"The Woman across the Street And the Cause of Her Neighbors' Change of Heart"

Introduction

Inez Haynes Gillmore Irwin. “The Woman across the Street: And the Cause of Her Neighbors’ Change of Heart.” Ladies’ Home Journal (Los Angeles, CA), 33 (September 1916): 23.

Inez Haynes Gillmore Irwin (1873-1970) was a highly popular author as well as a feminist social activist, significantly involved in the movement for women’s suffrage. Her concern with women’s lives and with women’s rights issues is variously expressed across her published output, which includes both fiction and nonfiction.

“The Woman across the Street” belongs to a genre that scholar Birte Christ has plausibly designated as “modern domestic fiction.” The story begins with five women gossipping about the woman across the street and her husband, whom they have socially ostracized due to an unspecified scandal in which the husband had been involved. In the course of the story they have various unplanned interactions with that woman, which cause them to appreciate her and to welcome her into their social circles. Part of the story’s appeal lies in its depiction of a leisurely social order governed by women: their perceptions, their decisions, and their retrievable errors.

Additional Information

Label

"The Woman across the Street And the Cause of Her Neighbors' Change of Heart"

Author

Inex Haynes Gillmore Irwin

Original Publication Date

1913

New Publication Date

1913

Publisher

Ladies' Home Journal

Location

Butler Stacks

Case

4