Turn About Eleanor

In Short

This novel explores the folly of living through others. When an orphaned girl named Eleanor is adopted by a group of six young, unmarried friends in New York, they view her as a "responsibility" to keep them grounded and unselfish. However, their attempts to curate her upbringing lead to emotional stagnation and a series of romantic misunderstandings. The book endures as a sharp, sympathetic critique of the Victorian urge to treat human lives as projects, capturing the transition from the stiff idealism of the early 1900s to a more authentic, messy reality.

The Story

Eleanor, a young orphan, is brought to New York by a group of six friends—Beulah, Margaret, Gertrude, David, Jimmie, and Peter. These friends have made a pact to remain unmarried, choosing to adopt Eleanor as a collective, "cooperative" parent instead. They believe this arrangement will provide them with a moral anchor. The experiment begins with high-minded intentions: Beulah oversees Eleanor’s education, Gertrude teaches her sculpture, and others provide various diversions. However, the plan immediately falters. Eleanor finds their interference suffocating, and the "parents" find their own lives increasingly lonely.

As Eleanor grows, she discovers the flaws in her guardians. She realizes that their commitment to celibacy is not a noble sacrifice but a defense mechanism against real intimacy. Meanwhile, the guardians drift into states of "inhuman preoccupation," failing to see that their devotion to the child is preventing them from living their own lives. Tension peaks when Peter, the most grounded of the group, decides to break the pact and marry Beulah. This revelation shatters Eleanor’s world; she has long harbored a deep, unspoken devotion to Peter and realizes that her place in their lives is essentially that of a prop.

Heartbroken and feeling like a burden, Eleanor runs away to train as a nurse. Her absence forces the remaining guardians to confront the reality of their isolation. They realize that their "experiment" was a retreat from the vulnerability of adult connection. The story follows Eleanor as she matures through the grueling, sobering work of nursing, discovering a sense of purpose independent of her guardians. Eventually, the group reconciles with the truth of their feelings. The "triple wedding" that follows marks the end of their artificial collective and the beginning of actual, individual lives. Eleanor survives her disillusionment, finding strength in her own capacity for love and professional work. The final pages shift to the reflective journals of the characters, where they acknowledge that their growth required the end of the artificial world they had built around their young charge.

How It Unfolds

The arrival Eleanor is brought to New York in a hansom cab, introduced to her new life as an educational project. She is treated with academic detachment by her guardians, who see her as a cure for their own moral aimlessness.

The domestic strain As the guardians attempt to enforce rigid schedules and lessons, Eleanor begins to chafe against the artifice. She finds herself performing the role of a "good child" while her guardians struggle to maintain their own artificial codes of conduct.

The pact fractures Peter’s decision to marry Beulah triggers a crisis, as the communal arrangement relies on the group’s shared celibacy. Eleanor realizes she is an outsider to the love she observes, leading to her desperate decision to run away.

The search and maturation The guardians search for Eleanor, only to realize the depth of their failure. Meanwhile, Eleanor finds a new identity in a hospital, where the realities of suffering and service replace the abstract theories of her previous life.

The resolution The group reunites, having abandoned their experiment in favor of authentic commitments. The story closes with reflections on the transition from the sterile, duty-bound life of their youth to the fulfillment of genuine companionship.

The People

Eleanor begins as a pliant, well-behaved child, but her growth into a woman of independent spirit and professional capability is the novel’s core. She is the victim of her guardians’ theories, eventually finding her own path through the harsh reality of nursing. Beulah is the most "purposeful" of the guardians, a product of rigorous, high-minded college life who believes she can "intellectualize" parenthood. She evolves from a woman committed to a life of cold duty to one who accepts the human necessity of love. Peter is the steadying force of the group; he is the only one who truly understands the child’s heart and the first to recognize the inherent absurdity of their social experiment. Jimmie, Gertrude, Margaret, and David complete the group, each struggling with the same suppression of their own desires. They are defined by their "inward gaze" and their gradual, painful realization that they have been living as shadows of real people.

In Its Own Voice

"Sometimes when your Aunts Beulah and Margaret and Gertrude, whom you haven't met yet--though you are on your way to meet them, you know--sometimes when they have been very good, almost good enough to deserve it, I stop by that little flower shop and buy a chaste half dozen of gardenias and their accessories, and divide them among the three."

This introduction highlights the detached, almost patronizing manner in which the guardians initially treat their communal responsibilities.

"She had a hazy notion that it was a kind of superfluous bone in the region of the breast, but her anguish was rooted in the fact that this, this was the good and useful book that her Aunt Beulah had found it necessary to resort to for guidance, in the case of her own--Eleanor's--education."

Here, the narrative captures the alienation of the child who discovers that her upbringing is being managed via a textbook manual.

What It's Really About

The book is a poignant inquiry into the danger of treating human life as an intellectual project. It challenges the late-Victorian and early-modern belief that social problems, including the care of children and the structure of families, can be solved through rational, collective "experimentation." The central argument is that love and parenthood are not matters of institutional duty or "purposefulness" but require a vulnerable, messy, individual commitment. The story asks: what happens to the human soul when it is forced to conform to a theoretical ideal rather than the natural, spontaneous flow of life? It ultimately suggests that the "good" is found in the breakdown of such rigid systems, not in their perfection.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy character-driven stories with a touch of period irony will find much to admire here. The book is written with an observational warmth that feels remarkably ahead of its time, stripping away the romantic veneer of the "guardian and ward" trope to show the emotional exhaustion behind it. While the prose retains some of the formal, slightly stiff mannerisms of 1917, the psychological acuity is striking.

Modern readers may find the guardians’ early, intense moralizing both frustrating and darkly funny, serving as a reminder of how easily we can become "theory-ridden" about our own lives. Eleanor’s journey from a child of "faded tam-o'-shanters" to a woman who finds purpose in the hospital ward is moving and grounded. It is a quiet, contemplative read that stays with you, largely because it refuses to treat its characters as heroes. Instead, it treats them as "scrambled eggs"—flawed, confused, and deeply human. The book’s greatest strength is its refusal to offer a simplistic happy ending; it acknowledges that growing up, and growing out of one’s own prejudices, is a lifelong, often painful process. It is a thoughtful companion for anyone interested in the shift from the rigid structures of the past to the more flexible, individualistic search for meaning.