Anzia Yezierska’s 1925 novel Bread Givers ends with Sara Smolinsky’s realization that her father’s tyrannical behavior is the product of generations of tradition from which he is unable to escape. Despite her desire to embrace the New World she has just won her place in, she attempts to reconcile with her father and her Jewish heritage. The novel is about the tension inherent in trying to fit Old and New worlds together: Reb tries to make his Old World fit into the new, while Sara tries to make her New World fit into the Old. Sara does not want to end up bitter and miserable like her sisters, but she does not want to throw her family away all together. Her struggle is one of trying to convince her patriarchal family to accept her as an independent woman, while assimilating into America without not losing too much of her past.
On the surface, Reb does represent the Old World, and Sara the New, but despite their being on opposite ends of the spectrum, they are remarkably similar characters: both believe in their own versions of the American Dream. Reb insists on leaving behind most of the family’s possessions because America is a “golden country, where milk and honey flow free in the streets” (9). The only possessions that are necessary are his books, “the light of the world” (9).
Reb is the product of thousands of years of patriarchal tradition; he has been brought up to believe that “God didn’t listen to women…Women could get into Heaven because they were wives and daughters of men. Women had no brains for the study of God’s Torah, but they could be the servants of men” (9). Reb’s behavior must be tyrannical because the eternal souls of his family rests on his shoulders, his wife and daughters are not capable of get...
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... 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.
Works Cited
Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers: a Novel. New York: Persea, 2003. Print.
In the novel The Bread Givers, there was a Jewish family, the Smolinsky family, that had immigrated from Russia to America. The family consisted of four daughters, a father, and a mother. The family lived in a poverty-stricken ghetto. The youngest of the daughters was Sara Smolinsky, nicknamed ?Iron Head? for her stubbornness. She was the only daughter that was brave enough to leave home and go out on her own and pursue something she wanted without the permission of her father. The Smolinsky family was very poor, they were to the point of which they could not afford to throw away potato peelings, and to the point of which they had to dig through other people?s thrown out ash in order to gather the coal they needed. They could not afford to buy themselves new clothes or new furniture.
Book three of the novel “Bread Givers,” written by Anzia Yezierska is set in New York. The story revolves around Sara Smolinsky, her family and the struggles they face in their daily lives. The main conflict in book three is Sara’s guilt for leaving her family and pursuing her career without seeing them for six years. For example, when she comes back to see her family, she realizes she is too late. Her mother is dying. Sara feels horrible that she didn’t come to see her mother and spend more time with her. She knows that she should’ve come to see her mother instead of investing so much time with school. Then, her mother dies a couple days later. She decides to stay and visit her father, Reb Smolinsky, often but doesn’t visit him after he gets married again only thirty days after her mother died. A couple months later, she sees Reb again but he’s working. 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
Anzia Yezierska has written two short story collections and four novels about the struggles of Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. Yezierska stories explore the subject of characters’ struggling with the disillusioning America of poverty and exploitation while they search for the ‘real’ America of their ideals. She presents the struggles of women against family, religious injunctions, and social-economic obstacles in order to create for herself an independent style. Her stories all incorporate autobiographical components. She was not a master of style, plot development or characterization, but the intensity of feeling and aspiration are evident in her narratives that overrides her imperfections.
Anzia Yezierska in Bread Givers and "Children of Loneliness" explores the theme of reconciling assimilation to American culture and retaining her cultural heritage. "Richard F. Shepard asserted in the New York Times that Yezierska’s people…did not want to find themselves. They wanted to lose themselves and find America" (Gale Database 8). Rachel and Sara, the main characters, move ahead by employing the America motto of hard work will pay off. The problem for both is losing their Jewish identity in the process. Yezierska, like the female characters, experienced the loneliness of separation from the Jewish people when she rose above poverty. "I am alone because I left my own world" (Ebest 8). She explores this issue repeatedly in her work trying to find a solution to a problem with no easy answer.
In Anzia Yezierska's works Bread Givers and "Soap and Water", she uses similar aspects of the characters that portray her own life. Both of the stories resemble similarities of Yezierska's life and appear to be autobiographical to her personal experiences. The author portrays, in both the stories, a belief that the majority culture is "clean" while the minority culture is dirty. Sarah in Bread Givers and the narrator in "Soap and Water" each have a hunger that drive them in different directions: actual hunger for food, progress into society and a hunger for knowledge. The ladies in both of the stories share similar desires: to become a teacher, go to college, and feed a constant hunger. Though the stories are alike they differ in some areas: outcomes of college life, self -portrayal and chances of getting started in the professional world.
The Smolinsky family in Bread Givers immigrates to the United States due to political strife. They actually leave Russia as an indirect result of the father’s refusal to serve in the army. His refusal is based on his religious beliefs. The mother, Shenah Smolinsky, explained the reason to Sara, the narrator, by saying, "The tsar of Russia [ …] wanted to tear your father away from his learning and make him a common soldier" (33). The family buys the father out of the army. Then due to the sudden death of Mrs. Smolinsky’s father, Mr. Smolinsky takes over his father-in-law’s business. Mr.Smolinsky’s business knowledge is hindered by his dedication to his religion and the business is forced to close. Thus, Mr. Smolinsky took to heart the American Dream, "And when everything was gone from us, then our only hope was to come to America, where Father thought things cost n...
Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers. Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers attacks several social norms of her. traditional Polish homeland and the American life her protagonist has come to know. Clearly autobiographical, Bread Givers boldly questions why certain. Social and religious traditions continue throughout the centuries without the slightest consideration of an individual's interests or desires.
After the first part of the Hughes chapter on Middle Eastern Muslim women, the emphasis shifts, from Quranic doctrine regarding women to how Muslim law and scholarship have interpreted the Quran’s direct admonitions to women. However, this shift is unfortunately subtle. The authors fail to make a clear distinction between the Quran, a sacred text believed to be the verbatim word of God; and Muslim law, which was formulated by (male) Muslim jurists who consulted the Quran and whose consensus was later declared infallible (Ahmed 58). Such a distinction is necessary because the Quran itself is vastly different from a legal document; Ahmed observes in “Early Islam and the Position of Women” that “Quranic precepts consist mainly of broad, general propositions chiefly of an ethical nature, rather than specific legalistic formulations” (59). Indeed, the Qura...
Whether one would like to admit it or not, change is a difficult and not to mention uncomfortable experience which we all must endure at one point in our lives. A concept that everyone must understand is that change does not occur immediately, for it happens overtime. It is necessary for time to pass in order for a change to occur, be it days, weeks, months, or even years. The main character, who is also the narrator of “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, realizing that “things felt less foreign in the dark” (Russell 225), knows that she will be subject to change very soon. The author makes it evident to readers that the narrator is in a brand new environment as the story begins. This strange short story about girls raised by wolves being trained by nuns to be more human in character is a symbol for immigration, as the girls are forced to make major changes in their lives in order to fit in with their new environment and adapt to a new culture.
Sarah’s Key, though depressing, and hard to read is still an prodigious book. While the new historicist criticism applies more to Sarah’s parts of the story, as it occurred in the past, this eventually leads to a more feminist type of appeal. Tatiana de Rosnay talks about her inspiration
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The busy season for the shop she was working on came and the owner of the shop kept demanding for what we call overtime. She got fired after she said, “I only want to go home. I only want the evening to myself!.” Yezierska was regretful and bitter about what happened because she ended up in cold and hunger. After a while she became a trained worker and acquired a better shelter. An English class for foreigners began in the factory she was working for. She went to the teacher for advice in how to find what she wanted to do. The teacher advised her to join the Women’s Association, where a group of American women helps people find themselves. One of the women in the social club hit her with the reality that “America is no Utopia.” Yezierska felt so hopeless. She wondered what made Americans so far apart from her, so she began to read the American history. She learned the difference between her and the Pilgrims. When she found herself on the lonely, untrodden path, she lost heart and finally said that there’s no America. She was disappointed and depressed in the
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of the Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are viewed from a woman’s perspective in the nineteenth century. They show the issues on how they are confined to the house. That they are to be stay at home wives and let the husband earn the household income. These stories are both written by American women and how their marriage was brought about. Their husbands were very controlling and treated them more like children instead of their wives. In the nineteenth century their behavior was considered normal at the time. In “The Story of the Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” both women explore their issues on wanting to be free from the control of their husband’s.