Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and a writer lauded both for his craft and his principles, wrote The Job as a statement of female empowerment, and self-determination over societal expectation. Written in the early years of the 1900s Lewis' central character, highly unusual for the era, is a woman, Una Golden, who gains work in an exclusively male world of commercial real estate. Golden struggles for the recognition of her male peers while balancing romantic and work life; she marries, divorces, continues to work hard and finally emerges triumphant on her own terms.