Mollie Schumacher is as "strong as a man" and can fix a car along with a whole repertoire of male and female accomplishments in this early offering of Ruth Suckow the feminist. The story invites conversation on male and female "roles" and…
In "A Home-coming,' published first in 1921 and again in 1926 in Suckow's first short story collection IOWA INTERIORS, Suckow offers one of the most complete pictures of the effects of the daughterly sacrifice. Laura Haviland returns to her birth…
California is questioned as a golden “paradise” in “Auntie Bissel,” published in 1935. Auntie Bissel is a naïve “Midwestern primitive” basking in California. Personal values are raised in this, Suckow's critique of California as…
In “Charlotte's Marriage,” Suckow again contrasts two women and their choices. Grace VanCamp, a wealthy Iowan “wintering” in California, contrives to look up Charlotte, a girlhood friend Grace always envied. Charlotte always possessed a…
In this story, Elizabeth has just lost her beloved husband and is riddled with pain and suffering from the loss. She goes to visit Miss Gurney, whom she has always admired. Miss Gurney, we learn, first took care of her mother who was injured after a…
In “Mame,” Suckow depicts the story of a daughter left to care for the parents while her sisters and brothers rush to leave town and make better lives for themselves. A story about the coldness of families.
In the short story “Merritsville,” Mary Redmund’s views are pooh-poohed by her painter-professor husband and his good friend, the Associate Professor of English George Sedwick who criticizes “most women” for lack of a sense of the Ideal. …
