Thoughts on Emma McChesney

I found this post in my drafts folder. I don't know why I never posted it.  I'm sure I meant to.  Maybe Blogger decided against posting it for me.  I wrote it back in November.  Enjoy it now if you'd like.

The Emma McChesney books are a trilogy by Edna Ferber. They are all quite short, I think the three together would make a regular-sized book. I stumbled across them this summer and really loved them. But I can't find anyone else who has read them and will talk to me about them, so I am pouring my thoughts into my blog. If you are interested, enjoy, if not, I understand. You have your own book list that you want to read.

I am a huge Edna Ferber fan. I thought I had read almost all her books when I was in high school. I don't know how I missed these. Emma McChesney is a divorced woman with a 17 year old son. The first book was published in 1913, I can't get over how ahead of her time both Edna Ferber and Emma McChesney were. Emma works as a traveling salesman at the beginning of the book series. Note she is a "salesman" not a "saleswoman," no one would have thought to call her that in 1913.  She travels 6 months of the year with the men, staying in hotels, taking trains from city to city, lugging her sample case and eating in restaurants by herself. She's almost the only woman on the road. She stands up to the men and often bests them.

One thing I wasn't sure about was where her son, Jock, was while she traveled. I think he was in boarding school, then the two of them lived together in a hotel in New York City when she wasn't on the road.

I liked that Emma loved her job, and as we see towards the end doesn't want to give it up, but that she longs for a house to be her own home. She wants a kitchen to cook in. She wants it all. Something many women still struggle with.

In Roast Beef, Medium, the first book, Emma teaches us many of the lessons of being on the road. Don't take crap from hotel clerks. Make friends. And don't eat the fancy foods, stick with roast beef, medium well to avoid the pains of stomach problems (something I didn't do on our recent vacation). I travel from time to time for work now, I'm gone about 15 nights per year, and I have to say her lessons hold true today. You can't be a woman on the road and let the men push you around. You have to make friends to make it bearable. But it is still an old boy's club out there. I work in a very female dominated profession, long term care. But the men on the road hang out in the bars, smoking cigars, and go off to the strip clubs. There they network. I don't know if we women are invited, but I for one am not going. I've been known to sit in the hotel bar with people I know, sipping beer, for hours, but it is always them mixed group, primarily women. I do enough networking there.

I also like Emma's maternal instinct. She loves Jock and she doesn't let him get away with anything. Even though she's been gone a lot, she expects him to follow her example and rules. But there is a lot of mom guilt flowing too. She's quick to blame herself when Jock messes up, because she wasn't there. I can relate to that too. I think we all can, no matter why we think our kids' mistakes are due to something we did or didn't do.

Spoiler alert!

When Emma marries T.A. Buck, she remains true to herself. She tried to be someone else for a while, but neither she nor T.A. were happy with that. T.A. loved her for who she was when he married her. Not someone else.