reviews_and_ramblings | Faith Baldwin (October 1, 1893

Faith Baldwin Cuthrell spent a fashionable girlhood in Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights. Born 1 October 1893, New Rochelle, New York, she died 18 March 1978, Norwalk, Connecticut. She wrote under the name of Faith Baldwin and Faith B. Cuthrell. She was the daughter of Stephen C. and Edith Finch Baldwin and she married Hugh H. Cuthrell in 1920. She could read at three, and at six was writing a drama, "The Deserted Wife." She first published verse in her teens, prose in her twenties. Cuthrell's books, stories, poems, and articles appeared steadily from 1921 to 1977, bringing her enormous popular and financial success. Many of her novels were made into films. She was a founder and faculty member of the Famous Writers School in Westport, Connecticut.

Cuthrell's family history emerges in The American Family (1935), based on her grandfather's diaries. Tobias Condit takes his wife to China in the 1860s to work as a missionary. Their son is sent to America to be educated, returning to China as a doctor. The sequel, The Puritan Strain (1935), centers on Dr. Condit's daughter Elizabeth.

Courtship and marriage with their attendant joys and crises are Cuthrell's favored themes. Her first novel, Mavis of Green Hill (1921), shows the maturation of a childlike bride, once an invalid, into a passionate wife. Something Special (1940) explores the threats to a union of 14 years. Satisfactory resolutions are always brought about. Cuthrell's novels are usually told from the woman's viewpoint and reveal an intimate group of women's problems.

Salient problems are the work women do and its relation to love and marriage. Cuthrell's heroines are secretaries, hostesses, nurses, actresses, real estate brokers. They sell bonds and securities, design dresses, and run beauty salons. a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/088411614X/?tag=elimyrevandra-20">White Collar Girl (1933) speaks of the wasted talent of girls from affluent families who stay in their hometowns to wrap up fudge in the Goodie Shoppe. Private Duty (1935) describes the working girl's lot, the long days, the social life crammed into after-hours, the little sleep. Rich girls might work for pleasure: "To be a working girl and socially secure gave one a certain cachet. Working without the social security made all the difference." Career By Proxy (1939) queries whether a wealthy girl ought to work, thus taking employment from one who needs it. In Hotel Hostess (1938), an unsympathetic male supposes women usually work for frivolous reasons, or because they are "exhibitionists."

Conflict between career and marriage is a frequent theme. Cuthrell's suitors and husbands generally regard the woman's work as unnecessary, or inimical to their mutual happiness. Cuthrell writes searchingly of the emotion on both sides. More often Cuthrell's heroines vainly strive to keep both marriage and career going, finally abandoning the career. In Self-Made Woman (1939) the clash is acute, the resolution uneasy. The wife capitulates to her dominant, sexually magnetic husband with "an awareness of defeat."

The West Wind (1962) patiently explores the corrosive effect on a childless marriage of a husband's single casual act of infidelity. The wife, fear-ridden and bitter, forgives her husband daily and thus makes their life impossible. Their spiritual isolation and agony ultimately give way to acceptance.

Cuthrell's nonfiction, following her husband's death, includes the inspirational, semiautobiographical Face Toward the Spring (1956) and Many Windows: Seasons of the Heart (1958). From July 1958 to December 1965 she wrote the monthly feature "The Open Door" for Woman's Day magazine, which she expanded to produce Testament of Trust (1960), Harvest of Hope (1962), Living by Faith (1964), and Evening Star (1966). Reflective and discursive, these "almanac books" follow the year's cycle. Cuthrell shares her thoughts on the seasonal activities and weather, on gardens and rooms, on love, sorrow, books, travel, memories, prayer, and people.

Among Cuthrell's last works are the six Little Oxford novels: Any Village (1971), No Bed of Roses (1973), Time and the Hour (1974), New Girl in Town (1975), Thursday's Child (1976), and Adam's Eden (1977). Seasons are breathtakingly beautiful in this suburban town, a "collage" of Westchester, Connecticut, and Long Island. Life is friendly and comfortable. A cast of characters reappears; new people pass through or settle, usually the heirs, relatives, or friends of the inhabitants. The principal action is the forming of a marriage, or an adjustment to marriage of a sympathetic young pair (maturer lovers marry or remarry offstage), who will in subsequent novels have already started a family and become part of the backdrop for the next set of lovers.

Cuthrell produced highly professional popular fiction, skillfully plotted, swift-paced, and entertaining. She captures the accents of daily speech, from plain talk to breezy dialogue. Her characters are middle-and upper-class Americans, living in Manhattan penthouses, luxurious country estates, and suburban communities. Cuthrell explores matters of concern to women—work, money, love, marriage, motherhood, divorce, dignified age. Her heroines are self-possessed women of mettle, some quietly independent, others spitfires. Individuals, couples, families, and neighbors resolve their difficulties. Cuthrell's inspirational works praise the seasons, the pleasures of books, dwellings, and precious objects, and the importance of solitude and friendship alike.

Faith Baldwin's Books on Amazon: Faith Baldwin

Source: http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/aww_01/aww_01_00273.html