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Feminist essays literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism an introduction summary
Feminist essays literary criticism
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The autobiographical novel, Bread Givers, is the story of a young girl Sara Smolinsky growing up in an immigrant Jewish household with her sisters Bessie, Fania and Mashah along with her parents Reb and Shena. Sara’s father, Reb, refuses to work to support his family and instead spends most of his days reading holy books. In turn, the neglect for his family has left his daughters to find means to provide for themselves. Throughout the novel there can be seen a common theme of oppression from Reb and other men. Additionally, other themes such as independence, self-sustenance, the struggle to find happiness and duty versus desire can be seen within the novel.
In the novel there can be seen a new age in the United States where women are branching
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Sara’s father seems to be a man that unintentionally brings down the women in his family but does this because of the way society is. At the end of the novel it ends with, “It wasn't just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon me” (297). Sara acknowledges that the society that her father was influenced by is the reason he acts in such a way. Sara advocates for women and fights against the injustices presented to women throughout this time and especially for her sisters. When she is eating at a restaurant she sees that she is given less food because she is a woman. Her sisters and mother are belittled by her father and his obsession with reading holy books leads to his self-destruction and that of his wife and children. His religious background leads him to believe that women are inferior and only have meaning because of men, “Women had no brains for the study of God's Torah, but they could be the servants of men who studied the Torah. Only if they cooked for the men, and washed for the men, and didn't nag or curse the men out of their homes; only if they let the men study the Torah in peace, then, maybe, they could push themselves into Heaven with the men to wait on them there” (9). He claimed that women had no place in heaven and that the current and the next world had no place for women …show more content…
This is where the theme of duty versus desire played a huge role with the internal struggle Sara faced. In the beginning Sara left and refused to visit her family as she thought they would only hold her back from progressing in her growth. As the novel progressed, six years after Sara leaves she received word from her family that her mother is ill and dying. When she arrives her mother asks her to take care of her father when she passes and although it may burden Sara, she agrees. The obligation felt to her family bring Sara back to the earlier centuries where women put their families first and then themselves. Prominently seem in in the 18th and 19th centuries women needed to care for the men in their families even if that meant it would not be the best option for themselves. Sara was not the only one from her family that was held back from happiness because of family. Bessie falls in love with a man, Berel, and when he proposes to her to marry him she refuses in an attempt to stay loyal to Reb. Mashah also experiences something similar to her sister Bessie since the man she loves, Noah, refuses to be with her as he attempts to remain loyal to his
... her goal. Just like most first generation immigrants, the family went through dreadful poverty. Anzia Yezierska did an excellent job in describing what life was like for Sarah’s family, which was a sample of what life was like for immigrants. As an illustration, when Mashah, who was worked went out and bought herself a toothbrush and a small towel for thirty-cents so she can have her own towel. The rest of the family became horrified. It was like, how dare she spend thirty-cents on a toothbrush and towel, when the rest of the family is starving and they needed that money to buy food? The father supposes it is his absolute right to expect that the four daughters either will never leave home thereby supporting him forever or they would leave home and marry somebody rich, who will then support him forever. The women in the Smolinsky family were the breadwinners.
She feels guilty for not supporting him and giving him money in his time of need. To see him working to get money for his greedy wife made her feel terrible. In the end, Reb can’t stand being in the same house as his wife and decides he wants to leave. He doesn’t know where to, so Sara decides to take him in and let him live with her. Many cultures, such as Sara’s, are like that.
... while she still has time (257). She fails at first, thinking her father is “bereft of his senses” in his second marriage (258). She believes this despite the Torah saying, “a man must have a wife to keep him pure, otherwise his eyes are tempted by evil” (259). Gradually, Sara begins to understand her father: the only thing he has in life is his fanatical adherence to traditions; “In a world where all is changed, he alone remained unchanged” (296). Reb has a deep and true fear of God, to expect him to change beliefs that he believes have been handed down by God, beliefs that have persisted for thousands of years, is illogical. It is impossible to reconcile fully the New World with the Old, and it is the responsibility of the New to be the more flexible, unfair as it may be.
Perhaps the best example of Sara’s deviation from her Jewish heritage and her attempt to assimilate was her refusal to allow the undertaker to tear her suit during her mother’s funeral service. The clothing that she wears is a symbol to her of wealth and of being an American. For Sara the ripping of her clothing had become an “empty symbol,” a cultural construction with only symbolic meaning that could help to identify her ethnicity, and does not serve any logical purpose. After being distanced from her family and immersed in American culture for so long, she no longer understands the purpose of the action, and posits verily that “Tearing [her only suit] wouldn’t bring Mother back to life again” (Yezierska 255). This represents a clear distinction between volunta...
Family is a story about slaves, masters of the land, and the interconnectedness of what it means to be “family”. Loretta is the daughter of the Master of the Land and as a child spends time with Sun even teaching him to read. She was going against the law in doing this and she helped him to escape. Loretta was not a mean person; she risked a lot for Sun and truly cared about him. She knew he was her half-brother and treated him with respect. When Sun left he promised he would send for her, but he never did. He sent letters asking how his sisters were and she became jealous. Loretta had power over the slaves because she was the white daughter of the master and as she grew more jealous and learned the ranks in society she changed. She took out her anger and jealousy out on Peach, Plum, and Always. She became evil and all the goodness in her heart was gone. Due to the experiences in her life, she adapted to accommodate for her jealousy and to take on the role of Mistress of the Land. Under different circumstances in a different time period this might not have been the outcome. As a chil...
Economic inequality and injustice come in the same hand. Poor people are more likely to experience inequality and injustice. The negative assumptions of poor people are created by the media and politicians. Promoting economic justice by offering people living in poverty some form of social support. Barbara Ehrenreich found in her experiment the workforce for low-wage was difficult. Conley talks about the different types of social inequalities and how they have been unsuccessful.
Initially, Elisabeth is the matriarch of the four generations of women talked about in the story. Elisabeth works in the house, but she’s married to a field slave and has three daughters. Not much insight is given on Elisabeth and her feelings, yet through the narration it is as if she lived vicariously through her youngest daughter, Suzette: “It was as if her mother were the one who had just had her first communion not Suzette” (20) Even though Elisabeth too worked in the house, Suzette had more privileges than her mother and the other slaves. Elisabeth represented the strength and the pride of her people: “You have a mother and a father both, and they don’t live up to the [plantation] house” (25). She would constantly remind Suzette of her real family, which signifies the remembrance of a history of people and their roots. It is up to Suzette to keep the heritage even through the latter miscegenation of the generations to come.
Sarah and her mother are sought out by the French Police after an order goes out to arrest all French Jews. When Sarah’s little brother starts to feel the pressures of social injustice, he turns to his sister for guidance. Michel did not want to go with the French Police, so he asks Sarah to help him hide in their secret cupboard. Sarah does this because she loves Michel and does not want him to be discriminated against. Sarah, her mother, and her father get arrested for being Jewish and are taken to a concentration camp just outside their hometown. Sarah thinks Michel, her beloved brother, will be safe. She says, “Yes, he’d be safe there. She was sure of it. The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel. I’ll come back for you later. I promise” (Rosnay 9). During this time of inequality, where the French were removing Sarah and her mother just because they were Jewish, Sarah’s brother asked her for help. Sarah promised her brother she would be back for him and helped him escape his impending arrest. Sarah’s brother believed her because he looks up to her and loves her. As the story continues, when Sarah falls ill and is in pain, she also turns to her father for comfort, “at one point she had been sick, bringing up bile, moaning in pain. She had felt her father’s hand upon her, comforting her” (Rosnay 55).
Sara. traditional Jewish upbringing exposed her to a life dominated by patriarchal control. When she arrived in New York to seek out the American Dream, she. found that once again her gender would stand in the way of such desires. In Despite these cultural barriers, her mother understood Sara's burning quest.
...oreover, Hugo’s eager acceptance of Sara’s father and his cultural traditions draws Sara full circle into reconciliation with both her father and the traditional Jewish culture he personifies.
...nt in such simple things further emphasizes the various hardships she had faced while growing up. In a way, she does adopt an American identity by taking advantage of what America had to offer. There was nothing wrong in Sara appreciating the riches of what awaited her outside of Hester Street. In the end, Sara does not sacrifice her European roots in exchange for an American way of life. Sara simply fuses the two cultures to create a new “Sara” who was successful because of her hard work and dedication to stay true to her dreams. This is proven by the fact that throughout all her father had put her through, she still wanted her father to be involved in her life by taking him into her home. She even allowed her significant other Hugo Seelig, to ask Reb if he could teach him Hebrew and their religion. In the end of the novel, Sara states that “it wasn’t just [her] father” whose shadow was still upon her, “but the generations who made [her] father whose weight was still upon [her]”. Sara is proof that even though she may have become assimilated to a New World, the Old World will always be a part of who she is.
The constant hum of street vendors yelling, car horns blaring, and poor people complaining acts as the soundtrack to the family drama within the small apartment on Hector Street. There was never a quiet moment, and between the four sisters, an overworked mother, and an entitled father, the place was bustling and busy enough to burst. But to a young Sara Smolinsky, this chaotic ensemble was home. In the novel Bread Givers, immigrant author Anzia Yezierska writes about the realization of the American Dream for the ambitious and determined Sara Smolinsky, but the price of success is high. Sara starts her journey in the impoverished ghetto of Hester Street, and she escapes its dirtiness and shame, going on to achieve the American Dream. The apartment
Sara's father also feels that he should get to pick the man that his daughters will marry. This is so old world, and Sara is not going to have it. She has watched her sisters who are so unhappy with the husbands that the father picked for them. Her father believes, "No girl can live without a father or a husband to look out for her," "It says in th...
Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, written in 1984, and Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, published in 1925, are both aimed at adolescent and adult audiences that deal with deep disturbing themes about serious social conditions and their effects on children as adults. Both books are told in the first person; both narrators are young girls living in destitute neighborhoods; and both young girls witness the harsh realities of life for those who are poor, abused, and hopeless. Although the narrators face these overwhelming obstacles, they manage to survive their tough environments with their wits and strength remaining intact.
The story in The Giver by Lois Lowry takes place in a community that is not normal. People cannot see color, it is an offense for somebody to touch others, and the community assigns people jobs and children. This unnamed community shown through Jonas’ eye, the main character in this novel, is a perfect society. There is no war, crime, and hunger. Most readers might take it for granted that the community in The Giver differs from the real society. However, there are several affinities between the society in present day and that in this fiction: estrangement of elderly people, suffering of surrogate mothers, and wanting of euthanasia.