Ptomaine Street (1921) by Carolyn Wells is a Jazz Age story about Warble Petticoat--who begins life as Warble Mildew, is promptly expelled from school for putting a caterpillar done the neck of another girl (which result--the expulsion--Warble has been longing for), teaches herself to bake a mean cream pie, becomes a waitress at a restaurant, presents a prosperous banker by the name of Petticoat with a piece of a perfect cream pie, and manages to become Mrs. Petticoat. Warble is an orphan and from a very different world from the one she enters as Petticoat's blushing bride. She finds her new home and new lifestyle to be greatly at odds with who she is and decides to try adjust her new surroundings to suit her. She finds this a very hard task indeed-despite entertaining her new friends with a grand party full of cream pies--to eat and to throw!--an various other entertainments.
The story is a wry comment on what it means to be fashionable or one of the "right sort." It provides an interesting examination of society and the artificial standards that set the boundaries of what is the "done thing" and what makes one fit in. It provides the contrasts between the outer and inner man (or woman, in this case)--what really makes a person who they are. Does it matter if they are fat or thin or if they wear the right clothes or attend the right kind of entertainments? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be yes. At least in these social circles. A humorous commentary and one which is said to have been a parody of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. A fairly enjoyable, very quick read.
1 comment:
Sounds kinda comical to me.
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