recommended.

ETA: Shortly after reading the novel, I also read the play, which Ms. Gale wrote about a year after the novel. My review for that can be found here. It's definitely worth reading both, as the play has not just a different ending but two different endings (at least the edition I read). It also won the Pulitzer.

[Richard S · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd but highly entertaining little book that reads like a play (and a play version was created that won Zona a Pulitzer Prize, first ever for a woman) primarily about social mores in small town USA in the 1920s. A large family of characters, each with their own little quirks, create a wide variety of interactions. The characters of the book a bit stereotypical and shallow, the primary thread of the book being the slow emancipation of Miss Lulu Bett from the oppressive household where she is basically kept as a slave.

This book was a bestseller at the time, and one can definitely see that, although I can see its appeal primarily to unattached single ladies in their mid-thirties, as the book is sort of a fantasy about that. It has strong feminist themes and bent; perhaps the most astonishing thing is its popularity - were people really like that back then? The book has very much an "Our Town" American feel to it.

Regardless, beyond pure entertainment value, the book seems extremely dated and perhaps has some historical interest, but virtually no literary value. Largely forgotten, there's no reason I can see to recommend it to a current reader except the curious. "Zona Gale" is an excellent name though, and while is apparently her best and most famous, she wrote over twenty novels.

To my Powys friends - this is the first of a batch of books I'm reading that were included in a list of "Modern Books" used by the writer John Cowper Powys. I felt a little of this book in JCP's "Miss Rowe! Miss Rowe!" and its claustrophobic family atmosphere. Otherwise the style is much too different.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always have the best of intentions in joining in with Karen of Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings, and Simon at Stuck in a Book's yearly clubs, which encourage readers to choose a book or two from a particular year.  However, in the past, I have only taken part in one or two of these, as something else inevitably gets in the way.  I am determined to make more of an effort going forward, and was excited to learn about the year of choice for the current project - 1920.  It felt rather special to select a book published exactly a century ago, and I was eager to join in.

I have read a lot of books published in 1920 which I have very much enjoyed - The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chéri by Colette - but was keen to select something a little less popular.  I considered a D.H. Lawrence novel, and also some F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories, but eventually plumped to read a new-to-me author in the form of American novelist, short story writer, and playwright, Zona Gale.  In 1920, she published a novella entitled Miss Lulu Bett, which appealed to me.  I downloaded it, copyright-free, on my Kindle, and settled down on a dreary afternoon to read it.

Upon its publication, Miss Lulu Bett was highly acclaimed.  The Atlantic Monthly wrote 'Miss Lulu Bett is without flaw', and The New Republic deemed Gale's novella 'a signal accomplishment in American letters.'  It was later adapted into a play by Gale, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.  

Lulu Bett lives with her sister, Ina, Ina's dentist husband Dwight Deacon, their daughters Diana and Monona, and her mother, the bad-tempered Mrs Bett.  They reside in a house in the small town of Warbleton, in an unnamed part of the midwest.  Dwight 'rules his house with self-righteous smugness', and everyone around him is forced to conform.  He constantly makes himself the centre of attention, and makes out that he knows best, to the detriment of everyone else.  He sees himself, writes Gale, 'as the light of his home, bringer of brightness, lightener of dull hours.  It was a pretty rôle.  He insisted upon it.'  Dwight is anything but a positive element in the family; indeed, he positively glories in the misfortune of others, whilst still trying to appear a selfless martyr.

A way out for Lulu - 'an olive woman, once handsome, now with flat, bluish shadows under her wistful eyes' - appears when Dwight's mysterious brother, Ninian, comes to visit, after two decades of living in South America.  He proposes to her in something of an unusual manner, and the two embark on a journey out of Warbleton.  This, in true dramatic style, does not quite go to plan.

The novella spans the period between April and September, in which rather a lot happens to Lulu.  Regardless, there is not a great deal of plot written here; rather, the reactions and interactions between characters are given the most focus. Gale is concerned with familial relationships, and those continual, growing frictions which reside just beneath the surface.  Sadly, because of this, Lulu is not given as much focus as I would have expected, given that she is a titular character.  Whilst in the stifling crowd of her family, she is allowed barely any room to breathe; rather than shine through as the 'headstrong' protagonist which Gale was so keen to create here, Lulu pales somewhat in comparison.  A lot of what she does and says is not overly memorable, until she gains a sense of what freedom could feel like for her.  In this way, I suppose it could be said that Miss Lulu Bett is a coming-of-age story, although its protagonist is in her mid-thirties when the novella begins.

When we are first introduced to the heroine of the piece, Gale writes: 'There emerged from the fringe of things, where she perpetually hovered, Mrs. Deacon's older sister, Lulu Bett, who was "making her home with us".  And that was precisely the case.  They were not making her a home, goodness knows.  Lulu was the family beast of burden.'  She is seen as something to be disliked within the family, and as too dependent upon them.  This notion is fostered by Dwight throughout, and remarked upon as often as he can manage it (which is certainly often...).

Gale sadly seems to be rather an overlooked author.  Whilst I would be interested in watching this story in its play form - mainly to see how loathsome Dwight is made by the director - the writing displayed in Miss Lulu Bett has not made me overly keen to reach for any of her other work.  This novella is structurally fine, but I do not feel as though it is really long enough for me to gauge whether I enjoy Gale as a writer.  The prose style is quite ordinary for the mostpart, and not much stood out to me as a first-time reader of her work.  Whilst I enjoyed the flashes of satire, there were not enough of them to make this story really stand out.  I would have appreciated a longer character study of Lulu, and I feel as though her character may have unfolded rather more realistically had Gale devoted an entire novel to her.

[karen thorla · Rating 5 out of 5]

a comparison to machinal by sophie treadwell

Zona Gale in Miss Lulu Bett, as in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, depicts the world as a place in which women have less opportunities and options than men. The plight of the unmarried woman is portrayed as one of drudgery – and yet the married life is looked down upon as a worse fate. Both leading women aim to escape the inevitability of having a husband in different ways, and – if referring to Gale’s original ending – they both in their own way succeed (with Bett’s future brighter than Helen’s).
In Miss Lulu Bett, Gale presents a couple deeply committed to their social status, and the repercussions involved with being regarded with any type of social status. Dwight Deacon is the justice of peace, and he, along with his wife, Ina, strives to keep their family in good standing with the public. This proves to be difficult when Ina’s thirty-three year old sister is accidentally married to Dwight’s brother, Ninian – a marriage which is cut unexpectedly short following the news that he had been married once before and Lulu, not wanting the stigma of being a bad wife, is willing to divulge the news of his bigamy to the town. Meanwhile, Lulu’s mother is urging her to avoid marriage at all; having been through a bad relationship, she offers the idea that working for the Deacon’s in return for housing and food as a better idea than a husband. Originally, Gale ended the play with Lulu finding independence and leaving both her family and Ninian behind to go “I don’t know where – to work at I don’t know what,” but audiences did not prefer the ending in which she went out on her own to face the world. Gale then revised the ending into one where Ninian finds that his first wife is deceased and returns to Lulu to ask for forgiveness, which she states that she’s already granted him. While the second ending was more widely accepted by audiences, the first seemed to empowered women in a much greater way. Either way, though Lulu shows enough growth to deny the opportunity of ever returning to the Deacon’s as, essentially, their slave.
In her satire of the middle class, the audience seems to find Lulu on an almost-too-late-in-life journey to self-discovery. She begins the play as a subservient member of her family – she appears as much more of a slave or maid than the sister-in-law to the Justice of the Peace. Her family takes advantage of her and berates her in order to keep her services; Lulu is convinced that she has nothing else to offer the world but her helping hand, confessing that her only goal pertaining to her career is to “take care of folks that needed” her. She is wildly insecure and cannot even distinguish when Mr. Cornish tries to flirt with her. She asserts herself as doomed to the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed – a feeling common throughout women of the time. She feels she is incapable of changing her station. When Ninian walks into her life, he introduces her to the idea that she should have a life of her own. With this newfound support, Lulu begins to see herself as worth far more than her family suggests. Until Ninian’s arrival, her presence in conversations is repressed, and many conversations go about without acknowledging her presence. In some instances it seems as if they no longer see her as a woman, but merely a workhorse. The only reason she puts up with this treatment is because she feels she has to – her mother has her convinced that she would prefer the life she is living, as opposed to one with a husband. Ninian, however, shows her that she can change her outcome in life; all Lulu needed, it seems, was a little “positive reinforcement.” Her small victories, such as going against Ina’s wishes and wearing a nicer dress to the theater, are a precursor to her larger rebellion of going away with Ninian after the accidental wedding in conjunction with her final outcome of self-realization (in both endings). Ultimately, the play follows Miss Lulu Bett through her transformation into an enlightened woman.
Throughout the play, every character seems to have a different connotation and interpretation to the idea of marriage and the relationships between husband and wife. Probably the most extreme idea about the subject comes from Lulu’s mother, Mrs. Bett. Mrs. Bett believes that the anguish Lulu has to suffer in being somewhat of an indentured servant is far less than what is served by being a wife. Through a fog of old age, she implies that a wife must do all of the chores and work that Lulu does, in addition to the pain brought about by enduring the loss associated with having a family. She doesn’t seem to dislike the sanction of marriage because of any mistreatment to women, but she simply doesn’t want her daughter to have to be subjected to the same work she currently experiences alongside the death and defeat she had to go through. Lulu views marriage as something that she doesn’t deserve. She can’t believe that a man would want to be with her. In fact, when they find themselves in a legal wedlock, she assumes he will want to pretend it never happened, but when he suggests that they remain married, she asks “how could you want me?” It is not as if she sees marriage as a bad fate, but a fate for which she is not adequate. In the original ending, she does seem to lightly refuse the institution of marriage, proclaiming that “sometime, maybe” she would marry Cornish, but she longs to be an independent woman. In the revised ending, she enjoys a life in which she is a wife because she finally has found someone who will love and respect her, and with whom she can love and respect herself. Ina’s marriage to Dwight represents the limits of a married woman of the time. Her husband, Dwight, is a self-appointed patriarch, which Ina goes right along with. Lulu’s involvement in the household leaves Ina a useless member of society. She is unable to think for herself because of Dwight’s rein on her, but she is also unable to perform “wifely duties,” such as boiling water, without help.
There are grave similarities between this play, and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal. Machinal which tells the story of a similar woman – unmarried, with a mother to care for. Miss Gale discusses the way this woman’s life would play out in a more positive way, while Treadwell chooses a bleaker route. The two women, while in separate situations, see similar options with their lives. Lulu is aware that she could get away from the Deacon family’s abuse by simply finding a husband to whisk her away, but prefers to stay with them because she isn’t confident that she could perform any other duties, and Helen understands marrying her first offer of a husband as her only way to take care of herself in the long run. Both women come to these conclusions because of a low self-image. Lulu states that “women like [her] can’t do any other work,” while Helen’s mother also drills into her head that getting married is the only way she will be able to pay the bills and take care of herself – implying that she would be unable to care for herself alone. Both women are eventually liberated from their former selves – Lulu finds out that she can care for herself independently and also realizes that she is worthy of love and decides to find freedom from the Deacon family. Helen, in a more morbid path, finds her delivery through the murder of her husband. She thought at first she found her way out through an affair, but after being driven to insanity, she decides that she can only escape him through his death. Lulu gains enlightenment and is finally “allowed the opportunity to explore her dreams [… and] understand her own identity” while, sadly, Helen is not.
Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett is a play about a dynamic woman overcoming her affliction of being a single woman, while discussing different ideas and outcomes of marriage in the early 1900s. The audience travels along her journey of self-discovery, as compared to the slow suffocation the audience must witness with Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal. These two pieces were great feats in the realm of women’s literature, both in that they discuss harsh realities women had to face and that they were award-winning works of dramatic writing – even earning Gale a Pulitzer Prize for drama.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it was written by a woman from Portage, WI in 1920 and I wanted to see what it was about simply because it was a local author. I found this novel to be surprisingly funny and engaging with a modern sensibility that I did not expect.

[~ Cheryl ~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate Zona Gale’s quirky writing style. It can be a bit clunky, but it is inventive. And every so often there is a sentence or a phrase that demands to be read over and savored.

But this story was lackluster. I hated everybody, except for Lulu who I felt sorry for, and one other character who turned out to be this story’s version of a hero.

Rather a disappointment, after how much I enjoyed her story, Christmas.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by Wisconsin native Zona Gale and published in 1920, it reminded me somewhat of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, though not of such epic size. It also reminded me of Ernest Poole's His Family, which won the first ever Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1918. Gale would re-write Miss Lulu Bett for the stage where she would be the first ever woman writer to earn the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.

Lulu Bett is a 34 year old dowdy spinster who has for the past 15 years lived with her younger sister Ina, who is married to an older widower Dwight who brings a daughter from the previous marriage. The Deacons now have an 8-10 year old daughter of their own, and Diana from the first marriage is now 18. Ina and Lulu have Mrs Bett, their mother, living with them. Lulu has been the housekeeper and cook for the family, and we find out she fills an even more important role. She has not left the small town of Warbleton in years, and she lives an empty existence. To make things worse, Dwight runs the house like a drill sergeant, and is unforgiving and cruel in the way he treats the woman, especially Lulu. Yet she is the glue that holds the family together, as they need it very much.

Dwight's brother Ninian pays the family a visit after an absence of 19 years, and soon there are love sparks between him and Lulu. A very bizarre wedding takes place with some catastrophic results. Feminist viewpoints on gender roles, marriage, and family are front and center. The opinions that others in the community hold about the Deacon family are very important to them. The younger set get involved in an elopement, and Lulu gets a second chance at marriage in the space of just a couple of months.

The story is dialogue driven, so I can see how it would have translated to the stage very well. The characters and relationships they have are very complex and kept me engaged while reading. The issues that are central to the story are still timely and relevant today.

[Gerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Miss Lulu Bett" is among the Pulizer-prize winners in a compilation I downloaded free to my Kindle. Think about it, aspiring authors: Assuming copyright law doesn't change (and of course it likely will in that length of time), seventy years after you're dead, all your stuff will be free as wifi, and some scum-sucking bottom-feeder like me will happen across it because he couldn't even bear the thought of paying for a 99-cent ebook.

There is an Akashic Record, after all.

Anyhow, this a a women's suffrage story, a parlor-room drama about a spinster whose hormones and innate wilfulness haven't quieted just yet. It's all raised eyebrows and innuendo. The men are pigs, almost to a man, but the pimply boys are kinda cute.

If you like Edith Wharton, try this.

If you crave less subtle stuff, you won't get past the first few pages. Don't feel bad. You belong to a newer age.

[Katy Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating period piece on a woman’s role.

A read that I chose as I saw this book/play mentioned in a recent read on feminist films over the last century. Not one I'd heard of, so I thought I should educate myself.

Always interesting to see women's lives portrayed at various times in history, especially by contemporary writers who lives those experiences.

Here Lulu Bett is the unmarried thirty-something spinster sister who is dependent on her sister's husband for her room and board, and she more than pays for this with her unpaid domestic work for her sister, niece and looking after their mother who also lives with them. There is also an older daughter as well, of an age to be making eyes at the boys.

The story sees the quite sober and clipped Lulu meeting Dwight's (the dentist/magistrate brother in law's) own brother, finding herself opening up both verbally and emotionally, and also spotting a potential situation developing between her eldest niece and a local smitten young suitor.

The two romantic situations develop in quite surprising ways as the meek Lulu is seen to be acting in ways unheard of in their controlled household and taking more interest and initative than her relatives clearly thought possible.

I would quite like to see this as a play/film, a lot is going on behind the words and in the scenes we cannot see. There are some good fleshy roles here of stereotypes and character, and a story that seems to end quite abruptly but pleasantly.


Novel which depicts life in the Midwestern United States, from the American writer. She adapted it as a play, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921. In the same year, Gale took an active role in the creation of the Wisconsin Equal Rights Law, which prohibits discrimination against women.

[Agnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love 1920's feminists!

I discovered Zona Gale in In the Stacks-short stories about libraries by Michael Cart

and knew I wanted to read more.

"Baked potatoes" said Mr. Deacon. That's good, that's good-that's good. The baked potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other way. The nourishment is next to the skin. Roasting retains it."

"That's what I always think," said his wife pleasantly.

For fifteen years they had agreed about this."


I also liked the short story "The Need" - imagine your husband wanting to throw a party and you realize you have no friends.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miss Lulu Bett is a spinster, living with her brother in law, her sister, their kids and her mother. She lives there and does all the cooking, and such, while her brother in law, Dwight, lords about the house in a pompous way. The story revolves around Lulu’s quick marriage to Dwight’s brother, and all of the repercussions from that.

I really loved this! It was interesting and I loved reading about Lulu. And Dwight…what a fool. He was disgusting, but had some really great moments. The ending was surprising and I would LOVE to read this again.

[Kirsten Bett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am giving this book all these stars because it deserves them. This was written in 1921 and bearing that in mind I tginknit is a highly courageous and entertaining story. It is also written well and the story gripped me. Zona Gale also writes with quiye a bit of humour and it reads like a film, very visual. I am going to check out her other books, in the meantime I recommend Miss Lulu Bett who could be an ancestor of mine...

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sure it's fine whatever. Zona Gale does deserve praise for being the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Miss Lulu Bett and it does present new ideas while having an engaging first act with our lead being interesting but the sideplot with the daughter is annoying and it has the shortest third act I have ever seen.

There's also the aspect of the husband referring to his wife as 'pussy' and 'puss' which is fucking weird in today's context and probably weird back then too.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars I really enjoyed reading this book. It was pretty short but showed an interesting perspective of a woman's life in the early 1900's. I loved that the author was gutsy enough (for that time period) to write a woman's character with some attitude and personality.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot although there were definitely some conflicts between was this feminist or not, and not as pertained to Ina, but to Lulu.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for a Modern Lit class.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just discovering this wonderful author. Some of the passages in this book are absolutely gorgeous.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally read this on Kindle as an assigned reading for a F. Scott Fitzgerald book group, FitzFirst@Four, in a departure from studying that author's work. Miss Lulu Bett, by Zona Gale was published in 1920, the same year as This Side of Paradise, by Fitzgerald and both were instantly very popular and sold well, although Miss Lulu Bett did even better, becoming a best seller that year along with Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis. Today, both Fitzgerald and Lewis are still read and studied widely but Zona Gale has been barely remembered, and only recently resurrected by college English Departments. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story although the 99¢ Kindle version was not digitized well. There were lots of typos and odd formatting which made it difficult to know what quaint turns of phrase and dialect peculiarities were intended and which were accidental. But the story itself, which takes place in a Midwest small town, 1920, is a brief but powerful awakening of feminism and a really solid piece of literature—almost "Hemingway-esque" in its spare, tight writing style and downright pithy at times with some quotations worth framing. Loved this book so much that I bought a hard copy too, autographed by Marc Seals, the author of the introduction to the 2016 Hastings College Press edition.

[Christian Engler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dramaturgically scrimpy in dialogue, plot, character development and visualization, Miss Lulu Bett is anything but an American comedy of manners; it is American manure, at best. A jejunely piece of writing, it belongs in a literary purgatory, bouncing back and forth like a ping pong ball with its other run-of-the-mill literary ilk. It is neither evocative nor emotive of the human spirit, human desires or gashing human pains. It is an annoying lump in the stomach that goes nowhere. Hailed by critics and theatre-goers alike (squarely for its stripped emotional armor and restraint) when it debuted in 1921, Miss Lulu Bett eventually garnered the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Drama - a drama that was based on Zona Gale's novel of the same title (which must have been a wonderful reading experience). The play evolves around Miss Lulu Bett, a homely spinster whose life is her servitude to her waspish sister (Ina Deacon) and her hubristic 'man-of-the-house' brother-in-law (Dwight Deacon). Lulu is not goal-oriented, interesting or witty; she is overly ordinary, mousy by degrees and excessively hesitant about everything and anything. And when she does do something extraordinary, i.e. taking control of her life and future, even that seems bland - which was not the intent. Lulu is written in a fashion that is as exciting as staring at a piece of tarp. But in the play, that is precisely her role - to be the protective cloak that covers the exposed areas of vulnerability, and there are many gaping holes in the Deacon household. The writing structure and voice is inelastic and archaic. Like chalk dust, it can be easily blown away and dismissed. As the family doormat, whatever is festering in the family is eventually heaped upon dear, old, reliable, compliant Lulu. As the repetitive ruts within the play's confines march ahead, the drudging cycle is eventually broken when Lulu is introduced to Dwight's charismatic brother, Ninian Deacon, the one glimmer in the whole play. He encourages her to see her 'good' qualities (Were there any to start off with?), then proposes marriage to her in a manner that is neither legitimate or credible. And the fact that the proposal passed off as something plausible is still very questionable. Ultimately, the marriage is not acknowledged or spoken of because of the most absurd circumstances. In her brief union/respit, Lulu finds a kind of independence that she never felt before, and when the marriage is no more, she uses her past marital experience as a catalyst to start a new life away from her annoyingly ungrateful family. Miss Lulu Bett perhaps works better as an insignificant period piece. But as true drama, I don't think so.

[Carolyn Di Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those who see this book as strictly a boring romance are missing the deeper message that I think the author was trying to show. Our heroine is trapped in a world that did not offer women many options other than marriage. Miss Lulu is seemingly subservient to her family, including a very overbearing bore of a brother in law. As the story moves along, you begin to cheer each time she says something that shows an inner spark of originality.
There is actually very little romance in the novel and whether or not it ends "happily" is really not stated and I have to wonder if it was meant to be implied.
Highly recommended as a fascinating picture of life 75 years ago, and a very easy read for a winter's afternoon.

[Stacy Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did it! I finally struck gold all by myself just casually picking something up in the library. Zona Gale was well known in her time but somehow has fallen into obscurity. This story reminds me of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." I loved the story and I loved the character of LuLu Bett. All characters are beautifully described and imbued with the best and in some cases most annoying of attributes. You will not be sorry to have taken some time for this story.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a joyous, slyly feminist glimpse into the past this is! Title character Lulu lives under the thumb of her sister’s maniacally polite husband, but some unexpected events cause her to grow a spine and turn things around. Many of the turns of phrase are dated, but the plot (mostly) avoids melodrama by virtue of being (still, sadly) timely and genuinely engaging. Good for you, Lulu!

[Hannah-riley Blessing · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very nice to travel into the past for a little while, and spend time with these people inside Zona Gale's head. She's very fun to read because she describes a scene very well, and things happen that aren't expected.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice find for a quarter on the Friends of the Library Shelf. Zona Gale was a feminist from Wisconsin writing about small town America in the same time period as Sinclair Lewis was. Miss Lulu Bett is a novel and the book also includes a few short stories.

[Stacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a play, though it was originally written as a short story. It won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1921, and was written by a woman. I believe it was the first play to win a Pulitzer. Enjoyable.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another family/living without marriage sort of play as a woman gets married only to find her husband may have another wife living. Bah.