Anzia Yezierska's Struggle for Independence in the New World - Research Paper Example

?Cory Parkinson Academia Research Anzia Yezierska May 3rd, A Greenhorn's Struggle Anzia Yezierska immigrated to America in the late 1800's and began a quest for Americanization and the individualization that came along with it. Her two main struggles to find her own identity away from that of her family's are portrayed in her novel Bread Givers which she wrote in 1925. The struggle to improve her living conditions and the struggle to understand religion's place in her new life were serious concerns for Yezierska. The main protagonist, Sara Smolinsky shows the fierce drive of a woman looking for a place of her own in the world in this largely autobiographical novel. She struggles to rise out of the poverty of the New York City ghetto, to have cleanliness and space for herself. She also struggles with the desire for secular education, while continuing to respect her father's strict religion. Most importantly, Sara is struggling to be able to make her own choices. She desires independence and free-will and she is willing to work hard to achieve it. The novel's ending is controversial, though Sara does get the happily-ever-after ending the American dream promises to all immigrants. The youngest of nine children in a devoutly Jewish family, Anzia Yezierska was born in the Russian-Polish village Plinsk, near Warsaw, between 1880 and 1885. The exact date of her birth is unknown and Yezierska, herself, was constantly lying about her age to further convolute the biography. Her family immigrated to the United States in the early 1890's, joining an older brother who had moved several years earlier. Yezierska was given the name Harriet Mayer by her new government, though she went by Hattie at first and then reassumed Anzia in her late twenties. Her family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a largely Jewish ghetto, where Yezierska would later find inspiration in the crowded, bustling Hester Street for her writing. The crowded tenement her family lived in, as well as all the unfortunate idiosyncrasies of living in such close proximity to your family members and your neighbors is reproduced in Bread Givers as well as her other novels. Yezierska's writing, as well as her struggle for independence, personal space, cleanliness, education and financial security come from this period of her life (Horowitz). Yezierska's father, Baruch, also reproduced in Bread Givers, was a talmudic scholar and valued the study of sacred books over any work that would financially support his family. The task of bread-winning fell on Yezierska's mother and subsequently, their nine children as soon as they were able. Extreme poverty, coupled with the fact that their religion does not respect the educational aspirations of women, caused Yezierska to attend elementary school for only two years. She finally moved into the Clara De Hirsch Home for Working Girls, determined to gain her independence. Choosing education as the route away from her parents and their old world beliefs, Yezierska forged a high school diploma and was admitted to Columbia University's Teachers College and given a scholarship. Yezierska was said to have wanted to become a “domestic science teacher to help better her people,” though she only taught elementary school for five years before turning to fiction as a career. Her determination to acquire an education and carve her own way in her new country is evident in every phase of her life. By placing her desire for education above everything else she was able to earn a living for herself and earn a good reputation in her community. (Horowitz). In the novel, Bread Givers, Sara Smolinsky struggles with many of the same issues as Yezierska. The tenement the Smolinsky family lives in on Hester Street is incredibly crowded and cleanliness is something often strived for, though never fully achieved. They're so poor that when Mother comes home to find ten-year-old Sara peeling potatoes for dinner, with all the weight of the families hardships upon her young shoulders, she reprimands her wastefulness. “She picked up the peelings and shook them before my eyes...'You'd think potatoes grow free in the street...you cut away my flesh like a murderer'” (7). Sara feels guilty and finds ways to help bring in some money to support the family despite her young age and thin figure reminiscent of a “dried-out herring” (7). She grows to enjoy these early moments of independence. She is proud of herself for being able to earn a little money and help her mother. The family doesn't have enough space in their apartment and therefore, live in close, dirty quarters. “So much junk we had in our house that everybody put everything on the table” (8). The family is crowded, with no space for themselves, yet money is so tight they further condense into one back room to rent the front room out to a boarder. They pile Father's books up on the windowsill all the way to the ceiling because “nothing but darkness comes through that window, anyway” (13). The oppression of this ghetto and the yelling of the landlord when rent is due both come alive to the reader in Yezierska's novel because they were the real setting of her childhood that she struggled to overcome. Sara, likewise, wants to be free of money troubles, hunger and over-crowded living conditions. Hester Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, circa 1925 is well documented as an incredibly crowded ghetto full of Jewish immigrants trying to survive in extremely unsanitary living conditions. Bessie, Sara's older sister, decides to clean the house one day after a string of good luck in acquiring work. She wants to impress a suitor so she brings home “a new oilcloth for the table, a remnant from a lace curtain to tack around the sink, to hide away the rusty pipes, and a ten-cent roll of gold paper for the chandelier to cover up the fly dirt that was so thick you couldn't scrub it away” (37). The sisters all work together to “pull out everything to the middle of the room and scrub out the corners” (37). The house is momentarily fixed up nicely and yet Sara is already thinking “if only we didn't have to pull out the torn bedding from its hiding place to sleep—the rags to dress ourselves—if only we didn't have to dirty up the new whiteness of the oilcloth with the eating, then it would shine in our house always like a palace” (38). Sara wants cleanliness, and space. The idea of a palace is mentioned several times; the notion of having endless space for everyone's own pursuits with grandeur to spare is the exact opposite of what she endures as a child. Hence, Sara values order and beauty and the small, cheap improvements they make to their Hester Street room are revered for the feelings they instill in the sisters of wealth and importance. “Let's have it beautiful for ourselves, not only for company,” Bessie says (38). Sara respects beauty and talks about it often as something hard to obtain in life. Her sister, Mashah is beautiful and men follow her everywhere because of it. Sara is clear though, that she values hard work more than vanity and harshly criticizes Mashah's selfishness. Beauty, to Sara and assumably Yezierska, is much like wealth, education, and success. They are all far away American ideas to be yearned for and worked towards. Sara knows from a young age, living on Hester Street, that there is a better life to be had somewhere in the world. She wants cleanliness and space and works towards it, bit by bit. In her family's tenement she aspires towards “the school teacher's rule, 'A place for everything, and everything in its place,'” but is frustrated by what is holding her back: Family obligations, money, and her youth. She admits this axiom is “no good for us, because there weren't enough places” (Yezierska 8). The breaking point for Sara is when her sister Mashah's mean husband humiliates Sara, calling her a “worn-out rag” and Sara suddenly finds herself homeless and alone on the street. She sets about to find a place to live and realizes she's never eaten alone in her life. She's never been able to be alone in a room with a closed door before. Suddenly, she is lusting after some “stillness” (157). After much searching and countless rejections on the grounds that she is a girl, Sara finally finds a room to rent that she can be alone in. It was a dark hole on the ground floor, opening into a narrow shaft. The only window where some light might have come in was thick with black dust. The bed see-sawed on its broken feet, one shorter than the others. The mattress was full of lumps, and the sheets were shreds and patches. But the room had a separate entrance to the hall. A door I could shut. And it was only six dollars a month. 'This is just the thing for me,' I cried. 'I'll clean it up like a little palace. Sara's standards are exceedingly low, yet she is determined to achieve her dreams. She finally achieves the first of them with her own room, a door she can shut for some privacy or some quiet and thus, a little independence. When Sara arrives at college after years of studying and struggling to make ends meet she is amazed. The town of “quiet streets” and “peace” seems like a “fairyland” to her (210). “So these are real Americans,” she thinks noting the lack of hunger in their eyes and the quiet of their surroundings (210). Getting into college is a success in itself to Sara, the “beauty for which I had always longed,” came as an unexpected surprise to her (211). She becomes even more determined to fit in to this new strange place though she doesn't belong at all. “If I could only lose myself body and soul in the serenity of this new world, the hunger and turmoil of my ghetto years would drop away from me, and I, too, would know the beauty and stillness and peace” (211). Sara had finally escaped the noise and overcrowding of her youth and she had done it through hard work. Perhaps the thing that surprises Sara the most in the shocking new world of college is the cleanliness she witnesses. As hard as they tried to clean in her parents room on Hester Street, they never came close to what she sees in college. “The spick-and-span cleanliness of these people! It smelled from them, the soap and the bathing. Their fingernails so white and pink. Their hands and necks white like milk. I wondered how did those girls get their hair so soft, so shiny, and so smooth about their heads” (212). Sara feels as though she has finally arrived at the 'good life,' though she also begins to realize just how much money she needs to dress like her peers or partake in their easy lifestyles. Her sense of determination is reenergized and she finds herself an ironing job to support herself. At the end of Bread Givers, Sara earns her teaching certificate and is long removed from the filth of Hester Street. Her regular salary allows her to order new clothing and ask for the 'best' of something for the first time in her life. She has finally succeeded in making all of her dreams come true. The principal of the school she is working in takes an interest in her and Sara feels an 'enveloping friendliness” as they walk down the street together (276). Sara is excited to show off her room for the first time. My plain room that I loved, how would it look to another? Anxiously, I watched him as he looked slowly around. 'How beautiful and empty!' he cried. I sighed with happiness. 'Years ago, I vowed to myself that if I could ever tear myself out of the dirt I'd have only clean emptiness.' He nodded understandingly (277). She is so happy to be removed from the overcrowded living conditions, constant noise, and unavoidable filth of her childhood that when she can finally afford luxuries, all she wants is clean space. Her independence is expressed in her ability to surround herself with the things she wants to be surrounded with. A beautiful table and sparse furniture are the exact opposite of her surroundings in her parents room on Hester Street. Another way Sara asserts her need for independence over her parents is by refusing to allow them to choose a husband and a life for her. She watches as each of her three older sisters lose the boyfriend they are interested in and settle for the match their parents arrange for them. Each ends up miserable in her own way. Father is extremely rude to a pale-faced young poet who comes calling and the sister, Fania tries to defend him. “I know what I want for my happiness,” she says (75). However, Father is more concerned with image and power. He tells her “A father knows the future because he is older,” and calls the young man a “long-haired beggar,” a “schnorrer,” and says, “Either you listen to what I say, or out you go of this house” (75). Sara takes this advice to heart and moves out of her parents house at seventeen years old. “I'm smart enough to look out for myself. It's a new life now. In America, women don't need men to boss them” (137). Yezierska's independence shines through Sara as she begins to establish her americanization. She has the spirit of the new generation and is determined to better her life with or without her parents support. Anzia Yezierska seemed to have trouble finding a husband or partner to settle down with in life. In 1910 she married a lawyer but applied for an annulment after only one day of marriage. She, apparently, “valued his friendship, but was unprepared for the physical aspect of marriage” (Horowitz). A year later, she married a teacher and writer, and after another year they had a daughter, Louise. The marriage lasted four years and then Yezierska moved to California, giving Louise to her father in 1916. As an adult, Louise stated that her mother, was a “vibrant, daring, and courageous person” though rumors of her mental instability are wide spread (Horowitz). Notably, Yezierska had a passionate, though fairly short-lived romantic relationship with the educational reformer, John Dewey. His radical ideas about the need to replace rout learning with hands-on teaching certainly affected Yezierska. Her hunger for education that made it into Bread Givers, and other works must have been strengthened by her proximity to an upper class philosopher making a difference in the world. Yezierska struggled for independence from her family, from poverty and from the old world customs that she felt tied to. Her unhappiness with her love life later in life only strengthened her dedication to achieving her own independence. She was 'American' enough to embrace free-will, divorce and a hard-working attitude. These characteristics made it into the protagonist of her novel Bread Givers as well (Horowitz). Sara Smolinsky is oppressed by the religious fervor of her father as a child and she struggles to overcome his zealotry by striving for a secular education. Yezierska and Sara both admire the beauty of the Torah's prose and the promise of wine in heaven is ever present in Bread Givers. When Father quotes the Torah, “Mother's face lost all earthly worries” and the reader becomes caught up in the lilting words full of compelling promises for the afterlife (16). Sara says, “His voice flowed into us deeper and deeper. We couldn't help ourselves. We were singing with him” (16). Religion is respected above all things in Bread Givers, yet Sara realizes that she must be independent in her bread-winning and that education is the way out of her misery. She is frustrated that this God she has put her faith in doesn't consider her worthy of his everlasting love. Being a woman in the Smolinsky house, under Father's rule, means being a second rate citizen. “The prayers of his daughters didn't count because God didn't listen to women. Heaven and the next world were only for men... Women had no brains for the study of God's Torah, but they could be the servants of men who studied the Torah” (9). Sara never turns her back on her religion, even after she leaves her parents house, though she does understand that she is smart enough to accomplish something in her life. Sara is briefly distracted by a gentleman's attentions as she is studying for her college entrance examination, but sees the light just in time. She realizes that with this young man, Max Goldstein, she “would only be another piece of property,” just as she was in her parents house (199). Her studies and an education are the only thing Sara needs to secure a happy future so she turns him away with all his money and all the good times he brought to her. Though she has doubts in herself and moments of hardship she never again forgets her goal. “I seized my books and hugged them to my breast” (201). Determination to succeed drives Sara throughout the novel. By recognizing that education is the way out of the poverty stricken life her parents are stuck in, she opens up a whole world for herself. She allows herself to dream big, “looking up to the top of the highest skyscraper while down in the gutter” (155). By becoming a school teacher Sara will succeed in becoming a 'lady,' with a steady paycheck and a sense of importance. As her education progresses she works with a steadfast determination to ensure her own future is what she wants it to be. Yet, when Sara finally achieves her goal and returns to her old neighborhood as a “teacherin” there's a gnawing feeling of emptiness within her (269). Her father's old preaching, “a woman without a man is less than nothing,” still rings in her ears. Sara then sets out to find love, something Yezierska herself may not have ever known. At the end of the novel, when Sara has found happiness, in education and in love, she is still moved by the beauty of the words her ailing father reads from the Torah. She is torn between the traditions of her ancestors and the values of her new countrymen. She ultimately chooses to belong to America: To work hard, become educated, and to strive for bigger and better things in life. The satisfaction she gets from succeeding at this life does not remove the innate guilt she feels for straying from her parents ideas of what a proper Jewish girls' life should be like. “It wasn't just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon me” (297). Yezierska is clear about the need for americanization and education for a greenhorn to find success in the new world, yet she is hesitant about leaving tradition behind. Sara recognizes that it is her father's “fanatical adherence to his traditions” that makes him a failure in the new world (296). It is the man Sara decides to marry who tells her that he knows “just the kind of an old Jew” her father is (279). “After all,” he says, “it's from him that you got the iron for the fight you had to make to be what you are now” (279). It turns out her determination and strength came from the one place she was running from. Anzia Yezierska wrote Bread Givers in 1925, more than a quarter century after she immigrated to America. Her family moved from the poverty and hardships of Poland to the poverty and hardships of New York City because they believed in the American dream. They believed that things could get better and that their children would have opportunities that were not available to them in the old world. They brought with them their strict religion, strong traditions and staunch beliefs. Yezierska, as the youngest of nine children, was in the best position to take full advantage of all America had to offer, despite the fact that she was a girl. She became determined to capture the American spirit she had learned about during her short time in elementary school. For her, assimilating was about shedding the greenhorn status and making a home for herself in her new country. Yezierska was determined to gain her independence from her stifling parents and the outdated customs they pushed onto her. This independence was to be gained through consistent decision making. She chose to leave the clutter and filth of her parents life on Hester Street. She chose to work hard for an education and secure a steady job she could be proud of. She chose to not reject her parents religion, but to embrace the beauty in what they had taught her and apply it to her new life. Yezierska became an independent American Jewish woman through determination and hard work. Works Cited "The History of Jews in America." American History News Network – Affordable College in New Hampshire. Web. 02 May 2011. http://americanhistorynewsnetwork.org/jews-in- america/ Horowitz, Sara R.. “Anzia Yezierska.” Jewish Women. A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 20 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. Web. May 1, 2011. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/yezierska-anzia Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York: Persea, 2003. Read More