{"id":3261,"date":"2021-05-05T15:37:39","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T15:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2021-05-05T18:41:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T18:41:23","slug":"the-barbizon-the-hotel-that-set-women-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/05\/the-barbizon-the-hotel-that-set-women-free\/","title":{"rendered":"The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The history of the Barbizon women\u2019s hotel showcases that even with the freedoms introduced in the twentieth century, nothing is perfect.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Veronica Clarke<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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New York City is the setting of many well-known tales of female ambition, of young women who longed to scrape the New York sky with their perfect fingernails. Paulina Bren\u2019s The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free<\/em> tells the interconnected story of some of the women who poured into twentieth-century New York to pursue their dreams. What did they have in common? They all stayed, at one point or another\u2014from its grand opening in 1928 to its eventual conversion into condominiums in 2007\u2014at the exclusive, women-only Barbizon Hotel on Lexington and Sixty-Third Street. Everything the Barbizon women could want or need was right at their fingertips: a dry-cleaner, hair-dresser, pharmacy, hosiery store, millinery shop, bookshop, swimming pool, gymnasium, roof gardens, lecture rooms, a library\u2014and, perhaps most importantly, camaraderie.<\/p>

Constructed on the heels of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Barbizon was one of many new women-only residential hotels built in the Roaring Twenties, providing a safe haven for women fresh out of college looking to \u201cmake it\u201d in the big city as models, writers, actresses, and more. Men were not allowed beyond the first floor\u2014easing the minds of anxious mothers all over the country as their daughters ventured into the City of Dreams\u2014though that didn\u2019t stop them from congregating in the lobby and, in the case of J. D. Salinger, lurking in the hotel coffee shop.<\/p>

Like its guests, the hotel was multifaceted: it was a \u201cfemale fortress\u201d and \u201csecular nunnery,\u201d providing a (sometimes dubious) guarantee of virtue; it was a \u201cdollhouse,\u201d housing beauty-icons such as Grace Kelly, who danced topless \u201cto Hawaiian music down the hallways of the Barbizon.\u201d In many ways it was also like a hospital: There were the women who emerged from it revived, ready to \u201csuck on the pap of life\u201d; and there were those who never left. Among the latter are \u201cthe Women,\u201d the residents who refused to leave even in the face of numerous constructions to the hotel, and who are still there to this day, paying the same rate of rent as when they first came to the hotel. There are also those who died at the hotel: The \u201cunsinkable\u201d Molly Brown, survivor of the Titanic<\/em>, died in her Barbizon room in October 1932 of a brain tumor; Mrs. Edith La Tour, after checking into the hotel, jumped to her death in 1934; Ruth Harding was mysteriously strangled in her eleventh-floor room in 1975. Even the most glamorous New York settings are touched by tragedy.<\/p>

Sylvia Plath was one of the many renowned residents who stayed at the Barbizon. One of the lucky winners of Mademoiselle<\/em> magazine\u2019s (famous for publishing fiction by Truman Capote, Flannery O\u2019Connor, and more) guest editor competition, which included a room at the Barbizon, Plath stayed at the hotel in June of 1953. To her, \u201cNew York in the summer of 1953 held the promise of a fairy tale.\u201d In a letter home, she wrote of her excitement: \u201cI feel like a collegiate Cinderella whose fairy Godmother suddenly hopped out of the mailbox and said: \u2018What is your first woosh?\u2019 [sic] and I, Cinderella, said: \u2018New York,\u2019 and she winked, waved her pikestaff, and said: \u2018Woosh [sic] granted.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The book, to some extent, seems to realize that even with the newfound freedoms of the twentieth century, nothing is perfect.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The fairy tale didn\u2019t last long for Plath. Overworked and crushed by the pressure to succeed, Plath found that \u201cNew York had changed her, but not in the way she had hoped.\u201d To her brother, she wrote: \u201cThe world has split open before my gaping eyes and spilt out its guts like a cracked watermelon.\u201d In her Mademoiselle<\/em> guest editor photograph for the August issue of the magazine, part of a feature introducing the guest editors to the magazine\u2019s readership, Plath is holding a downturned rose, an image that, in hindsight, seems to foreshadow the tragic trajectory of her life: depression, an unhappy marriage, divorce. Not long after returning home from New York, Plath was admitted into a mental institution and, after that, attempted to take her life. Her only novel, The Bell Jar<\/em>, is largely an autobiographical novelization of her experience in New York.<\/p>

Bren dedicates an entire chapter to Sylvia Plath (as well as Joan Didion, also a Mademoiselle<\/em> guest editor), because she regards Plath as the archetypal 1950s woman, struggling between ambition and family, cradling her dreams in one arm and a child in the other. But to declare Plath the \u201cembodiment\u201d of 1950s womanhood would be an irresponsible generalization. It is a shame that, beneath Bren\u2019s fascinating portraits of the Barbizon women\u2019s individual lives, there lies the tired old feminist narrative, first outlined in Betty Friedan\u2019s The Feminine Mystique<\/em>. Within this narrative, \u201cfamily and family expectations\u201d are a \u201cburden,\u201d marriage and motherhood are unfulfilling, and the suburbs are graveyards of \u201cuntapped ambition.\u201d The subtitle of the book\u2014\u201cThe Hotel That Set Women Free\u201d\u2014is based on the same premise: that women were not free until they were liberated from the support of their fathers, brothers, uncles, and husbands.<\/p>

The book, to some extent, seems to realize that even with the newfound freedoms of the twentieth century, nothing is perfect. As New York of the 1920s\u20131950s comes vividly alive on the page, the sixties and seventies\u2014the supposed high point of the feminist movement\u2014hardly appear to be the triumphant era feminists purport it to be. By then, the hotel had begun its slow decline: Ironically, the 1960s women\u2019s liberation movement sounded \u201cthe death knell for the Barbizon.\u201d Men were allowed into the hotel in the eighties, marking the end of an era.<\/p>

In spite of its faults, The Barbizon<\/em> is rich enough in anecdotes to be an enjoyable, informative read. I couldn\u2019t help wondering, along with the author: \u201cWhy do I wish a place like this had existed when I came to New York after graduating from college?\u201d One certainly laments the state of the \u201clanguished\u201d hotel industry today, with hotels offering \u201clittle more than a bed for the night, maybe with some added luxuries.\u201d While the women of the Barbizon heralded the beginning of a new age for women, not only in New York but all over the country, we now look back on many of its qualities as relics of the past\u2014intentional community life, elegance, formality, chivalry\u2014all of which speak to a higher form of freedom, and don\u2019t leave us saying regretfully, \u201cBe careful what you woosh for.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Veronica Clarke<\/strong> is assistant editor at\u00a0<\/em>First Things,\u00a0and graduated from Wyoming Catholic College in 2019.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Barbizon <\/em><\/strong>was published by Simon & Schuster on March 2, 2021. You can purchase a copy on their website here<\/a>. <\/em>
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The history of the Barbazon women\u2019s hotel showcases that even with the freedoms introduced in the twentieth century, nothing is perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-newsletter","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/The-Barbizon-3D.jpg?fit=1500%2C1383&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3274,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions\/3274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fa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