<cite>Mingling Yarn</cite> and its depiction of class struggles in the South
Ethridge discusses her first novel, <cite>Mingling Yarn</cite> (1938). Ethridge explains how she drew on her personal experiences of growing up in Georgia and working as a reporter covering the textiles industry during the 1920s. The story was about a love affair between the daughter of a cotton mill owner and a poor newspaper reporter. According to Ethridge, it accurately captured struggles, particularly those related to class and labor, in the South.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Willie Snow Ethridge, December 15, 1975. Interview G-0024. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- LEE KESSLER:
-
What was the name of it?
- WILLIE SNOW ETHRIDGE:
-
It was called Mingled Yarn. And, as I said, it was all
about the textile mills in middle Georgia. And it happened to come out
the same week as Gone With The Wind, by the same
publishing house (Macmillan), so it was kind of lost. Macmillan
couldn't have cared less about it; they were so
enthralled with Gone With The Wind (and so
was everybody else) that few people ever heard about it. But I reread it
every now and then, and I get the feeling I couldn't do it as
well now as I did then.
- LEE KESSLER:
-
Well, you know, there are many of your books in the Chapel Hill
libraries, but that's not one of them.
- WILLIE SNOW ETHRIDGE:
-
Well, this really is a very adequate picture of struggles in the South of
the textile workers, when they were living in those villages, you know,
and being paid by script and trading in, you know, the company
store—all that business is in there.
- LEE KESSLER:
-
What does the heroine end up doing?
- WILLIE SNOW ETHRIDGE:
-
Oh, you see, she married the hero—a poorly paid
newspaper reporter and they had an awful struggle. But she became more
and more liberated, more and more enlightened, because the man was so
very, very smart and so sincere and earnest in it.
- LEE KESSLER:
-
Did she join in herself?
- WILLIE SNOW ETHRIDGE:
-
No. A lot of people think that it was an autobiographical novel, which is
so often what writers do first. There was a lot of
personal experience in it in the love story, but I never did happen to
be the daughter of a cotton mill owner
[laughter]
—unfortunately. I was poor as practically
any laborer in the mills
[laughter]
, so it wasn't that. And the heroine of the book, of
course, was the daughter of the president of a big chain of cotton
mills. So it was not autobiographical, but there was a lot that I had
learned from personal experience about the cotton mills and what goes on
in them, and what people do, how they live. And so that was very
helpful; the first person I sent it to was Macmillan Publishing House,
which accepted it.
