Interview: Joanna Scutts

Ahead of her appearance at 2018 Bristol Women’s Literature Festival, writer and cultural historian Joanna Scutts tells Bristol 24/7 about her latest book, The Extra Woman, which examines the impact of trailblazing lifestyle guru Marjorie Hillis and how she inspired women from the 1930s onwards to ‘live alone and like it’.

Marjorie Hillis is relatively unknown today. Are you surprised that’s the case considering her influence as a feminist self-help writer during her lifetime?

Marjorie Hillis insisted in her books that women could be happy and fulfilled with a career, friends, and a home and community they loved, even if they never married or had children. She thought it was every woman’s responsibility to create the life she really wanted. When she became famous, during the late 1930s, American society was changing rapidly, and many women were going out to work, delaying marriage, and tasting independence for the first time. The turbulence of the Depression and then of World War II made readers more receptive to new ideas about how to live, including the idea that women needed to work to support themselves and their families. After the war, there was a powerful resurgence of the idea that women’s highest purpose was childbearing and housekeeping. In that climate, nobody wanted to hear that there might be another way for women to be happy.

If Hillis’ first book, Live Alone and Like It, was published now do you think it would be a bestseller?

I’d like to think so: much of the advice about asserting yourself and making your own choices is timeless, and Hillis’s writing is wonderfully witty and smart (the book is available now, in a lovely new edition from Virago.) She certainly speaks from a position of considerable social privilege, and she didn’t acknowledge the extent to which race and class limited women’s choices, or how difficult it could be for them to succeed professionally in a working world dominated by men. Despite these blind spots, though, readers of all backgrounds loved the book, perhaps because she made it sound so simple to “choose the life you want, and then make it for yourself.”

How radical was the publication of Live Alone and Like It and Hillis’ subsequent books when they were published?

I think it was their success that really made them radical—Live Alone sold more than 100,000 copies in the first three months of publication. The publishers had to scramble to catch up to the fact that a book they thought of as a fun little curiosity was becoming a social movement before their eyes. The “Live-Aloner” was the name Hillis gave to the characters in her books and to her readers, so they didn’t have to be defined by what they lacked (a husband) but by the choice they made—to build an independent life. Although the books were written in this lighthearted, entertaining way, that insistence on independence, no matter how old you were or what your situation was, gave them a radical backbone.

You say in the book “exercising the right to live your life as you choose is still a political act”. Do you think much has changed in attitudes towards women’s lifestyle choices since Live Alone and Like It came out in 1936?

I’d say it varies a lot by age and location – it’s much easier, or at least much less unusual, to be a single woman if you’re young and you live in a city, and that was true in the 1930s as much as today. But it’s still hard for a woman to declare that she has made her choice to live alone, and not have people assume it’s a fallback option, or denial, or just what she’s doing until she meets someone. We still have very limited ways of talking about happiness, fulfillment, and a good life outside of the model of the nuclear family. One really powerful effect of Marjorie Hillis’s fame was to make single women visible in the culture in a way that they’d never really been before, at least not in a way that was aspirational rather than pitiable. I hope that by reminding people of her work and her life, I can do my part to empower and celebrate modern Live-Aloners.

What do you think of the aims and ambitions of Bristol Women’s Literature Festival?

I’m so honoured to be a part of it—nothing compares to the energy of a festival audience, and the timing couldn’t be better for raising women’s voices and hearing their stories. It’s a fantastic range of subjects too, from reading and writing Young Adult books to exploring the legacy of the Suffragettes, so I can’t wait to hear the conversations that come out of it.

Joanna Scutts will be discussing Marjorie Hillis at Bristol Women’s Literature Festival on Saturday March 17. For full information on the festival please visit: womensliteraturefestival.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/tickets-for-bwlf-weekend-programme-now-on-sale/

Read more: Interview with Bristol Women’s Literature Festival founder, Sian Norris

photo credit: Sarah Klock