The Job: An American Novel was one of two novels printed by Sinclair Lewis in 1917. The other was The Innocents, which is considered by many to be another “kettle pot” of a novel. “Pot kettle” is the modern equivalent of “pulp fiction” or “mass market fiction.” The work is a serious novel.

“The Job” takes place over a decade from 1905-1915. In this novel the hero is actually a heroine: Miss Una Golden. In 1905 she is 24 years old. She is old and lives in Panama Town, Pennsylvania.

The rest of the story during those ten years deals with Una’s determination to find a good and romantic man to fall in love with and at the same time make a career in business, considered a “man’s job”.

Walter Babson is one of the first suitors who seems like a nice man. However, another man appears, a widower named Edward Schwirtz, who is a smooth-talking salesman. In a bad decision, she marries him. The next two years are unhappy and she eventually divorces him.

The novel focuses heavily on the issues of exploited workers, particularly women workers. In this time period, the question really is work vs. marriage as it was deeply frowned upon for a woman to do both.

It’s hard for working women to find a partner because there’s a stigma attached to the job, part of the reason Una makes the bad decision to marry the wrong man.

But along the way, she meets some very influential women, and Una proves to be a smart and capable woman who finds her way in a world dominated by men. Despite much darkness, this book ends with a deus ex machina happy ending in the last pages.

The first man who really interested her, Walter Babson, appears again and the final pages make the reader believe that they will have a future together, both working and hoping to have children.

This book was highly controversial in its time, promoting women’s rights, dealing with antisemitism, and this novel was bold enough to mention alcoholism, venereal disease, divorce, adoption by a single woman, and women who drink and smoke. Dealing with all of this, the main heroine, Una, is still a proper Victorian lady.

This is an interesting work, and is considered by many to be the first of three novels written by Sinclair Lewis that strongly advocates for the rights of working women.