Why Not?

by Margaret Widdemer

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366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978) was an American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (known then as the Columbia University Prize) in 1919 for her collection The Old Road to Paradise (1918). She shared the prize with Carl Sandburg, who won for his collection Corn Huskers (1916). Margaret Widdemer was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She graduated from the Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She came to public attention with her poem The Factories (1917), which treated the subject of child labor. In 1919 she married Robert Haven Schauffler (1879-1964), a widower five years her senior. Schauffler was an author and cellist who published widely on poetry, travel, culture, and music. Widdemer's memoir Golden Friends I Had (1964) recounts her friendships with eminent authors such as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Thornton Wilder, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, old romance with a sprightly heroine. She is tired of being told what to do, and when she gets a little money, she goes off to spend it as she pleases, chasing her dreams. Her relatives are sure she'll be back begging—but maybe there's something to be had in those dreams of hers.

[Kailey (Luminous Libro) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosamund is finally out from under her strict family's guardianship, and her uncle has left her a little money in his will. She decides to follow all her own dreams and not stop for anything. She buys a house by the lake, and decides to set up a fortune-telling booth to make her living. But her new neighbor Mr. Squire is a very traditional person who seems to disapprove of everything she does. Rosamund tells herself that she doesn't care about his approval, but in her secret heart she wants him to think well of her. Can they manage to be neighborly or will Rosamund's wild ways tear them apart?

I loved this hilarious book! The whole story is ridiculous and silly and delightful. The romance was so sweet, and I really liked the supporting characters who come to Rosamund for advice. She leads them into some crazy situations, but they all find their dreams have come true once they have the courage to see it through. There is an orphan girl looking for a true family, an inventor with no money to develop his turbo engine, a society girl who is sick of parties and fake people and just wants to tramp around in the woods and wear trousers like a man, and a millionaire who worries that his friends only want his money.

Rosamund is flighty and frivolous, but she has her own brand of wisdom as well. Although her words and actions are sometimes silly, she has a good and generous heart. She just refuses to be restricted by other people's ideas of what is sensible.
Mr. Squire is steady and responsible, but he is amused by Rosamund's antics, and he needs some shenanigans to shake him out of his boring life.

This book is altogether delightful and fun!

[Alisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Why not?" becomes a Rosamund's motto when, at the age of 23, she becomes independent. She's been brought up by an uncle who hemmed her in with restrictions and expectations, and her other family members aren't much better. But when her uncle dies, she seizes the opportunity to leave town and try something new.
This seems to be a recurring theme for Margaret Widdemer: young girl who doesn't like the way her life is going suddenly has the opportunity to chase happiness.

Rosamund has a long list of wishes, some of which seem frivolous or unnecessary, but she attacks them all with her motto, "Why not?"

She buys a house from a rather intimidating man named John Squire. He lives next door to her. Like her relatives, he too seems to have pretty strict ideas as to what she should and shouldn't be doing. He's pretty quiet, but somehow he ends up involved in all of her little troubles and situations. Hmm, wonder why? For most of the book she wavers between appreciating his kindness and resenting his viewpoints. Also, she has the impression that he's approaching middle age...but that impression is not correct!

Rosamund adopts a child, because one of her wishes is to have someone around who will look up to her. She also helps out the up-and-coming young inventor Jerrold, whom she sees in the role of her "knight," another thing on her list of wishes.
She also advises a girl named Sydney, who is terribly frustrated with the way she's being prodded into the life of a society lady. Sydney's preferred pursuits are much more tomboyish. This is where the always awkward, never enjoyable, girl-dresses-as-boy plot device comes in. But of course it doesn't last. It does, however, create one of those silly misunderstandings that make Rosamund's life more complicated.
Rosamund also has a plan to support herself by telling fortunes for tourists. She doesn't really get into this, and whatever little bit she does try is obviously just fake little platitudes (kind of like the papers inside fortune cookies) or things she already knows to be true.
Margaret Widdemer is a really engaging writer. Even when I can pick apart her stories and identify some things I don't like, here I am still giving it 4 stars.

[Shannon]

Made into the film The Dream Lady from 1918, directed by Elsie Jan Wilson.

[Mikaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for an absolutely wonderful little book!

An instant vintage favourite with a surprisingly well developed conclusion. Most such books make me contemplate selling my firstborn for an epilogue, but I found this to have a very satisfying end. There was enough foreshadowing of the denouement that the neatness of the ending did not feel contrived (or at least, not any more contrived than modern romances).

If you’re not a fan of the sprightly, sensibly nonsensical heroine — the less dysfunctional ancestral progenitor of the manic pixie dream girl — then this will not be for you. Think Audrey Hepburn mixed with Delyssia Lafosse, then add a dash of young Anne of Green Gables. Our heroine is irrepressibly good-humoured, with Puck-like flashes of young and old wisdom. Our hero is the love child of Mr Darcy and Mr Knightly - tall, dark and repressed combined with playful affection, scolding and hot-headedness.

I adore that the heroine held out for the hero’s respect and trust, not just for his love. I love that the hero unfurled under the heroine’s effervescent joie de vivre. He quietly went about smoothing her path without expecting recognition or reward, but he could still dance like Sinatra and win her out from under the more obvious, golden haired Adonis.

While I don’t expect American vintage books written by white women to have anachronistically modern views of race relations, I was pleasantly surprised to find that an important Black supporting character was developed beyond the stereotypes of the era, when she could so easily have been the much caricatured old Black servant. At first, I worried that there would be an unconcerned, swathing expression of casual racism (which there always is in literature from white dominated societies), but this key character was a real character, not a comic. She was beloved by the hero and heroine and treated with dignity and affection. Her quirks were attributable to her age or history in the family, not presented as characteristics endemic to her race. While not perfect, I was not tempted to burn my copy, which is an effusive compliment given the typically racist books of this era.

A solidly charming classic that is going straight to the pool room.