My Antonia Response Prompts: The Hired Girls
Harling Family Views
“They were all Bohemians, all “hired girls”, states Cather (136). Raising a family on the frontier is very hard work. At this point in the novel, a new aspect of life is revealed. Families who can afford it, bring "hired girls" into their household. Recently, many young women have been acquiring jobs within the Black Hawk area to earn a living. The Harlings are the next door neighbors to Antonia's best friends, the Burtons. Antonia has recently taken a housekeeping job at the Harling residence.
There are multiple components to being a “hired girl”. A girl usually starts out living a rough life and playing the role of a second mom. She faces the troubles of taking care of her siblings and having to make many sacrifices, including education, to provide a better life for her family. These girls learn "so much from life, from poverty, from their mothers, and grandmothers” that enable them to work for the citizens of Black Hawk, Nebraska (135).
There are, however, contrasting views of Antonia, as well as the hired girls in general within the Harling household. In particular, Mr. and Mrs. Harling have different attitudes toward Antonia as their “hired girl”. Mr. Harling holds high expectations for his children and Antonia. He has a tendency to be disappointed or easily angered with the members of his family. He is extremely strict, demanding, distrustful, and very protective of the people living in his home. Mr. Harling is considered to be a curmudgeon. In one particular instance, he expresses his feelings about Antonia after her night out in town. He states that she has “got the same reputation” of most girls who are easygoing (140). With his distr...
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...utter sneaks into the house. To do this, Mr. Cutter tricks his wife to get on the wrong train, so that he can get home early to catch Antonia and Jim. Sadly, Mrs. Cutter can not even trust her own husband.
Throughout the beginning of the novel, Antonia and the people of Black Hawk fight to survive the frontier. Even though, Wick Cutter is rather a villainous individual, Cather includes him in the novel for a reason. Most people today have not encountered the rigors of growing up on the frontier. Back in the day, many people encountered conflict between money-lenders and faced the consequences of getting sucked into their plans. Cather includes him to show that money-lenders, and people like them are very money oriented, and cannot be trusted. Wick Cutter is the textbook definition of cynical, and will hopefully pay, in multiple ways for his devious actions.
This week’s reflection is on a book titled Girls Like Us and it is authored by Rachel Lloyd. The cover also says “fighting for a world where girls not for sale”. After reading that title I had a feeling this book was going to be about girls being prostituted at a young age and after reading prologue I sadly realized I was right in my prediction.
Jenny Lee describes Conchita and Len’s home, “The house was literally teeming with young people and children … Older children were carrying tiny ones around, some of them were playing out in the street, some of theme were doing what might have been homework” (133). Immediately, the word “teeming” suggests an infestation of children. Although the family appears to be living harmoniously, the shear number of children is, nonetheless, unimaginable. With a household of over twenty children to care for, Conchita is bound to the house. As the housewife, her life is dedicated to cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children. Unfortunately, Conchita’s duties as a mother impair her ability to discover a new passion or work outside of the house. Therefore, Conchita’s maternal obligations stagnate any progression on the social
...s Antonio, and she teaches him to look beyond what he first sees. She shows that everything connects, that even his parents’ different live styles rely on each other. Her recognition of this connection “profoundly changes a boy who has lived in fear of his environment” (Novoa 4). This lesson is repeated throughout the novel.
For the first time women were working in the industries of America. As husbands and fathers, sons and brothers shipped out to fight in Europe and the Pacific, millions of women marched into factories, offices, and military bases to work in paying jobs and in roles reserved for men in peacetime. Women were making a living that was not comparable to anything they had seen before. They were dependent on themselves; for once they could support the household. Most of the work in industry was related to the war, such as radios for airplanes and shells for guns. Peggy Terry, a young woman who worked at a shell-loading plant in Kentucky, tells of the money that was to be made from industrial work (108). “We made a fabulous sum of thirty-two dollars a week. To us that was an absolute miracle. Before that, we made nothing (108)." Sarah Killingsworth worked in a defense plant. " All I wanted to do was get in the factory, because they were payin more than what I'd been makin. Which was forty dollars a week, which was pretty good considering I'd been makin about twenty dollars a week. When I left Tennessee I was only makin two-fifty a week, so that was quite a jump (114)." Terry had never been able to provide for herself as she was able to during the war. " Now we'd have money to buy shoes and a dress and pay rent and get some food on the table. We were just happy to have work (108).” These women exemplify the turn around from the peacetime to wartime atmosphere on the home front. The depression had repressed them to poverty like living conditions. The war had enabled them to have what would be luxury as compared to life before.
The paternalistic employers were also exploiting the girls of their time. Girls are lured to wo...
At the age of 5, she started working full-time. Her master would hire them out to other families within the area. She cleaned white people's houses during the day and took care of their children at night. She had to stay up all night with the babies so that they wouldn’t wake up and disturb...
...tuck in a home they both lived in. Mrs. Marroner and Gerta come together and face the injustice of subjugation by Mr. Marroner. They leave Mr. Marroner and he is left with guilt and sorrow, losing the two women he loved most.
This article, Life as a Maid’s Daughter by Mary Romero, takes the reader through the life a girl named Teresa. She lived a unique life, because she was able to see the differences ways in which different races and social classes of people live in America. Teresa and her mother Carmen are lower class Mexican-Americans, and the people that Carmen is a maid for are upper-middle class white Americans. Throughout her life Teresa learns about different aspects of herself (i.e. race, social class, gender, and family) through interactions with her biological family and the families of the employers.
Some women come to the US and take any job that is available even if it means doing long hours and not getting paid a lot of money. Corporations travel over to third-world countries and hire women to do small jobs in large factories for little to no pay. They only hire a certain type of woman. In “Introduction: Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism” the author touches on the subject of the treatment of the third-world woman and what companies expect from her: “This woman turns into a form of industrial waste, at which point she is discarded and replaced.” (Wright, 6) Once this woman has become old and no longer able to perform the task that she was hired for originally, the company throws her out and simply replaces her with another woman. The third world woman has a sad destiny of coming to the US and dealing with the unfair treatment of companies that do not even appreciate their work.
... sets fire to burn down the barn that belongs to the house, he thoroughly despairs of his father. He not only destroys the barn, but also shatters Sarty¡¦s hope. Sarty decides to leave his family and find his own way of life.
Arredondo exposed Luisa as a dynamic character because during the story the readers can see the changes that her personality had over the time. At the beginning of the story the reader can see how Luisa takes care of her uncle with devotion and love, but after they married she considered it as a disgusting duty. Ines Arredondo described Luisa as woman who has the power of “purify everything” (81), but after suffering the physical abuse of her uncle, all her innocence disappear. She was an innocent girl that was reserving herself for marriage. However, after married her uncle, she started seen the things in a different way. Now, she thinks of herself as “the vilest of harlot” (87). The way that the author exposes Luisa is like happy young lady that thanks to the circumstances enter to a deep depression that changes her life and she “was not able to go back to who I [she] was”
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
Before the major upheaval occurs Jane Austin gives us a glimpse of what social life, the class distinction, was like through the perspective of Ann Elliot. Ann is the second out of three daughters to Sir Walter Elliot, the proud head of the family (Austen, 2). The Elliots are an old landowning family that seems well known in the upper echelons of British society. The most important piece of background we are presented with as central to the plot of the story is that eight years prior to the setting Ann was engaged to a man she loved, Frederick Wentworth. They were soon engaged, but her family along with mother-like figure, Lady Russell, soon persuaded Ann that the match was unsuitable because Frederick Wentworth was essentially unworthy without any money or prestige (Austen, 30). This piece of background echoes exclusivity among the upper classes of Britain. In that time it would seem unacceptable for a girl like Ann with a family like hers to marry or even associate with someone not of ...
It can be concluded that women are treated in terms of stereotyped impressions of being the lowest class and greater evidence can be found that there are large disparities between the women and the men 's class. It can be seen that women are more likely to play casual roles as they are most likely to take seasonal and part time work so that they can work according to their needs. They are hampered from progressing upward into the organizations as they face problems like lack of health insurance, sexual harassments, lower wage rates, gender biases and attitudes of negative behavior. However, this wouldn’t have hampered the participation of the women in the work force and they continue to increase their efforts which is highly evident in the occupational and job ratios of females in the industry.