First, the case of Miss MacD.:įor several years, she lived in an inexpensive boarding-house in Detroit, slipping in and out unobtrusively and growing more and more convinced that life was a very lonely business. 2) Bolster your defiance through schadenfreudeĪs illustrated in two cases. Standing on your own feet is extraordinarily exhilarating, and being able to do very well (when it’s necessary) without your friends, relatives, and beaux, not mention your enemies, makes you feel surprisingly benign towards all of them. But you will soon find that independence, more truthfully than virtue, is its own reward. There will be moments when you’ll need it, especially if you’ve been somebody’s petted darling in the past.

When you start to live alone, defiance is not a bad quality to have handy. You’re living alone because you’ll show them, you’ll show them all, yes? Especially your enemies? You are glamorous enough to have enemies, aren’t you? Some of it’s very 1936, some of it’s very 2017, but all of it sounds like what your favorite glamorous, well-traveled, hard-drinking aunt would tell you to do. And while some of her advice is specific to the '30s (the topics she covers include bed jackets and boarding houses), a lot of it holds true today.īelow, I’ve collected my favorite pearls of Hillis’s wisdom. Sternly dismissing any attempts at self-pity - “Anyone who pities herself for more than a month on end is a weak sister and likely to become a public nuisance besides” - Hillis guides her readers through how to cope with life on their own. How the fantasy of the lady bachelor rose and fell over the mid-20th century

Live alone and like it book