Nevertheless, when Mrs. Bell arrives to have a special Chinese knot embellishment placed on her hat, Jo is made to make the embellishments. Unbeknownst to the Bells, Jo and Old Gin live beneath the Bell's house in what used to be a cellar to hide runaway slaves. A listening tube, disguised as a vent allows those in the basement to hear what was happening in the upstairs.While Mrs. Bell and Mrs. English are haggling over the price of Jo's work, Miss Melissa Lee Saltworth and Miss Linette Culpepper, whom Jo has nicknamed Salt and Pepper arrive. The daughters of "merchant aristocrats", Miss Saltworth is being courted by Mr. Quackenbush, the son of a financier who lost his fortune backing Confederate dollars.
That night Jo listens as the Bells discuss the dire circumstances of their newspaper The Focus. It has lost readers after the Bell's son, Nathan published an editorial against segregating Atlanta's streetcars. They need two thousand new subscribers by April or they will be forced to close and move to New York. This means Jo and Old Gin will likely lose their home too. Nathan questions what their newspaper is lacking and his mother states that it is an advice column. Their competitor, The Trumpeter has Advice from Aunt Edna and Mrs. Bell believes that an "agony aunt" column would help greatly.
The next morning, Jo attempts to find work but is unsuccessful. That night she decides that she will be the Bell's "Aunt Edna", writing an advice column for women, anonymously in order to help the Bell's newspaper obtain more subscriptions. Jo writes a letter to Nathan offering her services and sends along her first column which advises women to boldly ask a man to the Payne's eight-furlong race to be held in March in support of the Society for the Betterment of Women. She takes the pseudonym, Miss Sweetie, "...to temper the more provocative nature of the articles..." she will be writing.
While looking for another pair of gloves after losing one when she encountered Nathan Bell and his dog Bear, Jo discovers a man's navy suit, wool coat and shoes. Old Gin returns home and tells Jo that Mrs. Payne will see her about a job as a weekday maid for her daughter Caroline. However Jo is not happy about this because Caroline was always nasty to her when she was younger. She spent her childhood at the Payne's, first as a playmate to Caroline and later on working for them as a maid until she was suddenly let go over two years ago. Jo reluctantly agrees, hoping that finishing school has taken the nasty edge off of Caroline.
At the Payne's home, Jo settles in as Caroline's maid, working during the week, maintaining Caroline's quarters, her wardrobe and accompanying her when she goes out. Caroline however has no intention of having Jo follow her everywhere. On their first outing on horseback, Caroline tricks Jo, sending her to look for a dropped handkerchief, which allows Caroline to secretly meet her lover, Mr. Quackenbach. Mr. Q, as Jo calls him, just happens to be Melissa Saltworth's beau. Afterwards, Caroline threatens to have Jo fired if she reveals her secret but Jo counters with the threat to reveal her dalliance to Miss Saltworth. Her request is to be treated better by Caroline.
Upon returning to the Payne estate, Jo is disturbed to find Old Gin with Billy Riggs, a man with a nasty reputation as a "fixer". Old Gin tells her that one of the Chinese owed Billy's father money and warns her to stay away from him. Old Gin begins spending most of his days and nights at the Paynes helping Jed Crycks train the new Arabian stallion Merritt brought back to the estate.
At home, Jo discovers a partially made red silk garment which leads her to believe that Old Gin is working on finding her a husband. Meanwhile her Miss Sweetie column has become very popular, leading Mrs. Payne to buy extra copies of The Focus for her women's group, the Atlanta Belles. Jo decides to hand deliver her next column to the Bells. When she puts on the wool coat to run her errand, she discovers a note addressed to "Shang" and signed with the letter "e" in the pocket. Jo questions Old Gin about the letter and learns that Shang owed Billy's father a great deal of money. However he refuses to tell her much more than that. This mystery and the inconsistencies in Old Gin's story leads Jo to wonder if Shang might be her father. As Jo works to unravel the mystery of her past, Miss Sweetie's fame grows and the hunt is on to discover who is behind the provocative column that is having unexpected social repercussions across Atlanta! Eventually Jo uncovers the identity of her parents, Old Gin's connection to the debt to Billy and devises a plan to wipe out the debt.
Discussion
The Downstairs Girl is a novel with a strange plot. Set in 1890 Atlanta, Georgia, The Downstairs Girl incorporates the themes of racial tension, women's rights, class and identity. The novel, while historical fiction, is also part mystery and a coming of age story. Despite these many themes, the cleverness and wit of main character Jo Kuan, a seventeen-year-old who is half Chinese, half Caucasian makes this novel an enjoyable and intriguing read.
In 1890 Atlanta, racial discrimination is common towards Black citizens. The Reconstruction Era in the southern United States is over and the southern states are back to governing themselves. Although Black men were given the right to vote by the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1870, many obstacles were enacted to limit this right in many states. At this time women were also unable to vote, but were beginning to agitate for greater involvement in society and for more rights. Women were beginning to see themselves as having a greater role in society and in the political process. Somehow Lee manages to incorporate bits of all these themes into her story, through her varied cast of characters.
For those who are not white, the opportunities in 1890 Atlanta are limited. Jo, who is of Chinese heritage, a talented milliner-in-training is fired and blacklisted simply because she is Chinese and outspoken. She doesn't know her place. There is also Old Gin, Jo's grandfather, who has worked at the Payne estate as a groom for years. There is Robby Withers, a Black man who is a delivery man at Buxbaum's. But as Jo notes, "We all must abide by the rules, but some of us must follow more than others. Robby can be a deliveryman but not a clerk. Mrs. English would never have promoted me to milliner, just as Mr. Payne will never promote Old Gin to head groom. Like Sweet Potato and her twisted lot, we have been born with a defect -- the defect of not being white. Only, unlike in Sweet Potato's case, there is no correcting it. There is only correcting the vision of those who view it as a defect, though not even a war and Reconstruction have been able to do that."
The character of Caroline Payne represents the privileged white class and the Southern gentry, but she is also used to portray the social restrictions placed on women. Caroline is a mean, thoughtless girl who is wealthy, lives in comfort and can go wherever she wants. However, her freedom is an illusion because her path is life is mostly determined by social convention. She is expected to marry a wealthy man. Despite the opening of the debutante season, Jo notes that Caroline doesn't want to marry and she begins to understand that Caroline's situation is just as constraining if not more so than her own. "Caroline's scowling visage appears in my mind. With her wealth, every door is open for her. But maybe what she wants is not for doors to open, but for the walls to come down. When one grows up with walls, it is difficult to dream of a world beyond. Who knows what Caroline - what any of us -- could accomplish without the constant pressure to get married?" It is these observations that lead Jo to encourage Caroline's father to involve her more in the family printing business which she appears to have an aptitude for.
One of the many plotlines in the novel involves Jo's search into her past. All she knows at the beginning of the novel is that she was abandoned by her father and that she was left in the care of Old Gin. However, there are soon hints that not all is as it seems. "Wondering about my parents is a strange kind of agony, an itch that I can't help scratching until it causes pain." The revelation of the identity of her parents is devastating to Jo but she decides to show her mother that she won't be bound by the chains of shame but will live life on her own terms. Jo is determined, resourceful and forthright, with dreams of becoming more than what society tells her she can be. She represents the struggle for both women's and civil rights.
The Downstairs Girl is recommended for older readers because of some sexual innuendo as well as a scene involving male nudity in a house of prostitution. Those familiar with Lee's writing will find The Downstairs Girl similar in tone to her other novels with their unique settings and variety of characters.
Book Details:
The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee
New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons Ltd. 2019
374 pp.
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