Hotel oasis for women won ground but lost it

AT A TIME when women in Afghanistan face having to return to restrictions on their educational, professional and private lives under the domination of men, it is sobering to recognise that things were not that different in the West in the recent past.

The women-only Barbizon Hotel opened in 1928 in New York, precisely to meet the demands of young women who longed, in an era of increasing emancipation, to safely get out from under their parents’ supervision and forge their own way in the beckoning world.

It was a huge, attractive hotel with well over 700 rooms, strict front-desk supervision, cooked meals so the women would not have to worry about domestic chores and a policy of – no men, ever – in those tempting chambers.

One of the women who would famously beat that rule was the beautiful Grace Kelly, whose shenanigans, including dancing topless, became part of its legendary stories.

Historian Paulina Bren’s book on the Barbizon is also a history of female emancipation, and how remarkable those women were who broke the mould.

One of the first residents was the unsinkable Molly Brown, famous survivor of the Titanic. Over the years, there were many movie stars besides Grace Kelly – Rita Hayworth, Candice Bergen, Ali McGraw.

There were also women who started their own businesses, such as the Ford Modelling Agency. The doomed poet Sylvia Plath memorialised the hotel in The Bell Jar, as did Joan Didion in Goodbye To All That.

It was, it must be said, a haven mainly for white, middle-class women; the number of black women and those from poor backgrounds was very small.

But for the many who lived there, it was a welcome smokescreen; for the debutante who couldn’t tell her parents she really wanted to be an artist, for the shopgirl who longed for a Broadway career; for the 18-yearold who told her fiancé that first she needed to take a course in typing or secretarial work ... for those who just wanted a taste of life before the confines of dutiful domesticity.

Just when it looked as if they were winning, women in the Barbizon and elsewhere were forcibly reminded after World War II of who was really in charge.

Men returning from the war expected to take up the available jobs; expected their women to be full-time wives and mothers; expected to be the heads of the family.

After nearly three decades of opening up, the clock turned back. Male dominance and female deference in the 1950s was entirely normalised. So much ground had been taken and then lost within a few short years.

In 2007, the Barbizon was converted into condos. Its history is fascinating, reminding us that nothing should ever be taken for granted.