I first learned of this novel through an article in the New York Times describing relatively recent efforts to find, translate and publish works written in Yiddish, both in America and in Europe, by women writers. This book was essentially the article's centerpiece. While many male Yiddish writers' works have been well known over the years, the work of female writers fell into obscurity, essentially due to sexism, the women not being taken as seriously by the male-run publishing and academic worlds. Here's the Times article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/books/yiddish-women-novels-fiction.html

Miriam Karpilove, it turns out, was an extremely prolific writer. She was born in Minsk, in what was then Belorussia (part of the Russian Empire) and is now Belarus. She came to America at the age of 18, in 1905, living first in Harlem, then Brooklyn, and eventually in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She wrote novels, essays, short stories and criticism over her long career, publishing primarily, I believe in the then thriving world of Yiddish press in New York. Diary of a Lonely Girl was published first in installment form in a Yiddish newspaper over the period 1916-1918, and then in novel form in 1919. OK, so what is this novel about?

As made clear by the title, the book is written in fictionalized diary form. The writer is a single young Jewish woman in New York City. She is a working woman, though her work is never specified or really discussed, so she is not destitute. But she is alone, living in rented rooms in which she must always be careful of following the norms of propriety, lest she be turned out, as happens more than once during the course of the novel. But most dramatically for Karpilove's heroine, the stream she swims in is that of the leftist political climate of the young, non-religious Jews of New York City at this time. A mostly male-dominated society, a major tenet of this world is the idea that bourgeois principles must be done away with. That includes the constrictions of traditional marriage and therefore, so say the men, "free love" must be the rule of the day. As our never-named heroine describes for us in her furious, sarcastic and desperately heartbroken voice, this means fun for the men, who expect women to be essentially compliant, to "live life!" Affairs are to be enjoyed but definitely to be finite in duration. Commitment? Phooey! Children? Why bother, but if it does come up, that's the woman's problem. You can't expect a man to be tied down!

Our heroine is, in fact, in love, with the first of her suitors that we're introduced to, A. A is attracted to her, as well, but is only interested in a short-term affair, and not even a monogamous one. As heartbroken as this makes her, our heroine refuses the terms. And so it goes through one suitor after another, as our protagonist still pines for A. and refuses the advances of a series of others, though agrees to spend time with them as a futile antidote to her loneliness. Men tell her things. Mostly they tell her that she is wasting her life by refusing to "live," meaning to have sex with them. The lectures are long and rendered absurd by Karpilove's fierce sense of humor. One of these men tells her:

"Someone once said, I forget who it was, 'If even one person understood my work, it will not have been for naught.' Let me tell you, if someone--especially if you were that someone--should acknowledge the truth of my words, then I will have reached my goal."

When he said "my goal" I felt very uncomfortable. I didn't stop feeling that way for a long time. I asked myself why I didn't protest and tell him not to talk like that. I was firmly opposed to his reaching his goal. I pretended not to understand so that he would take more time to explain to me, and I could think of other things while he talked.

As is alluded to only once or twice during the narrative, other than just not wishing to partake in the "free love" as designed by the men around her, holding out instead for a committed relationship, she is also imperiled by these unwanted attentions which often take place in her own rooms, often essentially against her will. Readers of the original installments would have been aware of the laws that had been passed in New York City aimed at improving life in the city's tenements but also including provisions that punished prostitution in those tenements more harshly than in brothels or on the street. In the event, women could be informed upon as prostitutes without proof, sometimes by landlords hoping to rent out their rooms for higher rates, and wind up at the mercy of often unsympathetic and uncaring policemen and judges. The fact that the men in this novel are not above coming into her room unbidden and trying to force themselves on the narrator physically, assuming she will eventually submit if they keep it up, puts her even more at risk.

This and other aspects of the societal context that the novel's original readers in its installment form would have been aware of (the ongoing slaughter of World War One in Europe, and particularly the very real dangers that the war was exposing the Jews of Europe to, are well described in translator Jessica Kirzane's excellent Introduction, which I saved to read until after I'd read the novel.

So this novel represents a fascinating historical artifact. It presents a strong woman's voice coming to us from a long-ago world but expressing concepts that are extremely familiar to us today. It can feel claustrophobic. The long lectures from the men become repetitive. I understand the purpose for that, to show us the relentless and depressing nature of the onslaught of such efforts, and in that sense the storytelling is very effective. But it does get repetitious in the reading, no matter how much sympathy we might have for the narrative strategy. I suppose reading the work in weekly installments would have mitigated that factor somewhat for the work's original audience. At any rate, this is an extremely valuable book, I think, opening up one more revealing look at this particular era, at the price women have always paid for the blockheaded egotistical insistence of men for their own primacy and the value of their own pleasures, often in the name of "enlightenment," and at the efforts that women have continually had to make to try to confound that behavior. ( )