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The Foolish Virgin
Impulsive, modern Pamela Raleigh, clashed recklessly with convention. She lost the first round but came back fighting.
364 pages, Leather Bound
First published January 1, 1927
16 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Thompson Norris
226 books63 followersEducated at the University of California, Kathleen married Charles Gilman Norris, brother of the late Benjamin Franklin Norris, Junior, in 1909. She was a prolific author, producing over 80 novels in addition to numerous short stories and articles. Norris was a regular contributor to leading magazines such as Atlantic and Ladies' Home Journal. Her first novel, Lost Sunrise, appeared in 1909 and was immediately popular. By the end of her career her books had sold over ten million copies and made her the highest paid female author of her day.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 2, 2009
About as entertaining as an old b/w movie (and I do like my b/w movies!)
Nearly set it down after the first three chapters, but the setting kept me entranced. Imagine a little town in Southern California near the sea in the 1920's, crumbling old mansions and magnificent haciendas... Ah, it was like a little vacation and I appreciated that!
The plot was disappointing especially for a Kathleen Norris novel. I expecting something more wholesome and less of a generic romance.
Nearly set it down after the first three chapters, but the setting kept me entranced. Imagine a little town in Southern California near the sea in the 1920's, crumbling old mansions and magnificent haciendas... Ah, it was like a little vacation and I appreciated that!
The plot was disappointing especially for a Kathleen Norris novel. I expecting something more wholesome and less of a generic romance.
February 15, 2017
Kathleen Norris' books can be hard to get through in this day and age. However, this one held my interest, even though the copy I was reading was moldy so had to read through a plastic bag wearing a rubber glove on the page-turning hand.
The story was pretty straight-forward, in contrast to some of Kathleen's tales where you may have forgotten the plot by the time you reach the end, it was so complicated.
Nice girl smokes, sips drinks, goes out dancing to all hours--which is just "the way" of young people in 1927, but a bit hard for the Victorian-raised parents to accept. But then she crosses the line. Gets stranded without gas, overnight, with a man.
So many little elements tie this tale to its time, like: the open roadster in which they travel, including at night; the vast expanses of empty areas--stretching for miles--just beyond a population center that's a California coastal city; the impact of her "fall" where she is completely cut from all social life which, given the time and the limited options available to young women, was her life.
Another element of the time: The family had been the founding family of the town and continued to live in the mansion Mom was born in. Yet once dad died, the income stopped. With no pension--and no Social Security!--and no real options for mom to work, mom its reduced to selling off slices of the yard to get living expenses. Once this is no longer an option, its a matter of living on credit. When our heroine attempts to get a job to help out, there is no work available for her limited abilities. Literally, the family is in risk of starvation and the Depression is still two years away.
The heroine's struggle to get a job highlights how important marriage was to young women at the time, especially poor women. At certain points in the story, the heroine claims she doesn't want to marry, but the reader is to aware by that point that in her time and given her poverty, she has few other options.
A flaw for me was that the girl spends a lot of time crying over men she thinks she has lost. Yet she seems to want them because they are good-looking, a good catch, would provide security and an income--and not because she has any physical need for them. At one point she mentions that she doesn't want to kiss a guy and at another point she's fine with letters and can do without visits from the same guy--yet this is a guy she later wails over when she thinks she's lost him.
The story was pretty straight-forward, in contrast to some of Kathleen's tales where you may have forgotten the plot by the time you reach the end, it was so complicated.
Nice girl smokes, sips drinks, goes out dancing to all hours--which is just "the way" of young people in 1927, but a bit hard for the Victorian-raised parents to accept. But then she crosses the line. Gets stranded without gas, overnight, with a man.
So many little elements tie this tale to its time, like: the open roadster in which they travel, including at night; the vast expanses of empty areas--stretching for miles--just beyond a population center that's a California coastal city; the impact of her "fall" where she is completely cut from all social life which, given the time and the limited options available to young women, was her life.
Another element of the time: The family had been the founding family of the town and continued to live in the mansion Mom was born in. Yet once dad died, the income stopped. With no pension--and no Social Security!--and no real options for mom to work, mom its reduced to selling off slices of the yard to get living expenses. Once this is no longer an option, its a matter of living on credit. When our heroine attempts to get a job to help out, there is no work available for her limited abilities. Literally, the family is in risk of starvation and the Depression is still two years away.
The heroine's struggle to get a job highlights how important marriage was to young women at the time, especially poor women. At certain points in the story, the heroine claims she doesn't want to marry, but the reader is to aware by that point that in her time and given her poverty, she has few other options.
A flaw for me was that the girl spends a lot of time crying over men she thinks she has lost. Yet she seems to want them because they are good-looking, a good catch, would provide security and an income--and not because she has any physical need for them. At one point she mentions that she doesn't want to kiss a guy and at another point she's fine with letters and can do without visits from the same guy--yet this is a guy she later wails over when she thinks she's lost him.
July 24, 2009
Written in 1927 and set, I think, at roughly the same time, "The Foolish Virgin" is a tepid romance novel that, by today's standards, would probably be considered a very safe young adult novel.
The main character, Pamela, is young and popular, and is from a family that used to be the big name in town. With her father dead, their fortune has dissipated and the family has fallen on to hard times. Not realizing the extent of her hardship, Pamela continues to live to Society's standards. Then, one night, she and her beau find themselves stranded at the side of the road when his car runs out of gas. They take shelter from the cold in an abandoned house. Nothing happens, of course, but this is the 1920s and the mere thought of a young lady spending the night with a young man unchaperoned is too much for Society.
Marked with the stain of an indiscretion she didn't commit, Pamela is expelled from Society and promptly loses most of her friends. She hangs on to the beau, but also becomes aware of how bad her family's monetary situation is when their house is first foreclosed, then demolished.
The novel, then, is Pamela's coming of age. Overall, the story is exactly what one would expect it to be. She gets all the rugs pulled out from under her, discovers that she's much stronger than she thought, and manages to build a whole new, even better, life despite everyone's attempts to punish her for violating their rules. As a story, this is just not that interesting, if only because it's been written so many times. As a glimpse into the minds and mindset of the first generation of teenagers (as we understand the term), this book is fascinating. So much of what drives the plot is barely comprehensible by modern standards.
While it's true that the book is fiction, and that the author certainly wasn't trying to write a sociological study, the novel best functions as one now.
The main character, Pamela, is young and popular, and is from a family that used to be the big name in town. With her father dead, their fortune has dissipated and the family has fallen on to hard times. Not realizing the extent of her hardship, Pamela continues to live to Society's standards. Then, one night, she and her beau find themselves stranded at the side of the road when his car runs out of gas. They take shelter from the cold in an abandoned house. Nothing happens, of course, but this is the 1920s and the mere thought of a young lady spending the night with a young man unchaperoned is too much for Society.
Marked with the stain of an indiscretion she didn't commit, Pamela is expelled from Society and promptly loses most of her friends. She hangs on to the beau, but also becomes aware of how bad her family's monetary situation is when their house is first foreclosed, then demolished.
The novel, then, is Pamela's coming of age. Overall, the story is exactly what one would expect it to be. She gets all the rugs pulled out from under her, discovers that she's much stronger than she thought, and manages to build a whole new, even better, life despite everyone's attempts to punish her for violating their rules. As a story, this is just not that interesting, if only because it's been written so many times. As a glimpse into the minds and mindset of the first generation of teenagers (as we understand the term), this book is fascinating. So much of what drives the plot is barely comprehensible by modern standards.
While it's true that the book is fiction, and that the author certainly wasn't trying to write a sociological study, the novel best functions as one now.
January 17, 2020
Norris is fantastic as drawing characters and here she does that again. Three are many dimensions to all and her writing of dialogue further reflects that. This all enriches this otherwise standard tale of the young in love and the over written put down of city folks with their noses in the air.
The bookis worth reading, though, just for Nrris' writing. Despite the well travel trail of the tale, her writing drew me in and kept to the end.
Bottom line: i recommend this book. 7 out of ten points.
The bookis worth reading, though, just for Nrris' writing. Despite the well travel trail of the tale, her writing drew me in and kept to the end.
Bottom line: i recommend this book. 7 out of ten points.
January 31, 2013
What a great title...had to buy it and read about the main character Pam. Not meant to be hilarious, but it was. Every generation thinks the teens are wilder than they ever were! Fascinating look at what was acceptable behavior in 1927.
June 14, 2015
This book was in my great grandparents house and I read it years and years ago. It must have been good because I still remember it after all these years. What I really remember is being shocked at how someone could be ruined by so little in the 1920's. Luckily she was only ruined temporarily.
September 28, 2016
It got good towards the end, despite all the complex schemes.
July 17, 2024
"Appearances matter, don't they, Pamela?"
Mrs. Broome, wife of the town doctor and the utterer of the line above, is an insufferably smug, sanctimonious bitch who never really gets put in her place--and she's not the only one--so the tale is only moderately satisfying. Set seemingly sometime close to 1927, when this was first published, the novel's whole setup is pretty outlandish by today's standards. For Dr. Broome himself to say he'd rather his own daughter die than suffer the social humility of having to be rescued on the side of a road with a young man after a night of together waiting for a ride after running out of gas is preposterous, of course, but that's the crux of the main conflict. Our heroine, Pamela Raleigh, is the prettiest and most popular girl in town prior to that incident but is quickly and thoroughly ostracized, thanks mainly to the bristling Broomes. At age 19 (and then 20 for the novel's second half), she accurately describes herself as "vacillating and school-girly." She remains charmed by the 26/27-year-old Chester Hilliard, a self-satisfied and self-described "skunk" for way too frustratingly long (and hence the title's adjective, I guess), and meanwhile Norris way overdoes it with the references to Pam's "beautiful black-lashed gray eyes" and "lustreless tawny hair" and, likewise, to ranch foreman Gregory Chard's brown skin and "white, white teeth." Yeesh. There are a few racially tinged comments that today will no doubt grate people, but mostly the story is harmless and entertaining melodrama, especially from a historical perspective.
I found my hardback copy (not with the cover pictured here but a better one that doesn't give everything away--not a choice in Goodreads' list of editions) in a secondhand shop and couldn't resist the title, nor this penciled-in note handwritten atop the first blank page: "Bought with the 50 cents Aunt Dutch gave me for Christmas 1945."
First lines:
"Fog. It came creeping in over the blue Pacific like an army with banners, advancing steadily, irresistibly, across the burned, flat meadows beside the sea, rolling over the low line of the coast hills, and burying all sleeping Carterbridge, and a score of smaller, tributary villages and towns, under a blanket of creamy and impenetrable mist."
November 6, 2024
Norris was a canny writer who pitched woo to her enormous American readership in the first part of the 20th century, though I'm not sure anyone, including herself, believed a word she wrote. Certainly she managed to capture the feeling of young restless Americans, the importance of money to having a good time, the freedoms available to women after World War One but also the social constraints that held them back from expecting to be more than wives and mothers. There are glimmers of recognizing adolescence as its own separate stage of development, whispers of sex, a dim recognition that perhaps a girl could want more than a pretty dress, lots of beaux and a handsome, rich husband as her reward. That's here in this book if a reader is interested in seeing how terribly limited womens' aspirations were treated, even if you might be choking on mothballs by the end.
June 30, 2023
The book is, of course, dated and very racist. It wasn't as sexist as I thought it would be. The characters were all two-dimensional, but I enjoyed the story like I would enjoy a soap opera. There isn't much plot or depth, but I wanted to know what happened to everyone at the end.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews