Migrant Mother Photograph Analysis
This photo of a mother, Florence Owens Thompson and her two young children called, Migrant Mother was taken in March of 1936, a date was not given. This photo was taken by a Dorothea Lange, a photographer who wanted to take pictures of all the bad things happening around her during the great depression. After being taken, this photo was then called, migrant mother.” The photo was taken at a pea picking plant in Nipomo, California. Florence allowed Dorothea to take this picture because she thought that it would help to show the difficulties of the working poor. Soon after the photo was taken, it was published in newspapers promoting the government to send food and aid to the people of Nipomo where the living condition were almost unbearable. Later in her life, Florence came to regret that this picture was ever taken because it made her seem very desperate, which is something that she didn’t want to be known as being. The black and white and the expression on the mother's face add
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Later in Florence’s life, she came to regret ever having that picture be taken because of the, “grapes of wrath” stereotype. This stereotype means that it was a prayer to bring justice to the world. This could make Florence seem like a very desperate person when all she really wanted this picture to do was to show the hard life conditions for her family and other families. As a result of the picture mainly having a woman in it, it represents the stereotype that the women stay home with the children and do all the work at home. While many of them were at home helping, not all women were as at home and miserable as others. Also, today it is not uncommon at all for the man to stay at home for for the woman of the family to work for for both parents to work. Finally, since this picture was taken by a woman, is could show that women were desperate for a change in their lives and desperate for a change in the
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.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the fight for equal and just treatment for both women and children was one of the most historically prominent movements in America. Courageous women everywhere fought, protested and petitioned with the hope that they would achieve equal rights and better treatment for all, especially children. One of these women is known as Florence Kelley. On July 22, 1905, Kelley made her mark on the nation when she delivered a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, raising awareness of the cruel truth of the severity behind child labor through the use of repetition, imagery and oxymorons.
Florence Kelley was a social and political reformer that fought for woman’s suffrage and child labor laws. Her speech to the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association initiated a call to action for the reform of child labor laws. She explains how young children worked long and exhausting hours during the night and how despicable these work conditions were. Kelley’s use of ethos, logos, pathos, and repetition helps her establish her argument for the reform of the child labor laws.
The emotional letter that Juan left for his mother might be one of the most emotional scenes in the documentary. The pure emotions that the letter was written by Juan to her mother leaves the audience with the bonds and emotions felt between the kids and families. Juan Carlos’s father abandoned the family years ago and left to New York, consequently Juan believe it is his responsibility to provide for his family. He also wants to find his father in New York and confronts him about why he has forgotten about them. The story of Juan is not just about migration of children, but also the issue of family separation. The documentary does not dehumanize but rather bring the humane and sensitive lens to the story of Juan where the human drama that these young immigrants and their families live. Juan Carlos is not the first of Esmeralda’s sons to leave for the United states, his nine-year-old brother Francisco was smuggled into California one month earlier. Francisco now lives with Gloria, his grandmother, who paid a smuggler $3,500 to bring him to Los Angeles, California. Once Juan Carlos is in the shelter for child migrants his mother eagerly awaits him outside. After she sees him she signs a paper that says if Juan Carlos tries to travel again, he will be sent to a foster home.
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
In this work, and many, Kollwitz uses lithography to produce very dark yet sharp images. The use of color itself gives the audience a doleful view of her works. When first looking at this work, a deep sadness and sorrow is perceived. The expressions on the mothers’ faces give it away almost immediately. Viewing this piece from left to right, the first mother seems as if she has lost a loved one or is reminded of one. The way that she hides her face in her hands not wanting anyone to see her pain, shows the audience how devastating it is to lose a loved one. The other two mothers seem more collect about their thoughts but at the same time thankful. They seem thankful by clutching tightly to their young, firmly holding their infants and keeping the children close by their side as if the kids are the only loved ones that the mothers’ have left.
...ocuments and quotes about people’s feelings during this time and because of that they don’t often get considered. Even today it is hard for us to imagine these women being real people with families and busy lives. These women were working around the clock in other people’s houses. Many of them mentioned that they didn’t have set hours. People in the house would call for them during all hours of the day and they never had time for themselves. One women shared just this in her interview when she said, “I had a good room and everything nice, and she gave me a great many things, but I’d have spared them all if only I have had a little time to myself.” Life was extremely difficult for these women even though they weren 't doing strenuous labor. They were forced into the lives of other families with unpredictable hours while still trying to maintain a life of their own.
...atly, was undoubtedly ruined by the diet and stress she experienced as a result of forcible removal by welfare workers not dissimilar to myself. Yet, this inescapable dilemma only reinforces my striving to achieve the ideals demonstrated by my profession. These ethics, complex and often at conflict with the reality of welfare are the light that guides my professional practice through the perils of historic white shame.
“Women on the Edge of Time” is a book written by Marge Piercy explaining the position of women in the era 1976 going 150 years backwards. This book is open to any kind of interpretation. The narrative shows us the life of a single parent, Chicano. She is a poor woman who is struggling to provide a living for herself and her children; ‘the plight of poor women in a society that doesn’t really care, and the plight of the economically disadvantaged women and men captured in the cruel web of the mental health’. The book takes us through the struggles of an individual being trying to extricate herself from the effects of the diagnosis of mental problems in the psychiatric institutions.
Mama, as a member of an older generation, represents the suffering that has always been a part of this world. She spent her life coexisting with the struggle in some approximation to harmony. Mama knew the futility of trying to escape the pain inherent in living, she knew about "the darkness outside," but she challenged herself to survive proudly despite it all (419). Mama took on the pain in her family in order to strengthen herself as a support for those who could not cope with their own grief. Allowing her husband to cry for his dead brother gave her a strength and purpose that would have been hard to attain outside her family sphere. She was a poor black woman in Harlem, yet she was able to give her husband permission for weakness, a gift that he feared to ask for in others. She gave him the right to a secret, personal bitterness toward the white man that he could not show to anyone else. She allowed him to survive. She marveled at his strength, and acknowledged her part in it, "But if he hadn't had...
That feeling of leaving his parents in the Philippines to go with a stranger when he was 12 years old is truly unfortunate, but his mother was looking looking out with his best interests in mind. She just wanted her son to get a taste of the American dream, and have a better life in America rather than suffering with her in the Philippines. Vargas’s essay moves the reader emotionally as he explains when he was finally successful in getting the highest honor in journalism, but his grandmother was still worried about him getting deported. She wanted Vargas to stay under the radar, and find a way to obtain one more chance at his American dream of being
This image of the Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange shows a picture of a mother and two of her seven children. The only things known form this women was that they have been living off of canned good, killing birds and her age. The photographer captures a sad truth and of the victims of the great depression.
Since their inception in the 1860s, family albums have played an important role as the promoters of familial ideology and treasures of familial memory. ‘Most family photograph albums in containing a great variety of items, both identified and unidentified, from different periods and of varying quality,’ held together by their collective identity with the family (Schoeman, 1996: 8). The function of familial photography is to ‘fix perception and memory, represent a method of preserving memories, document important moments and confirm social relationships and fact of belonging’ (Tobiassen, 1990). When photographs are stored in albums the process ‘resembles the writing of family history’ (Tobiassen, 1990), and are thus a resource constituting an important mnemonic aid in the construction of a family narrative, although Tobiassen omits any thought that the photograph album is probably the closest that most families will ever approach to narrativising and transmitting their individual and collective familial experiences for later generations. Early portrait photographers stressed the importance of the photograph as a moral stabilizer for families and the social fabric, "… family photographs sustained sentimental ties in a nation of migrants." (Alan Sekula, 1986) These sentimental ties, especially those produced by viewing photographs of deceased loved ones, enabled families to document their lives as they happened, and to remember those who had predeceased them, thus forming a seemingly cohesive "history" on which to build a nation. Therefore, family photographs can be considered cultural artifacts since they document the events that shape families' lives and so the recording of family history becomes an important endeavor. In many cases, photographs are the only biographical material people leave behind after they die (Boerdam, Martinius, 1980). However, the impact of family photo albums extends beyond merely recording history. Interpretation of family structures, relationships and self is possible through viewing family photographs.
In this painting, Jean-François Millet layered the women on top of the background. This could be another representation of them being a different class than the rest of the people depicted in the background. It shows they are separate and do not have any connections with the higher classed. It may also represent their inability to eventually join the higher class. Once a peasant it will be very difficult to grow out of the
The short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen a remarkable piece of literature involving the struggles many women faced in the 19th century before, during and after the Great Depression. A mother describes her daughter as a “child of her age, or depression, of war, of fear” and constantly reflects over the decisions she has made as a mother. (Olsen, pg. 4). Her story exemplifies the guilt of a mother not being attentive to her daughter as she had been working (“Tillie Olsen” pg. 1). By reading “I Stand Here Ironing”, it is noticeable about the realism of women taking care of their families during the Great Depression.