Pandora, at 5, was determined to live a "hunnert years". She did, watching women fly out of their boxes and claim their place in history. Part history, part fiction, a story of women's lives through the 20th century. The accomplishments of real women are a fascinating part of this book.
A little girl sits atop a woodpile, and decides she will live a hunnert years and do important things. She was born on January 1, 1900, and by the time she was 5, she had learned the imbalance between women and men: men give the orders and women do as they are told. Her curiosity leads her to find out about the world — drive an early Ford V-8, fly in a barnstormer’s aeroplane, leave home to go to school, learn a trade and earn her own money (even though she turns it over to her dad).
Pandora Whaley is a “typical” woman of the 20th century: a white farm girl who dares to dream, but settles for marriage and a family. When life changes mid-century, she explores her dormant dreams and takes off to “do important things”. She writes books about what she observes around her, drawing controversy from those who disagree. Her rising fame stokes the fire inside her and she grows from innocent farm girl to reluctant wife and doting mother to inspirational aging woman. Much like her sisters who lived in the 1900s.
Pandora offers a ladybird’s-eye-view of the status of 20th century women, who peeked out of the box in the early decades, tested the water in the middle years, and exploded into full glory in the later decades — ready to take on roles side-by-side with men.
Pandora’s story will astonish 21st century young people.
Excerpt
1910-1919
Hello. My name is Pandora. I go to school; I am in the sixth grade, but I’d rather be outside ice skating. Santa brought me new white figure skates for Christmas. (Shhh! Don’t tell; I know it was Mama.) I’m going to get another brother or sister. I told Mama I’m not going to get married and have children. They would keep me from having a career, which Aunt Ede says I can have. Not sure what a career is, but I’m going to find out.
* * * *
After her tenth birthday, Pandora asked her schoolmates to call her Dora. She made other choices, opting to choose what clothes she’d wear and how she wanted to live her life. The former came after reading a Harper’s Bazaar magazine at Madame Pouquette’s library that showed women in tight corsets and hobble skirts; who could possibly run and play in such garb?
The latter was decided after a talk with her mother one afternoon following a day when Mary had ironed a pile of clothes, prepared three meals, canned eighteen jars of applesauce, and helped her children with their homework. When Mary Belle closed her eyes for a moment, Pandora asked, “Mamá, are you tired?”
“No, ma chere… well actually yes, I’m plumb worn out. It’s been a long day.”
After a moment, Mary Belle put her arms around her daughter and spoke quietly, “Pandora Nelle, don’t marry too soon. I think you might like a career some day.”
“What’s a career, Mamá?”
“Well, it’s work… but the kind that may take you away from the duties of keeping a house. Men seem to enjoy careers.”
“Oh Ma, I’d like a career. Is that like Miss Gloria’s Beauty Shop?”
“Not that kind of career; it’s too risky. But I hear some girls work in offices and stores and get salaries, like Grace does.”
“Teacher said she’d like an office job. What’s that?”
“Well, sort of like the bank… like the one in Durand where Pa goes to vote. He said he once saw a woman behind the counter there.”
“Teacher said some girls are typewriters. And they get paid money for it. Is that a career?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure either. But you’re too young to be thinking about such things yet.”
Pandora put her mother’s weary comments in her memory collection and knew she’d give the career topic more consideration later.
School was uppermost in Dora’s life, even though she became bored without enough challenges. She missed the times she and Pa hung around the barn or tromped through the fields. She hated being indoors and she hated having to wear skirts. Winters were the worst. She was happiest from spring to fall, when warm breezes beckoned her to roam the woods and hike along the creek.
For her eleventh birthday, Dora received a box of watercolors, brushes, and thick drawing paper. Teacher had told Mary Belle that she thought Pandora needed “an artistic pursuit”. Teacher thought Pandora was playing with the boys too much. “She tears the school yard around like one of the lads, her skirts flyin’ in the breeze. ’At’s not a proper activity for a proper young lady,” said Teacher.
Teacher was herself a very proper young woman. Lillian Horne came from a German family and still spoke English with a slight accent and occasionally reversed her sentences. Her family had come to America straight from Germany in the 1890s, homesteading on farmland near the Whaleys. At fourteen, Lillian went to work as a housekeeper for a family who took the time to teach her proper English in exchange for her teaching them German. She learned so well that when she was eighteen, she taught neighborhood immigrant children, until enough gathered to form a school of sorts. She had to convince the town council that she could teach as well as the men who, until that time, had done most of the teaching.
By 1911, Teacher had reached the grand old age of twenty-four and realized, as did her pupils, that she probably would never marry. She enjoyed teaching and loved the children. What more could she ask? (A husband to love me, she frequently told herself. But that was not to be.)
Dora had taken to tutoring her brothers, who were eager for her help. Andrew at seventeen was still struggling with numbers and spending most of his time at farm work. Jason, only a third grader and big for his age, hated to read.
“How do you squelch a tornado?” Mary Belle asked Teacher.
“Pandora Nelle has many talents,” Teacher responded. “She observes; she always knows what’s going on around her. And curious! I never saw such a girl with so much curious in her. Send her into the world to learn.”
Mary Belle spoke to Dora of Teacher’s comments about “artistic pursuits” only once, and was greeted with a sneer from her daughter. “I can’t just sit and sew like some of those girls,” she whined.
Professional Reviews
Really interest about womens voting rights
By jessica matthews on November 11, 2014
Format: Paperback
I'm in my mid-20s and taking a class in women's studies in college and someone mentioned this book as a good overview of the century that i missed. It took me a few days to start reading and found i couldn't put it down. The story is okay, not as exciting as a sci-fi thriller but at the end of each decade/chpater is a review of those years and what other women around the country were doing. i found it exciting to know how women got to right to vote and how Pandora took off on men. I can see my instructor doing that. I'd like to read the books that she wrote, but the professor says they weren't really written. Maybe i will some day. This is a good book for women and girls, especially thoss my age. I'm glad i got around to reading it.
5.0 out of 5 starsRefreshing 1900's account of a young woman growing into her surge for gender-equal treatment ! Legendary feminists alongside.
By Sandy Oestreich, ERA on May 19, 2015
Format: Paperback
A fine small book. Especially for those who are leery of peeking into a pandora's box where all girls and women used to be contained. But the author writes from the visions of a fictional young girl named Pandora, who saw what was wrong and promised to live "a hunnert years" because she needed time to get us freed out of that pandora's box and into the voting booth, eventually the U.S. Constitution. (It IS happening, the Equal Rights Amendment IS moving, and (Pan)Dora would be glad to know.)
Truth to tell, I got so "het up" about Dora's young life as she moved through the changes made by introduction of the automobile, the telephone, the aeroplane, and those made by amazing women who had jumped out of the box into a new world just trying its wings with women actually IN it, I just had to read Pandora's Hunnert Januarys all over again. I'm linking to it on our www.2PassERA.org and Facebook, so it can fill other women's imagination, too.
Ms. Dumond, I love it. Thank you.
5.0 out of 5 starsLoved it!
By Sharon McIntyre on February 4, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
I finally had a chance to read your book and boy am I impressed. It was fabulous! You are such an inspiration. I imagine this story has been mulling around that bright head of yours for some time. It was so interesting reading through the decades and reminiscing about my grandma, mom and now where I stand. I totally will recommend this book to my friends. It would lend itself to great discussions.
Encountering danger, romance, heartache and tragedy, Catherine Merit strives to fit into a world filled with prejudice, hatred and violence where she is forced to kill a man in order to save herself. Third book of the Indignities Series.
Based on the memoirs of a Pearl Harbor survivor. Letters from two pen pals take the reader on a journey into the past, a past where nightmares came true, and when hatred reigned.
