Introduction
The Adventures of Claudia is a novel of the early 1930's, a time of great social and moral upheaval. We tend to think of our own day, the 1960's, as the era of the "sexual revolution," forgetting that the social mores of today are nothing more than the logical culmination of the revolution that began after the First World War. That was the period when the suffragette movement achieved its goal of universal female suffrage, with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, in 1920. It was the day of the "lost generation," with its free-thinking guru, Gertrude Stein. It was the era of the flapper, with her short skirts and bobbed hair. It was the time of the first blossoming of sex goddesses on the motion picture screen.
The American woman was coming into her own, and the world was being made abundantly aware of the fact. Movies had become the most popular form of mass entertainment, and the film industry had discovered the power of sex. At first, the filmmakers weren't quite sure of what to do with it, and we had a dual development, represented on the one hand by Mack Sennett's bathing girls, and on the other by Theda Bara's vamp. But it was Cecil B. DeMille's bedroom and bath format which set the style that is still followed today. At about this same time, the public discovered Hollywood and made it into a symbol-the city of beautiful girls, the sex capital of the world!
In literature, sex and women were not unfamiliar subjects, but the emancipated woman of the 1920's offered a new dimension of expression and a freedom from the restraints which had limited most earlier writers in their female characterizations. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and others helped to create this new woman, who formed the mold of her life as she wished, who demanded to be mistress of her own fate. They recognized the American woman's desire for self-expression, and they gave it to her-but they tried to be scrupulously fair and honest, and they gave her the problems that went along with it as well.
No one will suggest that the unknown author of The Adventures of Claudia possessed the literary artistry of a Fitzgerald or a Hemingway-that kind of talent would not remain hidden behind a pseudonym like Joan Cabot for very long. Nevertheless, our author did possess a certain modest ability. The story line of the book does not exhibit very great originality or ingenuity, but it flows smoothly and its parts are quite well-coordinated. The characterizations are not very deep, but they do have a lively freshness and appeal about them. Most important, however, is the fact that the author seemed to possess an understanding of the mind of the "modern" girl of the 1920's and 1930's: her desires, what motivated her actions, her perplexities, and how she went about resolving the problems that beset her in a society which sometimes still displayed a hostility toward her and often had no compunctions about taking advantage of her.
This brings us to the question of who, or what, is Claudia Fenton, the heroine of our story. To answer this, we must think of her in the context of the time in which she was created. She is not, of course, the average girl of those tumultuous decades of the 1920's and 1930's, but neither is she totally divorced from reality. She is an exaggeration, but an exaggeration in the sense of being drawn larger than life rather than one which is a distortion of life. The complete, individual Claudia, with her amazing sequence of adventures and vicissitudes, would be hard to find, but the composite Claudia, the many girls who have experienced parts of Claudia's life, is very plausible indeed.
Specifically, Claudia is the distilled and concentrated essence of the "modern" girl of the 1920's and early 1930's. The heroine of our book was neither the first nor the last small town girl faced with the need for an abortion who chose to go to Chicago, partly because it would be easier to find the necessary facilities there and partly to begin a new life behind the mask of Chicago's anonymous millions. She was not the only girl to accede to the blandishment of admirers and take on the status of mistress, which simplified some of the economic problems of life, and after all, was the thing to do. Nor was she alone in discovering that in such entanglements romance is often short-lived and succeeded by disappointments and frustrations for one or both of the participants. And finally, many others, like Claudia, became sufficiently disillusioned with the free and independent life of the big city to make at least a partial compromise and return to a more circumscribed but relatively secure life in their home towns.
Thus Claudia is made up of bits and pieces of the lives of many girls, all rolled up in one rather appealing and sympathetic package. She exemplified the desires and interests of much of her generation. She acts for them and contends with their problems, resolving them to the best of her ability. We may not feel that she always decides wisely, as for example, when she permits herself to become involved with her lesbian neighbor, Billy, or when she puts herself under the not-too-tender care of Killer Jones. But would the average girl caught up in a similar chain of circumstances have acted much differently? Claudia is not the clever and resourceful heroine of romance; she blunders all too often, and she pays for it in full measure. She doesn't have a built-in reservoir of intestinal fortitude and unconquerable spirit. When things go well, she is happy and optimistic; when they go badly, she is disheartened. When a particularly low point is reached, and she simultaneously learns of the illness of her father, it is all she needs to throw off her last illusions about the big city and return home. There, in typical American tradition, she finds the promise of a more meaningful future.
One final word on the author of The Adventures of Claudia. Despite the feminine pseudonym, the book almost certainly was written by a male. In a general sense it reflects the typical male dream-fantasy of the beautiful girl subjected to a wide range of sexual experiences-and there is far more concern with the physical aspect of these experiences than with the emotional. Descriptions center on those elements which a man would tend to notice; this is particularly true in the descriptions of the female characters. Surely if a woman had written the novel we would have much more descriptive detail about Claudia's clothing than the few brief references to the color and material of some of her dresses. And unquestionably there would be a much greater concern with the emotional relationships with her lovers than we are given. And lastly, although there are the usual exaggerations of male staying and recuperative powers, the writer exhibits a considerably better understanding of the nature and functioning of the male in sexual activity than of the female. Needless to say, none of this helps in identifying the real author, who very possibly never will be known. But we may still enjoy his book, a work which may not possess great depth and complexity but more than makes up for it in sympathetic appeal and human interest.
Frank A. Hoffmann, Ph.D. Buffalo, N.Y., May 1968