Personality Plus: Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jack

Emma McChesney Series #2

by Edna Ferber

Edna Ferber, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Show Boat and Giant, achieved her first great success with a series of stories featuring Emma a smart, stylish, divorced mother who in a mere twelve years rose from stenographer to traveling sales representative to business manager and partner of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company.
 
In this second of three volumes chronicling the travels and trials of Emma McChesney, the plucky heroine trades in her traveling bag and coach tickets for an office and a position a T. A. Buck Jr.'s business partner. Along with this well-earned promotion comes the home–-with a fireplace–-that she had longed for during her ten years on the road.      
 
Her dashing son Jock, now twenty-one, has just entered the business world himself with the Berg, Shriner Advertising company. His colleagues believe that with his heritage he "ought to be able to sell ice to an eskimo." Indeed, Jock dazzles them with his keen business sense and exemplary work ethic, but goes overboard on the charm and ends up alienating clients, unnerving his boss, and even patronizing his business-savvy mother. When his company takes on the challenge of  creating a zippy advertising campaign for T. A. Buck's no-frills petticoats, Jock comes through, but not without a reminder that mother always knows best.
 
In this bracingly modern novel, first published in 1914, Ferber contrasts the virtues of talent with those of experience to provide a fresh, readable, and smartly entertaining contest between a mother and her adult son.
 

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Humor, American

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).

Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.

Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.

Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.

Reviews

[Bill on GR Sabbatical · Rating 3 out of 5]

The focus shifts from Emma McChesney to her son, Jock, in this second of a trilogy by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Ferber, as he sets out to conquer the advertising business in pre-WWI Manhattan, where Emma settles into her new executive post with the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, after a decade representing it on the road. The banter is still fun and the tone still surprisingly fresh, but the plot is a little thinner and less interesting to me than the first entry, Roast Beef, Medium. I'll be interested to see how the trilogy ends, with Emma McChesney & Co..

[Mariangel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pleasant short book, but I liked the previous volume of business adventures of Emma McChesney better than this one, about the start of her son’s advertising career.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

After ten years on the road as the Midwestern sales representative for T.A. Buck’s Featherloom skirts and petticoats the savvy, stylish, tell-it-like-it-is Emma McChesney now shares a New York City apartment with her plucky 21-year-old son Jock. She shares this story with him too--Emma’s busy being T. A. Buck, Jr.’s business partner and Jock’s trying to break into 1914’s version of Mad Men by getting a job in the up and coming business of advertising.

Jock is as high-spirited as his mother and feels ready to take on the world, but he’s still got a lot to learn. Emma’s having some trouble adjusting to Jock’s growing independence, but T. A. Buck, Jr. would love to distract Emma from her looming empty nest by having more than a business relationship.

Personality Plus is Edna Ferber’s second of three books about the jaunty, irresistible, early career woman Emma McChesney. Ferber wrote all three long enough ago that they’re in the public domain so ebook versions can be downloaded from sites like Project Gutenberg. I listened to a wonderfully narrated audio version available on the Libravox website that made me not mind being stuck in traffic--I had witty Emma to keep me company.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually read two in a row by the same author, but I just wanted more Edna Ferber for some reason. This collection of stories picks up where Roast Beef Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney left off, sharing more of Emma McChesney and her life, but with more focus on her son Jock now as he launches his own career in the world of advertising.

Interesting and witty as always, but I did prefer the previous volume with more focus on Emma McChesney herself.

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

From my Algonquin Round Table Collection:
I'm such a fan of Edna Ferber. She is so good at intertwining characters and dialogue within a story that would be hard to imagine being interesting. Ferber was genius and this book is just another example of that.

This is very low key and not a book of epic proportions as her others. She was able to layout a talein any size she wanted.

Bottom line: i recommend this book.10 out of 10 points.

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the most disappointing book of 1914 for me. I really loved Roast Beef Medium last year and this is the sequel. But I could tell Edna was just phoning it in. It’s about Emma McChesney’s son going into the advertising industry and triumphing. But you can tell Edna Ferber didn’t know anything about the advertising industry so there’s a curious lack of substance to it. It’s okay, Edna, I still believe in you! I see there’s another sequel next year and I bet that one is going to be great!

[Mh430 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emma has to share the spotlight with her son this time around but she's still as worldly-wise and yet winningly human as ever. I really like her character and I didn't mind her young adult son that much. And the depiction of the advertising business in the pre-WWI era is fascinating. Recommended reading but be sure to start this series with her debut novel (Roast Beef Rare).

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume in the series is not quite as good as the first. However, it is a very worthwhile, entertaining and well written continuation of 'our' heroine's life and travails. This is a very good series...

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first book of stories more, but I am still very impressed by Ferber's forward-thinking main character! Emma McChesney has strength, attitude, fortitude... she is a feminist badass. 1914!

[Kathy Nealen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice sequel to the original on the series. I want to read the final installment. Emma successfully navigated mansplaining in the early 20th century but ends up earning everyone’s respect.

[Dari · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it but I just find jock annoying

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

May 6th 2025: I’ve first read the 3 books about Emma 15 years ago and now it was time to reread them. I loved every minute of it. Emma is such an inspiration. Back then I didn’t have a child and now my son is 13 and he is so much like Jock and even my life is so much like Emma’s. Crazy! She says to Buck that everything she’d done in her life was all for her son. Everything good and bad and annoying etc. that is so true. A mother is like that and when the child leaves the nest you have to reinvent a part of yourself.

[Anne Seebach · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gentle, 'wholesome' read from the early 1900's, this is one of those stories that quietly meanders through the small events and doings in the characters' lives, with nothing much ever really happening. Ferber's storytelling often incorporates (presumably her own) ideals of respect, hard work and moral character, usually by having her characters model these ideals through their own actions and interactions. Her characters are ordinary people, engaged in the ordinary business of getting on with work and life, though her female characters do seem to take a more assertive role than we usually associate with that time. The writing is undeniably dated (published 1914) but it's interesting how often her characters also voice perceptions and social commentary very similar to common perceptions now a full century later. Her writing also provides an entertaining insight into the small daily doings of the average working urban American at that time - from clothing, to wages, to what to eat for breakfast.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a simple and fast-read of a coming-of-age book about a middle class white male in 1914. What is interesting about this fictional story collection is the female protagonist who is depicted as a divorced white collar working woman that raises a son in NYC on her own. Ferber, using the colloquial of her time, sounds a lot like a "Leave it to Beaver" family tv episode. The ending is predictable and tidy for a woman of her day. She represents a smart, tenacious, and determined modern female heroine who knows the glass ceiling can only be raised so high for herself but not for her son or male business partner. I wonder if Ferber's supporting female character, who is equally-paid as her male coworkers with the last name "Galt"; and Ferber writes "should be paid six times more" because of her pay status; inspired the overrated Ayn Rand to write her overwritten novel, Atlas Shrugged. One will never know. But for the women of 1914, who could not vote or run for office, one cannot help but think Ferber must have opened their minds to a world of tremendous possibility.

[Harron68 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in the series was, not surprisingly, the most interesting. This one (Part 2) shows her career as time passed. It also brought her young son more into the story, which made it contemporary to our time. For a book a hundred plus years old it reads beautifully. So many old books have a formal stilted or hopelessly overwrought style that is a challenge to readers now. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edna Ferber had this wonderful ability to distill the flavor of a place and time, then sprinkle it with great characters and let them stew in a good plot. Personality Plus, with it's extended title, follows two who are trying to achieve the American Dream in the early 20th century.
Ferber does what she does best by keeping you fascinated throughout, and never missing a chance for a good metaphor.
Available from Amazon on Kindle for free.

[Laurie Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good!

But just a little excruciating to watch Emma's son maturing from a rather pompous young man who imagines that he can start at the top and go up from there, into someone worthy to be called his mother's son.

[Saleha · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun, zippy, little portraits of professional life in the early 20th century New York