Dorothy Canfield Fisher was a popular novelist in the first half of the twentieth century, who used her prolific writing (18 novels) to campaign for social change, including women's rights. The Squirrel-Cage is the first of her books to deal with marriage, and is available for free on Project Gutenberg.

At the start of The Squirrel-Cage, a young woman, the indulged youngest daughter of a well-off family, returns from a year in Europe. Her family confidently expect that the son of the town's top family will finally speak for her - but Lydia herself seems oddly interested in the story of a young engineer who has given up his social standing to live quietly in the woods and work with his hands.

At this point, I thought I knew what I would be getting. But rather than a romantic tale of love against the odds, the book turned into an impassioned plea for (middle-class) women to be allowed to have real interests, to stand with their husbands and face the world together, rather than only having to occupy themselves with keeping up appearances and social climbing. It's actually not just about women's rights but about wider social change: in this view, men are also trapped by the need to get on in life, and to show the outward indicators of success. But it hits women the worst. On her second day back home, Lydia is a little bored because having just arrived back, she didn't need to add trim to any of her clothes, send any thank-you notes or wash her hair; as the story goes on, she is increasingly desperate to be allowed to play a real role in supporting her family, and frustrated by their insistence that she concentrates on her social graces.

This had a very easy-to-read style, and managed to carry off the transition from lightly witty social comedy to being a much sadder story. There were some shortcomings: the theme became rather laboured over the course of what is a long book, the ending was rather over-dramatic (it felt as if Canfield couldn't think of a way to bring the story to a close naturally), and there was some unpleasant language/stereotyping of the different races of "help" that it was possible to get (although I was curious that, in a book written in 1912, one of the richer characters ostentatiously hires "Japanese boys" as the latest trend in quality staff). But read for a campaigning book of its time, I found it very interesting.

...a few days before, Lydia had suggested seriously, "Why can't we shut up all of the house we don't really use, and not have to take care of those big parlors and the library when you and I are always in the dining-room or upstairs with Mother, now she's sick?" Judge Emery had thought of the grade of society which keeps its "best room" darkened and closed, of the struggles with which his wife had dragged the family up out of that grade, and was appalled at Lydia's unconscious reversion to type. "Your mother would feel dreadfully to have you do that; you know she thinks it very bad form - very green." ( )