Collection: As He Should Be

As He Should Be

"As He Should Be" is a 1926 collection that gathers Edna Ferber's short fiction and sketches, and it displays the qualities that made her one of the sharpest observers of American life in the early twentieth century. Ferber writes with a satiric but humane eye, turning her attention to people who are trying, often a little desperately, to become the version of themselves that society expects. The title points toward one of her central concerns: the pressure to perform the proper role, especially in romance, class, family, and business, and the uneasy gap between appearance and reality.

The pieces in the collection move through the ordinary settings that Ferber made vivid throughout her career: parlors, shops, boarding houses, hotel lobbies, city apartments, and other places where people watch one another and measure their worth. In these social spaces, ambition is rarely grand or heroic. It is often intimate and fragile, taking the form of wanting to be admired, wanting to marry well, wanting to seem elegant, or wanting to hold onto dignity in the face of disappointment. Ferber understands that such desires can be foolish, but she never treats the people who have them as ridiculous. She is interested in the vulnerability beneath the performance.

A recurring strength of the collection is Ferber's ability to find drama in small moments. A glance, a phrase, a pause in conversation, or a minor social slight can reveal a character's deepest longings or fears. Her stories and sketches often hinge on awkwardness, embarrassment, vanity, and self-deception, yet they are animated by sympathy rather than cruelty. Even when she exposes pretension or sentimentality, she does so with a lively wit that keeps the pieces from becoming harsh. The humor often comes from the mismatch between what characters believe about themselves and what others plainly see.

Romance is another major thread. Ferber frequently explores the social rituals surrounding courtship, marriage, and flirtation, but she does not romanticize them. Love in these pieces is shaped by class expectations, gender roles, and practical concerns, and the result is a world in which affection and calculation coexist. People may want tenderness and security at the same time, and Ferber is especially good at capturing the emotional confusion that follows. Her characters are not always able to say what they want directly, which makes the stories feel both comic and poignant.

The collection also reflects Ferber's background as a magazine writer, where brevity, clarity, and immediate effect were essential. The prose is concise and polished, with scenes that quickly establish mood and character. That economy gives the work its energy. Ferber can sketch a whole personality in a few lines, and she often uses dialogue to expose social habits and private hopes without heavy explanation. The result is writing that feels deft and modern, even when it is rooted in the manners and conventions of its time.

What gives "As He Should Be" lasting interest is the balance Ferber strikes between satire and compassion. She is alert to vanity, snobbery, and the theater of everyday life, but she is equally attentive to disappointment, loneliness, and the desire to be seen kindly. The collection presents people as performers, but also as human beings struggling to appear composed while quietly fearing failure. That combination of wit, social intelligence, and sympathy is at the center of Ferber's art, and it makes these stories and sketches feel vivid, charming, and observant.