So Big (Ferber)

So Big
Edna Ferber, 1924
HarperCollins
252 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061859984


Summary
Winner, 1924 Pulitizer Prize

Widely considered to be Edna Ferber's greatest achievement, So Big is a classic novel of turn-of-the-century Chicago.

It is the unforgettable story of Selina Peake DeJong, a gambler's daughter, and her struggles to stay afloat and maintain her dignity and her sanity in the face of marriage, widowhood, and single parenthood.

A brilliant literary masterwork from one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and admired writers, the remarkable So Big still resonates with its unflinching view of poverty, sexism, and the drive for success. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—August 12, 1885
• Where—Kalazmazoo, Michigan, USA
• Death—April 16, 1968
• Where—New York, New York,
• Education—Lawrence University (briefly)
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize


Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).

Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Jacob Charles and Julia (Neumann) Ferber. After living in Chicago, Illinois, and Ottumwa, Iowa, at age 12 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.

Writing
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, although she fleshed out multiple characters in each book. 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 persons have the best character.

Due to her skill in crafting scene, characterization and plot, several theatrical and film productions have been based on her works, including Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, Cimarron (which won an Oscar) and the 1960 remake. Three of these works—Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk and Giant—have been developed into musicals.

When composer Jerome Kern proposed turning the very serious Show Boat into a musical, Ferber was shocked, thinking it would be transformed into a typical light entertainment of the 1920s. It was not until Kern explained that he and Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights. Saratoga, based on Saratoga Trunk, was written at a much later date, after serious plots had become acceptable in stage musicals.

In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her book So Big, which was made into a silent film starring Colleen Moore that same year. An early talkie movie remake followed, in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent, with Bette Davis in a supporting role. A 1953 remake of So Big starred Jane Wyman in the Stanwyck role, and is the version most often seen today.

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. Ferber and another member of the Round Table, Alexander Woollcott, were long-time enemies, their antipathy lasting until Woollcott's death in 1943, although Howard Teichmann states in his biography of Woollcott that their feud was due to a misunderstanding. According to Teichmann, Ferber once described Woollcott as "a New Jersey Nero who has mistaken his pinafore for a toga."

In 2008, The Library of America selected Ferber's article "Miss Ferber Views 'Vultures' at Trial" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.

On July 29, 2002, in her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Distinguished Americans series postage stamp honoring her. Artist Mark Summers, well known for his scratchboard technique, created this portrait for the stamp referencing a black-and-white photograph of Ferber taken in 1927.

Personal life
Ferber had no children, never married, and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship with anyone of either gender. In her early novel Dawn O'Hara, the title character's aunt is said to have remarked, "Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning—a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling." Ferber did take a maternal interest in the career of her niece Janet Fox, an actress who performed in the original Broadway casts of Ferber's plays Dinner at Eight and Stage Door.

Ferber died at her home in New York City, of stomach cancer at the age of 82.  (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

It is a thoughtful book...clean and strong, dramatic at times, interesting always, clear sighted, sympathetic, a novel to read and to remember..
New York Times (2/24/1924)

A masterpiece...It has the completeness, [the] finality, that grips and exalts and convinces.
Literary Review

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for So Big:

1. The book title's obvious reference is to Dirk DeJong's childhood nickname. What else, in the larger scope of the novel, might it signify?

2. Describe Salina Peake DeJong. What kind of a character is she? Is she believable? What do you think of the following remark...?

I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure.... Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things.

Is this philosophy an indication of Salina's inner strength or her unguarded naivete? Does she hold true to her vision throughout the novel?

3. When Salina arrives in High Prairie, she is stuck by the beauty of things. In what sense does she find cabbages beautiful? What does this suggest about her sense of aesthetics? Is it a heightened sensitivity to beauty...or an indiscriminant one? What is meant by the sentence describing Salina: "Life has no weapon against a woman like that"?

4. What do you think of Pervus DeJong? What kind of man is he? Why does Salina marry him—a decision that yokes her to the monotonous, racking life led by the very farm  women she once pitied? How would you describe their marriage?

5. Ferber offers readers an insight into rural life as exemplified by those in High Prairie. Talk about the hardships of those lives, especially in the absence of modern conveniences, even basic plumbing.

6. How does Ferber portray Chicago in So Big? In what way does August Hempel exemplify urban society and its values, as opposed to life in High Prairie? What comparison is Ferber attempting to draw for her readers?

7. What are the societal values that Dirk represents? Is he a sympathetic character? Does Salina sacrifice too much for him? Why does he turn away from what the teachings she attempted to instill in him? By the end of the novel, what, if anything, does Dirk come to understand?

8. Talk about the difference between the two types of students at Mid-Western University: Classified and Unclassified. What is the irony here? And what is Ferber satirizing?

9. What kind of character is Dallas O'Mara? How does she represent what is antithetical to August Hempel and his peers?

10. Is the ending of So Big satisfying to you? Do characters get what they want...or deserve?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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