Marry for Money

by Faith Baldwin

Book by Baldwin, Faith

Genres: Fiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Faith Baldwin attended private academies and finishing schools, and in 1914-16 she lived in Dresden, Germany. She married Hugh H. Cuthrell in 1920, and the next year she published her first novel, Mavis of Green Hill. Although she often claimed she did not care for authorship, her steady stream of books belies that claim; over the next 56 years she published more than 85 books, more than 60 of them novels with such titles as Those Difficult Years (1925), The Office Wife (1930), Babs and Mary Lou (1931), District Nurse (1932), Manhattan Nights (1937), and He Married a Doctor (1944). Her last completed novel, Adam's Eden, appeared in 1977.

Typically, a Faith Baldwin book presents a highly simplified version of life among the wealthy. No matter what the difficulties, honour and goodness triumph, and hero and heroine are united. Evil, depravity, poverty, and sex found no place in her work, which she explicitly intended for the housewife and the working girl. The popularity of her writing was enormous. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, she published five novels in magazine serial form and three earlier serials in volume form and saw four of her works made into motion pictures, for an income that year in excess of $315,000. She also wrote innumerable stories, articles, and newspaper columns, no less ephemeral than the novels.

Reviews

[Eleanor Birney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in a lot of old pulp novels I bought. The title is campy and the cover was clearly designed to match: the face of an attractive, if somewhat vapid blonde, with a debonaire gent hovering just over her. I did not have high hopes for it, but the story surprised me. The writing is solid, the characters interesting, and the plotline, while far from original, is still interesting.

Gail (Rusty) Rogers, a beautiful young model, is in love with a reporter named Sam Meredith. He is also in love with her, and the book opens right after she has rejected his proposal of marriage. Why reject the man you love? Well, Sam is your lovable lout -- the guy who plays with you and calls you an idiot five seconds before he’s making violent love to you. He’s also a divorcee and an unapologetic womanizer.

Though she is madly in love with Sam, Gail is, at heart, a practical girl. And she knows better than to tie her line to that anchor. After all, her mother had loved her father, and that didn’t go so swell for anyone.

So, Gail decides to seduce the plain, but good-natured Brad Spencer, an independently wealthy scientist. She lets Brad know that while she likes him, it's his wealth and accompanying stability that really attracts her. Brad is so besotted that he’s willing to take what he can get. His elitist grandmother and her paid female companion are less broad-minded. But, in spite of their mild objections, Brad and Gail soon marry, and, as the title suggests, the bulk of the novel centers on whether a loveless marriage w/ stability can win out against a passionate love.

While this book is certainly mired in its era, it is far less prosaic than many such novels. Gail is from a broken home. Her father is an unrepentant waster and her mother was stupidly and destructively devoted to him all of her life. Grandma Spencer opposes the match, but she’s reasonable and is able to put her grandson’s happiness above her own. And, as a bonus, there’s a female scientist (as competition for Brad’s affections) who is mired in her own dysfunctional marital situation.

At heart, this book is less about traditional morality (which, surprisingly, is never touched on explicitly) than about the importance of feeling okay about yourself and valuing what you bring to the table -- any table.

This was my first Faith Baldwin, but a quick Google search revealed that she was a prolific author who wrote from the early twenties to late seventies. In the back of my Bantam Book, it has a brief note about the author that concludes with, “She types her own manuscripts and says she ‘would rather be a biologist, an obscure scientist, an actress, a doctor, and explorer than a novelist.’”

I believe it. Ms. Baldwin’s characters weren’t overly complex, but they weren’t caricatures or object lessons either. The heroine, in particular, felt human. Added to that, the writing was clean and intelligent, even elegant in spots. Take for example this line, spoken by Gail's father while discussing his marriage to her mother: "She could inculcate guilt, very subtly. I couldn't take that either. I was a bad husband, granted, but believe me, she didn't want a good one; she didn't even want to be happy. She liked the stake and the flames."

Added to the virtues mentioned above, the story was straightforward and enjoyable, making this a solidly good read all around. I liked it so much that as soon as I finished reading it, I searched around and bought more Faith Baldwin books.