The Job: An American Novel — Key Ideas to Explore

was not--and will not be--a misunderstood genius, an undeveloped artist, an embryonic leader in feminism, nor an ugly duckling who would put on a Georgette hat and captivate the theatrical world. She was an untrained, ambitious, thoroughly commonplace, small-town girl. But she was a natural executive and she secretly controlled the Golden household; kept Captain Golden from eating with his knife, and her mother from becoming drugged with too much reading of poppy-flavored novels.

She wanted to learn, learn anything. But the Goldens were too respectable to permit her to have a job, and too poor to permit her to go to college. From the age of seventeen, when she had graduated from the high school--in white ribbons and heavy new boots and tight new organdy--to twenty-three, she had kept house and gone to gossip-parties and unmethodically read books from the town library--Walter Scott, Richard Le Gallienne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Humphry Ward, _How to Know the Birds_, _My Year in the Holy Land_, _Home Needlework_, _Sartor Resartus_, and _Ships that Pass in the Night_. Her residue of knowledge from reading them was a disbelief in Panama, Pennsylvania.

She was likely never to be anything more amazing than a mother and wife, who would entertain the Honiton Embroidery Circle twice a year.

Yet, potentially, Una Golden was as glowing as any princess of balladry. She was waiting for the fairy prince, though he seemed likely to be nothing more decorative than a salesman in a brown derby. She was fluid; indeterminate as a moving cloud.

Although Una Golden had neither piquant prettiness nor grave handsomeness, her soft littleness made people call her "Puss," and want to cuddle her as a child cuddles a kitten. If you noted Una at all, when you met her, you first noted her gentle face, her fine-textured hair of faded gold, and her rimless eye-glasses with a gold chain over her ear. These glasses made a business-like center to her face; you felt that without them she would have been too childish. Her mouth was as kind as her spirited eyes, but it drooped. Her body was so femininely soft that you regarded her as rather plump. But for all her curving hips, and the thick ankles which she considered "common," she was rather anemic. Her cheeks were round, not rosy, but clear and soft; her lips a pale pink. Her chin was plucky and undimpled; it was usually spotted with one or two unimportant eruptions, which she kept so well covered with powder that they were never noticeable. No one ever thought of them except Una herself, to whom they were tragic blemishes which she timorously examined in the mirror every time she went to wash her hands. She knew that they were the result of the indigestible Golden family meals; she tried to take comfort by noticing their prevalence among other girls; but they kept startling her anew; she would secretly touch them with a worried forefinger, and wonder whether men were able to see anything else in her face.

You remembered her best as she hurried through the street in her tan mackintosh with its yellow velveteen collar turned high up, and one of those modest round hats to which she was addicted. For then you were aware only of the pale-gold hair fluffing round her school-mistress eye-glasses, her gentle air of respectability, and her undistinguished littleness.

She trusted in the village ideal of virginal vacuousness as the type of beauty which most captivated men, though every year she was more shrewdly doubtful of the divine superiority of these men. That a woman's business in life was to remain respectable and to secure a man, and consequent security, was her unmeditated faith--till, in 1905, when Una was twenty-four years old, her father died.

Captain Golden left to wife and daughter a good name, a number of debts, and eleven hundred dollars in lodge insurance. The funeral was scarcely over before neighbors--the furniture man, the grocer, the polite old homeopathic doctor--began to come in with bland sympathy and large bills. When the debts were all cleared away the Goldens had only six hundred dollars and no income beyond the good name. All right-minded persons agree that a good name is precious beyond rubies, but Una would have preferred less honor and more rubies.

She was so engaged in comforting her mother that she scarcely grieved for her father. She took charge of everything--money, house, bills.