An Analysis Of Katherine Paterson's Lyddie

841 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Women's roles during the industrial revolution

Everyone makes decisions every day, both big and small. In the novel Lyddie, by Katherine Paterson, the main character, a girl named Lyddie, lives in the mid-1800’s during the American Industrial Revolution. She travels to Lowell, Massachusetts to start work as a factory girl. The story illustrates what life would have been like for a factory girl, and sheds light on important topics like child labor, unfair treatment of factory workers, and other hardships of the time period. Diana Goss, one of Lyddie’s first friends at the factory, is a part of the Female Labor Reform Association, a group that wants an end to the hardships. A petition is circulating and Lyddie must decide if she wants to sign or not. While there are reasons Lyddie should …show more content…

She has to save up the money if she ever wants to pay it off and go home to the farm. Lyddie is trying to convince Betsy not to sign the petition. “I mean, please, don’t sign. I can’t. I got to have the money. To pay the debts before-.”(92). Lyddie wants to keep everything the way that it is because she fears she won’t make enough money for the debt. Lyddie wants to stop the talk of the petition in her room in the boardinghouse. “She was making far more money than she ever had at home in Vermont or was ever likely to.”(93). She is arguing with Betsy and Amelia, and wants the wages to stay the same as they are because it was the most money she had ever made and she could make enough money to go home faster. Lyddie feels that signing the petition is like giving up. She is stubborn in making money because she longs to one day return to the farm with her family. Lyddie is trying to convince her roomates that they should not go against the corporation. “But we’d be paid less…’if we just work ten hours, we’d be paid much less.”(91). Lyddie is worried about the pay decline if the girls sign the petition because she cares about making money. This shows that Lyddie cares about the money and paying off the debt, so she should not sign the

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Camelot On The Lowell Textile Mills By Stephen Yafa

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    What would one expect to be the sentiment of a young women who worked in the Lowell textile mills? It is just such a depressing story; and the sad heroines are the young women of Lowell - Lucy Larcom- who Stephen Yafa portrays in his excerpt “Camelot on the Merrimack.” A perception through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old Lucy Larcom reveals that, “For her and the other young girls, the long and tedious hours they spent tending to demanding machines robbed them of their childhood.” The imagery in “Camelot on the Merrimack,” from Big Cotton by Stephen H. Yafa disclose the working conditions in those sordid mills.

    Read More

  • Edwidge Danticat's Night Women: Literary Analysis

    470 Words  | 1 Pages

    Since the beginning of time, our ancestors have made sacrifices for the next generation that brought us to where we are today. This idea is woven throughout the book Krik? Krak! Where the author, Edwidge Danticat, portrays fictional short stories people that live in the impoverished nation of Haiti, and how hard it is for families to stay together, provide for each other, and reach their goals of freedom. Danticat uses the motif of generations to illustrate the ideas of hope and survival to develop the theme of sacrifice for a better future of the youth.

    Read More

  • Florence Kelley Rhetorical Analysis

    581 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the early 20th century in the U.S, most children of the lower and middle class were workers. These children worked long dangerous shifts that even an adult would find tiresome. On July 22, 1905, at a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Florence Kelley gave a famous speech regarding the extraneous child labor of the time. Kelley’s argument was to add laws to help the workers or abolish the practice completely. Kelley uses pathos to highlight the need for change and diction get her point across to the audience.

    Read More

  • The Petition In Lyddie By Katherine Paterson

    472 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the novel “Lyddie” by Katherine Paterson, the main character Lyddie faces many problems throughout the novel. One of the challenges that she faces is to sign the petition. She shouldn’t sign the petition because she needs to support her family with the money. Also, she needs to pay off the debt that her father left them. The factory girls will work less hours and they will have more free hours. They will have better working conditions if the company agrees. The problem is that they would be pay less if they agree to go it. She shouldn’t sign because she needs money for her family and she wants to save her father's farm from being sold.

    Read More

  • Locavore Movement Outline

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Florence Kelley’s 1905 speech to the Philadelphia convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association, she accentuates the obligatory need to reform the working conditions for young children.

    Read More

  • Florence Kelley Ap Language Essay

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    Rhetorical Analysis of Florence Kelley’s Speech Florence Kelley’s address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1905) touches upon both the social and political aspects of the need for reform regarding child labor laws. By revealing the shocking truth about how young children around the country work for long hours in inappropriate conditions, Kelley is able to emphasize the urgency of this situation. Simultaneously, she defends women’s suffrage by presenting the logical statement that there would be laws to prevent extreme child labor if women had the right to vote; more progress could be made if women and men worked together, starting with women’s right to vote. In her address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Florence Kelley establishes a dramatic tone and appeals to her audience’s emotions to persuade them to advocate for a reform of child labor laws by employing several rhetorical strategies. To begin, Kelley utilizes the audience’s sense of logic to generate answers to rhetorical questions such as, “If mothers and the teachers from Georgia could vote, would the Georgia Legislature have refused at every session for the last three years to stop the work in the mills of children under twelve years of age?” and “would the New Jersey Legislature have passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised?”

    Read More

  • Mary Jones: The Progressive Era

    1404 Words  | 3 Pages

    She was now getting into the field of labor agitation and would change America forever. In 1903, she organized a march in which children, mutilated from their jobs, marched the streets to the home of Theodore Roosevelt in order to draw attention to the grueling and wicked child labor laws. “Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.” This shows how after several attempts from previous progressive reformers, Jones was the only one whose protests were powerful and effective enough to open people’s eyes to the issues. A reason that Jones had become so effective was that of her exploration and observations. She frequently visited factories to observe the cruel working conditions in which people worked in and interviewed workers to get a feel for them and understand the brutality of the work. She stated herself that because of rough conditions, “The brain is so crushed as to be incapable of thinking, and one who mingles with these people soon discovers that their minds like their bodies are wrecked. Loss of sleep and loss of rest gives rise to abnormal appetites, indigestion, shrinkage of statue, bent backs and aching hearts.” By examining workplaces, she was able to gather empathy and sympathy for the workers who were suffering.

    Read More

  • Cult of True Womanhood: Women's Suffrage

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    More than three hundred citizens came to take part in one of the most important documents written in women’s history during the Women’s Right’s Convention in upstate Seneca, New York, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott on July 19-20, 1848 (Ryder). Stanton became persistent when she included a resolution supporting voting rights for women in the document, intimidated by this notion her loyal husband threatened to boycott the convention. “Even Lucretia Mott warned her, ‘Why Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous!’ ‘Lizzie,’ however, refused to yield” (Rynder). As Mott dreaded, out of eleven resolutions the most argumentative was the ninth–women’s suffrage resolution. The other 10 resolutions passed consistently. “According to Cady Stanton’s account, most who opposed this resolution did so because they believed it would compromise the others. She, however, remained adamant” (Rynder). When the two-day convention was over, one hundred men and women signed the historical the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments to...

    Read More

  • Negotiating Fine Lines between Women’s Work and Women’s Worth

    2507 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...ues women’s work becomes wrong. Yes, in today’s society one could argue further that a woman who stays at home and does not work is only reinforcing the stereotype and prolonging the inequality. However, this essay was not written to change the world. It simply strove to identify and prove the reasons behind a ruined sense of self worth that many women in the early 1900’s felt as a result of their work being demeaned. By reaching out to people’s emotional sides, McBride relayed her grandmother’s tale so that people could clearly feel the hurt and demotion that women of that time lived with in order to have them persuaded that the oppression of women in any manner and capacity is wrong.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Capitalism In Today's Society

    1508 Words  | 4 Pages

    Led by Clara Lemlich, 20,000 immigrants, mostly young women, demanded a twenty percent pay raise, a fifty-two hour workweek, and a closed shop (59). Their cause gained a significant amount of attention and caught the eye of wealthy progressive reformers, such as Alva Belmont and Anne Morgan, who perceived the strike as an opportunity to also advocate their own objective: women’s suffrage. Wealthy elites like Carnegie and Sumner may have believed that efforts to change the natural order are futile, but Morgan claimed that after learning about the details of the strike, she and other women wouldn’t be able to live their lives “without doing something to help them” (72). These affluent women demonstrated their support from both sides of the spectrum, from modestly distributing ribbons and buttons, to Alva Belmont’s contribution of her several cars to a parade for the striking workers (682) and the pledge of her mansion as surety for the bail of four strikers (76). Without the aid of these women, it was doubtful the strikers “could have lasted much longer without progressive money” (70). However, frustration arose amongst picketers as these progressive reformers turned a strike based on class struggle into a “broader feminist revolt” (68). Morgan blamed the strikers’ treatment on the inability for women to vote, not their inability to unionize (67). Striker’s retorted, asking

    Read More

  • A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...y the social convention, gives Nora the strength to abandon her’s. As Pythagorous once said, “Decisions are the hinges of destiny,” and with the help from her husband and society, Nora opened her door.

    Read More

  • Katherine Paterson's Happy or Unhappy Ending

    1250 Words  | 3 Pages

    is not a nice one. Gilly thinks that the only way she can be happy is

    Read More

  • Reasons Why Women Couldn't Vote Before 1914

    703 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the 1900’s women were thought of as if there only respectable job was that, at home cooking, cleaning and looking after the welfare of the family. It was unthinkable that they should be allowed to vote and work as l...

    Read More

  • Compare and Contrast Women in The Yellow Wallpaper and Story of an Hour

    1712 Words  | 4 Pages

    Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex.  Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom.  They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children.  Only recently with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men.  Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men.  This tension is derived from men; society, in general; and within a woman herself.  Two interesting short stories, “The  Yellow Wall-paper and “The Story of an Hour, “ focus on a woman’s plight near the turn of the 19th century.  This era is especially interesting because it is a time in modern society when women were still treated as second class citizens.  The two main characters in these stories show similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problems and life in general.  These two characters will be examined to note the commonalities and differences.  Although the two characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that the woman in the “The Story of an Hour” is a stronger character based on the two important criteria of rationality and freedom.

    Read More

  • Nora's Decision to Leave in A Doll's House

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.

    Read More

More about An Analysis Of Katherine Paterson's Lyddie

Open Document