The Prodigal Women

by Nancy Hale

The other side of Gatsby: rediscover this sensational bestseller that unveiled the Jazz Age from the flappers' perspective

Ranging from posh Beacon Hill to go-go New York City to stately Virginia, a sweeping coming-of-age story of three women's lives, loves, and ambitions in the 1920s, '30s and '40s

An uncompromising literary portrait of the interior lives of women, The Prodigal Women was an explosive hit when published in 1942, the scent of scandal propelling it to the bestseller list. It tells the intertwined stories of Leda March, a lonely New England schoolgirl, and Betsy and Maizie Jekyll, daughters of a transplanted Virginia clan who upend Boston society, tracing their friendship from adolescence into adulthood, through childhood bullying, a string of abusive marriages, dangerous liaisons, botched abortions, and feminist awakenings, with Leda ultimately turning her back on love and desire and embracing her own mysterious inner strength.

Fascinating and gripping, The Prodigal Women was a crucial influence on such later works as Mary McCarthy’s The Group and Jacqueline Susann‘s Valley of the Dolls, and it remains powerfully resonant today.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Coming Of Age, American, Literature

875 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Nancy Hale was an American novelist and short-story writer. She received the O. Henry Award, a Benjamin Franklin magazine award, and the Henry H. Bellaman Foundation Award for fiction.

Reviews

[Sarah Mac · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF, pg 100-something.

This is a well-written & (I suspect) groundbreaking novel for the era it was published; so far as I know, there was little open discussion of infidelity, abortion, & marriage problems in 1940s women's fic. So I give it props for being one of those 'forgotten' pieces of feminine literary history.

That being said...my tolerance for uber-literary trudging doorstoppers that examine the depressing minutiae of Human Experience without the added spice of potboiling plots, flamboyant melodrama, or OTT romantic shenanigans is extremely low. In short: I just do not care. Younger Sarah forced herself to finish any book she started, no matter how lacking it was in terms of personal enjoyment -- but Older Sarah has no compunctions about DNFing when she's not invested in the outcome. If I don't enjoy myself, I'm not gonna waste reading time. Life's just too freakin' short.

I gave this weighty tome two chances to impress me in very different reading moods, but neither attempt managed to hook me. So...bye-bye.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wondered why I found this book (borrowed from my mother's shelf; I never saw her read it and doubt that she did) so compelling that I read it a number of times as an adolescent. So, I decided to read it again now, as a married, mature adult. It is really, mainly, about a young girl who does not fit into her own culture, and finds solace and acceptance from people who don't CARE about the mores that have always oppressed her. (She grows up to become an artist but is long influenced by those carping voices.) The other women characters are interesting too. They do not 'fit in' any more than the first character does. However, they love others (the men in their lives) so much, they sacrifice their own needs to that love. I think Nancy Hale's message is pretty clear: women, too, are entitled to lives as individuals. This was a very unusual message for women when she wrote the novel, in the early 1940s.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started out promising, focusing on two sweet girls who become friends and admire one girl's older sister who is popular with boys. Unfortunately, it's downhill from there, and at 556 pages it's a long way down. The two girls and the older sister ALL become obsessed with men who are absolute brutes, who abuse them emotionally and/or physically. It's quite disturbing to read. No matter how much these men openly admit their contempt and their desire to hurt them, the women are fine with it and actually double-down on their commitment to them. "I can take it, whatever you give me...." is the kind of attitude and language they use. Yuck!

The older sister ends up with a nervous breakdown and the younger sister seems headed to the same sanitarium by the end. There are four minor characters who seem decent: a friend Nicola who marries a decent man, one girl's cousin James, and the psychiatrist at the sanitarium. Other than that, it's horrible. Let's see, can I think of any redeeming qualities? Well, you get a lot of details about the way that horrible people think and feel, so if you want to learn about that, this is the book for you.

I am furious with Florence King who recommended this book. I have no idea what she sees in this dreadful tale....

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and compelling, the characters and their lives will stay in my mind. Published in 1942 - "a book to "red flag" for public libraries" per Kirkus Reviews - it is set in the 1920s and 1930s, in Hampton, a small town outside of Boston, as well as in Boston, and South America, and follows Leda March, Betsey Jekyll, and Betsey's older sister Maizie. Leda, born in Hampton, is, from childhood, highly intelligent, self-conscious, alert, aware, moody and miserable, out of step with her classmates, with her parents, her father one of the sons of the March family, a formidable old Boston family, but an outlier himself; Leda is friendless, treated terribly at a birthday party of a classmate, wants revenge via power, to prove herself better than the rest. Into her life comes Betsey Jekyll, the second daughter of four in the Jekyll family, an old Southern family, who arrive from their small Virginia town in Hampton, the mother wanting more from life, for herself, her husband, a lawyer, and their daughters. The Jekyll family is gay and fun, music is always playing, and there is much laughter, all that Leda's small family of three lacks. There are beaux galore for older and beautiful Maizie, who will, to her detriment, fall in love with Lambert Rudd, a painter from an old Boston family, who is handsome, dark, and violent by way of his actions and words, and has no intention of marrying. Despite the length of this novel, 960 pages, it reads so swiftly, filled with life events, love, marrying for the wrong reasons, motherhood, being true to oneself, and more, along with deep characterizations. I've read the recent reissue of Hale's short stories - she wrote something like 78 stories that were published in the New Yorker during her career - and she herself was a fascinating woman - but it's The Prodigal Women that will stay with me.

[Tj · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite books that I have read more than once. A challenging read but it is set during the Roaring 20's (one of my most favorite time periods) and really illustrates what it was like to be a woman during that time. New freedoms and old constraints mixed together.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was a road trip through my own mother's time period and revealed a lot of what the culture of the 1920s might have been for her during her college years. Bit of a slow start as the first chapters felt like a young adult novel of the post world war 1 period, but then it livened up as it moved into the Flapper Era of Boston and New York. Our young protagonists then moved on into a "Sex and the City" phase, and then matured into more complex adults. It became very psychological as the characters got more and more layered and complex. My love of the book is extraordinarily personal -- I can imagine that my mother might have read it when it first came out in the 1940s and I have a great yearning to talk about it with her.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Florence King's "desert island" book.

RIYL _The Group_

[Lori Sinsel Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of Nancy Hale or this book and I thought I had a fairly extensive knowledge of literature. I was mistaken. How I ever missed this one I can not imagine, I am only glad to have found it now.
Though this book is pretty long I enjoyed every minute and every page. This is a raw, concise portrayal of 3 women's lives at the beginning of the century through the Jazz Age.
Hale shows a vivid portrait of what it was like to be a female, growing up and coming of age in a time where men ruled. She shows the disparities between men and women and of the social classes. I applaud Nancy Hale for her courage and bravery in writing this book when she did, crossing invisible boundaries of what was acceptable and what wasn't, and daring to speak of such taboo topics like abortion, infidelity, pre-marital sex, women's rights, etc. Groundbreaking when it was first published it is still relevant today. I recommend highly to anyone as long as you don't let the length deter you, it is a vivid look at the life of a woman in the early 1900s.
Thank you to the Library of America and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review voluntarily in return.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the 1942 edition of this book at the local Goodwill store and it impressed me because it presages the whole "women's lib" era of the 1960-70s. The author not only clearly shows the social culture of the 1920-1930s but also looks at the psychological need in women to find their place in society and purpose in life through the men they marry. The women and men in the novel manipulate each other through power, guilt, and jealousy, while feeling trapped, insecure, or unloved. Each of the three main characters searches for a way to be "liberated" from her toxic relationship. The novel is full of rich descriptions and colorful characters.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Written in 1942, Nancy Hale was ahead of her time in the way she depicted the inner lives of women. The novel shows us a few generations of the same family, and through the eyes of her female characters, we see their struggles and disappointments as wives and mothers. I loved reading about this era, though I struggled with the tiny print of the edition I had. This book probably could have used an edit of about 100 pages, and yet I was swept up all the way to the end.

[Donna Piranha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this old book at the recycling center and I'm so glad I decided to take it home. I'd never heard of it but it turned out to be one of those books that stays in my mind. Very enjoyable.

[LS · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Prodigal Women
by Nancy Hale (Goodreads Author)
20456683
LS's reviewDec 31, 2024
Last read December 3, 2024 to December 31, 2024.

First, many of the other reviews I just read express what I would & therefore needn't. I'm one of Those who never quit a book I've begun unless ... I didn't quit this 1942 novel recommended by highly trusted Bath, UK, bookstore, Persephone Books. [I'm not there, far from it.] But I did recognize the satire, structure, & repetition after reading 2/3's of the story, and I really couldn't face more repetition of the 3 women characters' circumscribed lives. What kept me reading after skipping a hundred pages [ready to backtrack if necessary] were pages of such eloquent interior monologue by the characters and/or authorial observation of It All that I couldn't help dog-earing those. Nancy Hale was clearly a fine writer. Like her characters, she was trapped in a female-hobbling epoch. The most interesting character is the one who likely mirrors the author. Leda is a poet who takes the whole novel to arrive at her epiphany. The 2 other women are sisters whose attraction to their mates is unexplained and for me, inexplicable. The men in the story are 2 dimensional, walls against whom the women are thrown to see what will stick. I nearly rated the novel a 4 for the occasional splendid writing ... can recommend it for a course in Women's Lit if used for contrast. Alas, it's not like misogyny and women voting for it aren't contemporary, but if published today, this novel of 3 lost white women [only one prodigal found] wouldn't be welcomed by many genders/races.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hunted down a copy of this novel because of its connection to famous fabulous editor Maxwell Perkins. I thought it would be interesting to read one of the works he shepherded into print when he wasn't absorbed by the hijinks of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wolfe.

Reading other GR comments about longtime love for this book and even for multigenerational attachments to it makes me wistful. I wanted it to be another sweet little discovery for me, but I just found it hard to like, much less love. The early chapters seemed to me to describe the main character over and over in much the same terms, so I tried to leaf through the 700-plus pages to find myself a toehold further on:

"Well, Mts. Rudd, your husband did kiss a very little girl a very little girl just a very little bit."

"Oh... Christ!..."

"Please do not be melodramatic in public. About five-- small-- kisses underneath a moon on a nightclub terrace do not constitute a major catastrophe."

She turned on her side, away from him.

"I was going to ask for the honor of sharing your couch this evening, madam," he said. "But seeing as you don't seem to like me very much I'll just trudge back to my own lonely room."

"Darling, please, please do stay here. Oh, Lambert, darling--"

The writing still felt slow-going to me, the dialogue artificial, the characters unsympathetic. I sadly closed the book and trudged away.

[Kathie Kovacs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is so old – I might have a first edition, as the only date on it is 1942, and the name inside the front cover (the owner, I suppose) has dated it 1944. Anyway, I’ve had it for a million years and decided to finally read it. But first, I thought I’d see if anyone else had ever read it – the print is SO small, and it was written SO long ago – but yes, they had!

I did love the vivid descriptions of life in Boston and New York, and the “high society” lifestyle. The names of stores, long gone, and products, I am sure are all real. You could just tell. The back story, however, was horrific. If the author was trying to portray the lives of women in that period of time, I hope it wasn’t true.

I heartily agree and quote another reviewer, Shelley Diamond:

“This book started out promising, focusing on two sweet girls who become friends and admire one girl's older sister who is popular with boys. Unfortunately, it's downhill from there, and at 556 pages it's a long way down. The two girls and the older sister ALL become obsessed with men who are absolute brutes, who abuse them emotionally and/or physically. It's quite disturbing to read. No matter how much these men openly admit their contempt and their desire to hurt them, the women are fine with it and actually double-down on their commitment to them. "I can take it, whatever you give me...." is the kind of attitude and language they use.”

Save your reading for something more worthwhile.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was quite a read. A long read, for sure, perhaps too long, but overall a compelling story of three women, set in America between 1922 and 1940. It was a bestseller in its day (published 1942) and created much controversy in its frank depiction of toxic marriage, infidelity, abortion and love affairs. The three women are Leda March, a lonely New England schoolgirl, a misfit, and Maizie and Betsy Jekyll, daughters of a Virginian family who have re-located to Boston to improve the girls’ social advancement. From adolescence to adulthood we follow their trajectories. What links the three more than anything else seems to be that they all become obsessed with brutal abusive men, and even for its time I found it extraordinary how much they allowed themselves to be abused, in particular Leda. The characters are so extreme, with the women largely pitiable and the men mostly sociopaths, that it’s hard to actually empathise with any of them. It’s an evocative and presumably authentic portrait of a time and place but the women are so lacking in agency and so frankly unpleasant that I was bemused much of the time as to the point of the book. It’s well-written for what it is, hence my high rating, but my goodness, talk about dysfunctional relationships.

[Lori Sinsel Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of Nancy Hale or this book and I thought I had a fairly extensive knowledge of literature. I was mistaken. How I ever missed this one I can not imagine, I am only glad to have found it now.
Though this book is pretty long I enjoyed every minute and every page. This is a raw, concise portrayal of 3 women's lives at the beginning of the century through the Jazz Age.
Hale shows a vivid portrait of what it was like to be a female, growing up and coming of age in a time where men ruled. She shows the disparities between men and women and of the social classes. I applaud Nancy Hale for her courage and bravery in writing this book when she did, crossing invisible boundaries of what was acceptable and what wasn't, and daring to speak of such taboo topics like abortion, infidelity, pre-marital sex, women's rights, etc. Groundbreaking when it was first published it is still relevant today. I recommend highly to anyone as long as you don't let the length deter you, it is a vivid look at the life of a woman in the early 1900s.
Thank you to the Library of America and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review voluntarily in return.

[Margot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1942 bestseller is an ambitious saga about three young women and their search for love, acceptance, and success. At 800+ pages, it is ridiculously long and yet, it kept my attention. The length also feels like a bold statement: that Hale believes the experiences of young women are worthy of serious treatment. The book is set in the 1920s and 1930s and follows Leda March and sisters Maizie and Betsy Jekyll as they grow from young girls into young women into wives and mothers. It reinforces how many of the challenges women face have not changed: men can still be brutes, women's sexuality is punished, and every choice comes at a cost. All three women are complicated and whether any of them gets a "happy ending' is up for debate. I especially enjoyed some of the NYC scenes where one character goes to work. A book worthy of rediscovery, in spite of its length and the racist portrayals of what few characters of colour appear.

[Riley K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An uncompromising literary portrait of the interior lives of women, The Prodigal Women was an explosive hit when published in 1942, the scent of scandal propelling it to the bestseller list. It tells the intertwined stories of Leda March, a lonely New England schoolgirl, and Betsy and Maizie Jekyll, daughters of a transplanted Virginia clan who upend Boston society, tracing their friendship from adolescence into adulthood, through childhood bullying, a string of abusive marriages, dangerous liaisons, botched abortions, and feminist awakenings, with Leda ultimately turning her back on love and desire and embracing her own mysterious inner strength.

Fascinating and gripping, The Prodigal Women was a crucial influence on such later works as Mary McCarthy’s The Group and Jacqueline Susann‘s Valley of the Dolls, and it remains powerfully.

Such a well-written story. She talks about the topics that were considered taboo in that era. I will recommend this to others.

[Reet · Rating 1 out of 5]

.5 extra for craft.

This is the biggest bucket of crap I've read since American psycho. The characters lived around the time my mom and dad were born: late 1920s. I got all the way to page 407 and just couldn't take it anymore. This woman author let's the men characters fuck around all they want, but these same men characters find out that their girlfriends have been to bed with other men, and oh boy! they let them have it: verbal, physical, mental abuse..... and the stupid women characters just take it.

I could have sworn this was a man writing as a woman, but noooooo.

Okay this was written in the early 1940s, but it is no excuse to be writing this enabling crap. Grrrr, I am so angry I wasted all this time trying to see if these asshole characters were going to get theirs.

[Nell Rudoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

~3.5 stars? I think that Nancy Hale writes beautifully. I really hated reading Maisie and Leda's POVs at times. All the men who are love interests in this book are dusty and red flags and the women stay which was hard to read. What I did end up enjoying about the characters was Betsy and Leda's character arc. I also liked the portrayal of flawed women. I think that is definitely something you didn't see from books from this era. No one gets a fairy tale ending but I think that is closer to how life actually is.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard about Nancy Hale before until I read about the Library of America releasing a collection of her short stories. Then I read a few in the Vanity Fair archives and liked them, so I checked out a copy of The Prodigal Women and really liked it. For a book written in 1942, it covers topics I didn’t expect: abortion, abusive husbands, mental illness. It is very well written and held my interest to the end.

[Nainika Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me a while. And it was really good. I learned a lot about these characters, some things that made me laugh, some things that made me stare blankly at the pages, and
some things that made me really question Hale's mind. But it's all good. I highly recommend this book if you're interested in the minds of young girls who question: What is it about me that I can change to make others like me?

[Judith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to like this book as I had read a review that said it was about 3 women who were following their own paths in the 194os. Which was when this book was written. I found all of these characters to be very dysfunctional. The women latched on to men who abused them psychologically and they just kept going back. I couldn't continue reading it as I saw no end to these three women having any redeeming qualities. I was disappointed.

[Claire Daughters · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could’ve been so much shorter oh my goodness. It did I very good job at weaving the stories of the three women together and really building out their lives but I didn’t feel that there was a climax at all for the plot of the book. There were beautifully written sections with really insightful comments on the role of women and their feeling, but it could’ve been done in a way where it didn’t feel like you were finding a diamond in the rough.

[Judy Rising · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoyable writing and use of language in the beginning evolved into repetitive and exhausting dialogues between women who had devoted themselves to abusive men, not budging from pathetically hanging on them, from South America, over Boston, to New York and Virginia. Over and over and over. Disappointing all in all.

[Lucy Taliadoros · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem. An immersive, esoteric..peculiarly disruptive book. It stayed with me even when I was not reading it.
I found it oddly contemporary although written over 60 years ago. Not in the way the relationships between the characters were described but the thoughts and motivations of these -very- complex characters.
I am very glad this fell into my hands.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, I did not finish this book. I wish I could, but at 960 pages I would need a vacation and a long plane ride to get through it. I read about 30% and maybe I will go back. A true period piece and since it takes place partly in Boston, I could truly put myself at some of the locations.

[Liz Meirowitz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m not sure why I pushed through to finish this book. It’s twice as long as it needs to be and there wasn’t a single character that I connected with. Maybe it was considered a good book at the time it was written but I would not recommend it now.

[Adrien · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 really. Leda was the only one worth reading about. Definitely did not need to be 526 pages.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense.