Review of Female (1933) by Dalia D — 02 Mar 2009

If Ex-Lady reminded me of myself in a relationship, Female reminded me of myself out of one. The super-powered heroine runs an entire automobile company (having taken over after her father's deathâ??family business seems the only way for girls to get their start in the '30s), barking orders to her boardroom, her secretaries, and her phone by day. Each night, though, she's invited another intriguing young man from the company to her home for dinner. There, she's dropped the suit for something slinky, and the postprandial discussion turns constantly to romance, rather than business. She pages her staff to bring vodka, incapacitating her victim, and when the man shows up at work the next morning, with flowers and promises of devotion, she has him transferred to a far-away department where she'll never have to see him again. She goes on in this desperate way, having less and less luck, when she meets her matchâ??a new engineer who won't have any of it. They'd already met one night when she went out into the streets "in disguise" as a nobodyâ??she picked him up at a shooting gallery, they went dancing, ate a hamburger, and then he got away. When he finds out that he's working for her, he won't give her the time of day in a romantic way, instead preferring his fawning, doe-eyed secretary. Our heroine takes her male secretary's advice, and plays at being girlish and silly; this works to a degree, but when she laughs at his proposal of marriage, he storms off again. It's not until she's caught in the middle of work and love and chooses the laterâ??blowing off a meeting with bankers to follow the engineer once he's run offâ??that he takes her back. To cement their love, she insists that he take over the company's operations so that she can have nine children, and driving off to the bank together, the man back behind the wheel, those cheerful letters spell out The End.

The End! The end of her freedom and desperation: why do these things always come hand-in-hand? It's reassuring for a girl to see that her 2009 problems infuriated girls 75 years ago, but disappointing to find out that 75 years haven't brought about a better solution.