Part school story and part family tale, this brief and rather sentimental novella for young people, first published in 1907, concerns the social and cultural reformation of Mary O'Brien, a young girl from the working class Fifth Ward - colloquially known as "The Bloody Fifth" - who, although the brightest student at the Jackson Avenue High School, could never seem to make any headway with the 'better' set - the girls from Congress and Kennedy Streets - amongst the pupils. Opening on a day when Mary, having missed the trolley-car home, unexpectedly receives a midday dinner invitation from Sally Platte, the leader of the "Congress Street set," the story follows her as she becomes aware of the many things, both large and small, that have prevented her from becoming the social success she would like to be. Having unconsciously adopted the idea that money brings status, Mary had attempted to outshine all the other girls in matters of dress, wearing stylish but cheap clothing that set her apart. Aware from the beginning that she was different, she had insisted upon being known as Marie O'Brean, a "new pronunciation ... pleasing to the girl," but which, despite its 'patrician' sound, "failed to work the change she coveted." Ignorant of the proper way to behave, whether to a teacher, or as a guest in someone's home for a meal, she covered her insecurity with a rather rude, brazen way of speaking - forceful, but not terribly informed.

Things were no better at her home on Stump Street, where Mrs. O'Brien, unaided by her elder daughter in the housework, had given up on any of the niceties, whether eating in the dining room rather than around the kitchen table, and dressing for dinner, or keeping Mary's younger sister Gladys clean, and away from the gutter children. Gladys herself, always eager to imitate her idolized elder sister, had taken to singing the "low" coon songs that Mary and her neighborhood friends had always enjoyed performing during evening visits to one another. Mary's father, a talented and hard-working machinist who had risen through the ranks to become the foreman of hundreds of workers, was a gentle and loving husband and father, but had taken to spending his evenings at Jack's Place, a drinking spot where men eventually went "to the bad." After a series of disastrous encounters, and an overheard conversation, Mary's eyes are opened, and the girl, who is lacking in neither intelligence nor proper spirit, sets out to see what she can do to mend matters. Her uplift in habit of dress and manner is soon accompanied by an uplift in sentiment, and she finishes her high school career by making a sacrifice for a new friend, thereby becoming the unsung "honor girl" of her school.

Although not terribly successful as a story - the social transformation of Mary and her family is effected in under one hundred pages, and none of the characters are fully realized - The Honor Girl does offer a fascinating glimpse of ideas of class and gender in early twentieth-century America. Mary O'Brien is the perfect example of the "social climber" type - a working class person who either gains some extra income, or who attends school with pupils of middle and upper class backgrounds, but who has no idea how to go on in this new environment - in the children's literature of the day, but while she would undoubtedly have been either the villain or buffoon, if this were a British book, here she is the protagonist and heroine, and the aim of the author is to show how she overcomes her background, rather than remaining defined by it. As odd as it is, given how egregiously classist the story appears to the contemporary reader, Baird is presenting a more progressive view of class - the idea that it is not immutable or inherent, but something situational, that can be changed through hard work and imitation of one's 'betters' - than many of her contemporaries. The desirability of that change is taken as a given, and nowhere is there a sense that the inequality between the classes has anything to do with economic factors, or with the behavior of middle and upper class people. There is no hint in the story that any of the Congress or Kennedy Street girls have ever had so much as a snobby thought - when Mary changes, they are immediately willing to embrace her as an equal - or that ethnicity plays any role at all. This latter is particularly interesting, as it points to possible changes at this time in the wider culture's ideas about Irish Americans. Seen as irretrievably "other" in the mid nineteenth century, have they now become acceptable as full equals, providing they behave "just like us" ("us" being White Anglo Saxon Protestant Americans)?

Just as Mary must change in dress and manner, learning by observation some of the complicated social behaviors of the middle class into which she is trying to enter (and with her, her family), so she must also attend to deeper matters of taste and culture, and this draws heavily upon notions of gender abroad at the time. As a young girl, she must reject the unladylike in conduct - the loud voice, the showy but rather messy clothing - but also the unladylike in spirit - the coon songs, the assessment of others by wealth alone - embracing more refined and cultured ideas. In the end, by sacrificing her own chances of being the top student at the high school, she has fulfilled the ultimate ideal of Victorian femininity - self sacrifice - and earned her titular status as "The Honor Girl." She also, by involving her entire family in her project of uplift - she begins to help more at home, becoming a better role-model for Gladys, and guiding her away from the unladylike; she is instrumental in convincing her mother that she is still loved, with electrifying results; and she even manages to influence her father away from Jack's Place (and the implicit dangers of alcohol), by making home a more attractive place - has become a shining example of that classic nineteenth and early twentieth century woman's occupation: the social reformer.

There's quite a bit to unpack in this one-hundred-page story - more than enough for a paper, I would say - but since I picked it up largely to get an idea of Jean K. Baird's work, as I am working on a piece about a trilogy of children's/young adult novels she wrote, I'll leave it at that. I don't think there's much here to attract the casual reader - it is a deservedly obscure book - so I would recommend it primarily to other readers researching early twentieth-century American girls' fiction. ( )