The Best of Everything, By Rona Jaffe

The women of Madison Avenue

Lesley McDowell
Sunday 22 May 2011 00:00 BST
Comments
(Getty Images )

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

Each generation of young women gets the fiction it deserves, or perhaps more accurately, needs.

The early Sixties had Mary McCarthy's The Group, the Seventies Marilyn French's The Women's Room, and the Nineties Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City. For the post-war generation of young women, the publication of Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything in 1958 – a time when they were still being encouraged to stay at home – must have been like a light flashing on. Suddenly, here was a book about them – the Madison Avenue girls, earning their own salaries and renting single apartments.

Jaffe's debut novel is hardly a feminist tome – all her girls are chasing after the perfect husband – but she does show the irresistible lead-up to the calls for women's lib. It's the story of 20-year-old Caroline Bender, who moves from being a temporary secretary at a large New York publisher to the position of reader, then editor, all the while skirting lecherous bosses. The Best of Everything charts just the kind of journey made by the career girl Peggy in television's Mad Men. (Indeed, the cover of this re-issue is badged "As seen on Mad Men".)

Jaffe's characters experience disappointments in love: April has an abortion to save her relationship with rich Dexter; the tragic aspiring actress Gregg has casual sex with the self-absorbed David. Jaffe tells of young women negotiating their brave new world with verve and wit.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in