So Big

By Edna Ferber

Pulitzer Prize winning novel of 1925.

Selina Peake lived with her father till he died when she was 19. He'd been a gambler and when things were good, they lived the high life with nice clothes, dinners out and trips to the theater. He even managed to put enough money aside to have Selina educated at a private school. But when he died, things weren't going so well and Selina was left with little money. She had to get a job and she found one as a teacher in a country school.
She soon found herself married to a farmer, a large, practical, dull man. She truly loved Pervus DeJong even though they had nothing in common. Selina loved beauty and saw it everywhere, even in the commonplace crops grown by the locals. When she had a son, Dirk, her fondest wish for him was that he too love and live for beauty. She wanted him to live a creative life and she definitely didn't want him to be a farmer like his dad. (So Big is a nickname she gave Dirk when he was a toddler.)
Pervus dies and Selina has to run their little truck farm by herself. Which is ok because it turns out that Selina is a better farmer than her husband and with the help of a friend from school whose father makes Selina a loan, she is able to make the farm profitable enough to send her beloved son Dirk to college where he decides to study architecture. This thrills Selina because she sees her son embarked on a fulfilling, creative, beauty-filled life.
Gradually Selina comes to admit to herself that her son is a chip off the old block and has no more feeling for beauty and art than did his dullard father. She is disappointed and the novel ends with poor Dirk finding out that he is a clod in his mother's eyes. He is crushed to discover that although she loves him dearly he is a huge disappointment to her.

I read this book some years ago and didn't remember much about it except that it was about a woman and her son. I guess it didn't make much of an impression on me. So I decided to read it again. Can't say it improved with re-reading. Selina has this handsome, kind, polite, well-liked, successful son and that's not good enough for her. His terrible crime? He's not artistic! So Big? Should call it So Sad.
This is such a mean-hearted story.  The author sneers at everyone in it. She sneers at the stoic Dutch farmers and their kids, she sneers at the wealthy businessmen and their families, she sneers at the office girls in the office. And she sneers at Dirk, a perfectly lovely man whose only failing is that he is not artistic.

Review from Reading the Pulitzer Prize Winners for Fiction.