Ruby is the diary of Ruby Alice Side Thompson, an independent, intelligent, passionate, ordinary woman who was born in 1884 and died in 1970. Born in England, Ruby moved to the U.S. in 1905, married and raised her sons in New Jersey. Ruby covers the years 1909 to 1938, during which time she returned unwillingly to England with her husband and three younger sons. Married to a rigid, traditional man, Ruby was an outspoken feminist whose ideas on education, equality, and financial independence for women far outpaced those of her husband. She was a converted and ambivalent Catholic, highly critical of what she saw as the male dominated Church, and in favor of birth control and abortion. She was a frustrated novelist whose diaries were the receptacle not only of her everyday joys and frustrations, but also of her creativity and love of storytelling. Ruby Thompson was an ordinary woman who chose to record her life so that other women might find in it a reflection of their own. Her thoughts about career, marriage, friendship, children, sexuality, spirituality, and literature are as pressing and provocative today as they were over fifty years ago.

Log in to favorite or list