The Learning Umbrella

Charity Girl tells the tale of a young girl trying to make it on her own during WWI (before women had the vote, before women could really be independent), who gets swept up in a government program to quarantine girls with “social diseases” and thus protect the “fighting boys”.  The novel is a coming-of-age tale, taking a naive 17 year old girl and turning her into a pragmatic adult.  It is pretty negative toward notions of “romance”, and shows over and over again how men will take advantage of girls with pretty dreams.  There are also threads of outrage against a society and system that has a double standard for men and women.  Not a light and fun read!

The part that is really interesting is that there really was this program during WWI.  The author says that there were 30,000 women detained without due process, and completely cut off from contact with the outside world or their families.  The author provides links to his research on his official website.  The government really did lock up women in the hopes that this would control the spread of “enslaving habits” and “keep men moral”.  The irony is that this was right before the Spanish Influenza hit and killed thousands - a disease they couldn’t control just by victimizing the already vulnerable.