"Miss Lulu Bett - novel" from Zona Gale. Author of novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and plays (1874-1938).

Miss Lulu Bett is a 1920 novel by American writer Zona Gale, and later adapted for the stage. It was a bestseller at the time of its initial publication.Zona Gale (1874-1938) was an American author and playwright. She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.

Lulu Bett lives in a small town with her sister Ina and Ina’s husband Dwight–a dentist who rules his household with self-righteous smugness. The unmarried Lulu has learned that she cannot question her role as chief cook, housekeeper, and gracious presence. But when Dwight’s sophisticated brother Ninian comes to visit, Lulu finds in herself a surprising wit–and the boldness to accept his playful proposal of marriage. Through her appealing, determined heroine, Zona Gale satirically dispatches a sheaf of the social assumptions of her day, from male supremacy to the security of marriage. First published in 1920, Miss Lulu Bett was immediately acclaimed, and went on to become one of two bestselling novels of the year. Together with four of Gale’s short stories–including the O. Henry award-winning “Bridal Pond”–Miss Lulu Bett reflects Gale’s broad progressive interests and the fast-paced, affecting prose which made her one of the most popular writers of her time and a classic American storteller. “A great book . . . the telling is almost incomparable” —Robert Benchley, The World “Eloquent. . . . Miss Lulu Bett is without flaw” —The Atlantic Monthly “It has a narrowly limned beauty. . . . The book stands as a signal accomplishment in American letters” —The New Republic

Top 100 Books – Bestsellers - Classic Novels Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale Miss Lulu Bett is a 1920 novel by American writer Zona Gale, and later adapted for the stage. It was a bestseller at the time of its initial publication, but gradually fell out of favor with changing tastes and social conditions. The story concerns a woman, Lulu, who lives with her sister's family, essentially acting as a servant. She does not complain about her position, but is not happy. When her brother-in-law's brother, Ninian, comes to visit, there is a certain attraction between them. While joking around one evening they find themselves accidentally married, due to the laws of the state requiring little more than wedding vows to be recited while a magistrate is in the room for a marriage to count as legal. On learning this, Ninian and Lulu decide they actually like the idea of being married, and choose to stick with it. However, within a month, Lulu is back home, having discovered that Ninian was already legally married: 18 years prior he had wed a girl who left him after 2 years, and he had actually forgotten about the whole thing. Lulu considers this a reasonable story, but her brother-in-law, Dwight, insists that it would be a humiliation to the family to reveal such a thing, and insists that she tell everyone instead that Ninian grew bored with her and left her. Lulu is unable to see why this should be a less humiliating story, and begins to complain about her circumstances for the first time. She also notices that her teenage niece, Di, is unhappy, and also seems to be trying to use marriage as a way to escape her circumstance. Lulu eventually has to prevent Di from eloping, and is finally inspired to move out of her sister's home and live on her own. Two endings were written for the play, the original as seen in December 1920 (and the ending that won Gale the Pulitzer Prize from Drama; the first woman ever to do so) has Lulu starting a life on her own and undertaking adventures of her own as we hear in her final lines, "Good-by. Good-by, all of you. I'm going I don't know where-to work at I don't know what. But I'm going from choice!" The revised ending is a much less satisfying one, but is more typical and would have been a bit more commercially acceptable and far less challenging to the audiences of the day. In this ending, Ninian shows up in the nick of time just as Lulu decides to go off on her own life to work and live elsewhere. He asks her forgiveness and she agrees saying "I forgave you in Savannah, Georgia."