The Dual Oppressions of Working-Class Women in Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth by Alex Gomez

["What I have written is not a work of beauty, created that someone may spend an hour pleasantly; not a symphony to lift up the spirit, to release it from the dreariness of reality. It is a story of a life, written in desperation, in unhappiness. I write of the earth on which we all, by some strange circumstance, happen to be living. I write of the joys and sorrows of the lowly. Of loneliness. Of pain. And of love." Smedley 7).]

The socialist movement criticized the exploitation of workers under capitalism. The feminist movement, lead by middle-class women, criticized the exploitation of women. Each movement on its own ignored the fundamental objective of the other. Yet, out of these two movements emerged socialist feminists like Agnes Smedley, who were determined to bring each movement together and give birth to a new vision that would shed light on the dual oppression of the working-class women. Agnes Smedley, in Daughter of Earth, shows this dual oppression by exposing the characteristics of capitalism and those of the male-dominated society.

First, Smedley, in developing her feminist socialist view, narrates the exploitation that Marie and her family experienced under a capitalistic system that denied them the basic right to live. Myra Jehlen in the New York Times article, "Alone with Her Freedom" writes how Smedley's memories in Daughter of Earth, tasted of hunger. We can see that the reason for this hunger is the abuse promoted by a capitalist system as Smedley writes how Mary's father, John Rogers, had made a verbal agreement with the owner of a coalmine. When he had finished months of work, the owner of the mine refused to pay what he had...

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..., suffering, and anguish and understand her struggles to make this world a better one so that we take up the cross because as Smedley puts it, "when one is conscious, one is responsible" (Smedley 255). Therefore, as readers, we become conscious and in turn responsible to continue her work, to be a rip in the fabric of America.

Works Cited

Guttman, Sondra. "Working Toward `Unity in Diversity': Rape and the Reconciliation of Color and Comrade in Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth" Studies in the Novel. Winter 2000: 488-515.

Hoffman, Nancy. "A Journey into Knowing." Tradition and the Talents of Women. Ed. Florence Howe. Chicago: Univ. of Illinois. 1991.

Jehlen, Myra. "Alone with Her Freedom." New York Times 23 Aug. 1987. late ed.: 14+.