The Hired Girl Review by Emma
Recently, I read the book The Hired Girl, which is a novel written from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl named Joan during the year 1911. The book is formatted as Joan’s personal journal, and it chronicles the story of her life as she leaves her family farm and her overbearing, abusive father and travels to Baltimore to work as a servant for a wealthy family.
The book opens on the family farm, just after Joan’s father has made her stop attending school so she can spend more time working on the farm, where she takes cooks, cleans, and gardens for her father and three brothers. Joan loves books, and is frustrated with the dullness of her life compared to those in the stories she reads, as well as with her lack of independence and the loss of her education. Tensions grow between Joan and her father, and a series of events, including her father losing his temper when her favorite teacher brings Joan a book, Joan being kicked by a cow and receiving little treatment or care for the injury, and her father burning the only three books Joan owns, she decides to run away to the city. She arrives in Baltimore, Maryland hoping to become a hired girl, and is taken in by a wealthy Jewish family called the Rosenbachs. As the book progresses, she learns to navigate the complex world of Baltimore’s wealthy society, comes to terms with the religious conflict between her and her employers, makes friends, experiences art and literature, and even falls in love.
I found The Hired Girl interesting and enjoyable for several reasons, including its character development, the issues brought up, including religious tolerance, conflict between tradition and change, and loyalty, and its detailed descriptions of the characters and setting. However, the aspect of the book that really stood out to me was the format in which it was written. Because the story was framed as Joan’s personal journal, the reader got to interact with the narrative in a different way. Since each “entry” is meant to be written shortly after the events it describes happen, many of them start with Joan’s reactions to these events, and sometimes tangents in which she writes about a new character or object she hasn’t yet explained. This makes the story pleasingly different from a typical linear plot structure, and helps set the tone of the book by showing one way in which the plot is written to focus more on showing the reader how an event occurs than to surprise them with an unexpected plot twist. This format about also pushes the reader to consider the concept of hindsight. For example, Joan discusses flipping back through her recent entries, often with regret and even disgust at her past emotions and actions. I think that this helps Joan’s character feel more real and relatable to readers, since everyone has times when a later event or change in emotion makes them regret their earlier actions, and these additions to the story demonstrate to the readers that Joan isn’t perfect, and doesn’t view herself as such.
Overall, I would highly recommend The Hired Girl to anyone who enjoys realistic fiction, especially with first-person narration, romance, or character- and setting-focused books such as Little House on the Prairie that are more about everyday life in a certain time period and setting than focused on an exciting or action-filled plot.
The book opens on the family farm, just after Joan’s father has made her stop attending school so she can spend more time working on the farm, where she takes cooks, cleans, and gardens for her father and three brothers. Joan loves books, and is frustrated with the dullness of her life compared to those in the stories she reads, as well as with her lack of independence and the loss of her education. Tensions grow between Joan and her father, and a series of events, including her father losing his temper when her favorite teacher brings Joan a book, Joan being kicked by a cow and receiving little treatment or care for the injury, and her father burning the only three books Joan owns, she decides to run away to the city. She arrives in Baltimore, Maryland hoping to become a hired girl, and is taken in by a wealthy Jewish family called the Rosenbachs. As the book progresses, she learns to navigate the complex world of Baltimore’s wealthy society, comes to terms with the religious conflict between her and her employers, makes friends, experiences art and literature, and even falls in love.
I found The Hired Girl interesting and enjoyable for several reasons, including its character development, the issues brought up, including religious tolerance, conflict between tradition and change, and loyalty, and its detailed descriptions of the characters and setting. However, the aspect of the book that really stood out to me was the format in which it was written. Because the story was framed as Joan’s personal journal, the reader got to interact with the narrative in a different way. Since each “entry” is meant to be written shortly after the events it describes happen, many of them start with Joan’s reactions to these events, and sometimes tangents in which she writes about a new character or object she hasn’t yet explained. This makes the story pleasingly different from a typical linear plot structure, and helps set the tone of the book by showing one way in which the plot is written to focus more on showing the reader how an event occurs than to surprise them with an unexpected plot twist. This format about also pushes the reader to consider the concept of hindsight. For example, Joan discusses flipping back through her recent entries, often with regret and even disgust at her past emotions and actions. I think that this helps Joan’s character feel more real and relatable to readers, since everyone has times when a later event or change in emotion makes them regret their earlier actions, and these additions to the story demonstrate to the readers that Joan isn’t perfect, and doesn’t view herself as such.
Overall, I would highly recommend The Hired Girl to anyone who enjoys realistic fiction, especially with first-person narration, romance, or character- and setting-focused books such as Little House on the Prairie that are more about everyday life in a certain time period and setting than focused on an exciting or action-filled plot.
Comments
Post a Comment