Bread Givers By Anzia Yezierska Struggles

Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers is a novel that describes the difficult life of a young Jewish girl who goes through many difficulties in her life in order to strive for success in America, only to find herself back at the same place where she was in at the beginning. The protagonist, Sara Smolinsky, is daughter of Jewish immigrants and belongs to a family of six. Under the dull household and extremely strict rules of her father, Reb Smolinsky, Sara struggles to become a person in society. The novel expresses issues related to religion, the struggle of fitting in society as a woman, and customs, all of which are faced through Sara. The entire novel describes in detail Sara’s quest to achieve peace and joy from independence and live her own life,

all of which lead to theme of being able to achieve one’s goals regardless of any contradictions, even if it is from your own family.
Starting off, immigrants coming to America usually have a hard time choosing either to assimilate to American culture or keep one’s own culture. As for Sara’s family, they have chosen to continue with their religion and customs. In this case, Sara has problems believing everything her father spouts about religion. Her father preaches conformity and having a defined role for his daughters to follow. They are to do their jobs as women, wed wealthy suitors, and have children, according to Sara’s father. The daughters honestly believe this will be their lifestyle since their father continuously reminds them that “heaven and the next world were only for men. Women could [only] get into Heaven because they were wives and daughters of men” (Yezierska 9). If they deny their father’s words, then they risk not being able to go to Heaven. However, Sara takes her chances and stands up against what she believes is wrong. She continues to deny her father’s orders of who she should wed. She does not want to marry just any guy who will give the most money to her and her father, as Reb Smolinsky wants, but she wants to marry one who she actually feels a connection to and fulfills her with happiness. Due to Sara’s urgent desire to be more than just an asset to her father, she runs away to pursue her own chosen lifestyle and become an educated American. This quest leads her to a successful life as an independent woman and working as a teacher. However, she still seemed to struggle with religion as she often found herself feeling incomplete. During this struggle, she remembered how her angered father used to lash out and insult Sara with radical religious text that he interpreted as stating that women have no purpose in life without men; that without men, who are they to serve?; who is going to take them to Heaven (Yezierska 270)? Sara could not understand why she did not feel as superior as she thought she would. She began wondering if all this time her father was right. On her quest for freedom, religion was definitely something she struggled with, but overcame the obstacle beating the odds and defying the stereotypical female roles.
In continuation, Sara faced many more gender roles throughout her life. From the start Sara unknowingly faced a form of discrimination just for being a girl. Her father brought her up making her believe that her self-worth as a woman was less than a man’s. He only allowed her to do small jobs that were not so appealing. Sara did not “want to [keep] on sell[ing] herring for the rest of [her] days. [She] wanted to learn something. [She] wanted to do something [with her life]” (Yezierska 66). At a young age, Sara felt she had more potential than what her father had planned for her. She did not like the idea that he made her believe of being less just because of her gender, no matter what her father preached that their religion stated. If she did not resist, she would end up like her tortured mother, constantly hard at work for her father. Her mother realizes the mess she is in, but cannot do much but hope Sara grows up to be different, so she would not face as many hardships as a woman in this man-based world according to the Torah (Yezierska 118). Sara follows her heart and goes on a quest to find independence and prove to herself that she can overcome her father’s sexist preaching. She believes that she is “smart enough to look out for [herself]. It’s a new life now. In America, women don’t need men to boss them” (Yezierska 137). Although her father is strict on old traditions, Sara is part of a new generation and knows she can have a happy life if she works hard enough for herself. She values her education more than anything and is not looking to please her father or anyone but herself. Instead, she is hoping to prove to herself that she is worth it; that women are worth it. Sara goes on and defies the odds to become a teacher on her adventure for a better life, and not a thing stopped her from achieving this.
Furthermore, right from the beginning of the novel, it is seen that Sara’s life is not an easy one.

No one had a sustainable job and Bessie, Sara’s sister, was the family’s only hope to continue living in their home. Sara could already see their “things kicked out on the sidewalk like a pile of junk. A plate of pennies like a beggar’s hand reaching out of our bunch of rags” (Yezierska 1-2). This poverty continued for a while as the customs set in society for women are only wives and mothers. Their father mostly relied on marrying them off to wealthier suitors and obtaining the dowries for the marriage arrangement as a source of income since he did not believe in women getting a job like men do. Sara faces yet another obstacle in her quest which are the customs and expectations that are in place in society. It is obviously wrong to think poorly of one’s parents since they provide food and care for their children, and put a roof over their heads. Sara faces an inner conflict deciding whether to blindly follow her father’s plan for her or create her own path. Being a free spirit, Sara recalls all the hardships her father has put her, her sisters, and her father through; he had ruined their lives and created their own personal hell in conformity. However, Sara would not follow the trend and inevitably chose to disobey his rules (Yezierska 135). Although Sara chooses what she thinks is right which is to disobey her father and find her true self-worth, there are still many repercussions that she faces along her quest for independence. For example, in the end she learns that no matter how hard you try, you cannot run away from family. She begins to wonder if her father, too, was just following customs because the shadow she felt “wasn’t just [her] father[’s], but the generations who made [her] father whose weight was still upon [her]” (Yezierska 297). Although Sara did reach her goal of being independent for a while, she ended up taking care of her father and found

herself right back to square one.
In conclusion, Sara Smolinsky had faced a difficult life from her middle childhood all the way to young adulthood. For Sara, it was not easy to go through the struggles that she did, including the many conflicts she had with her own father. However, none of these stopped her from striving for success and achieve her goals of becoming an educated person; a ‘someone’ in America. Analyzing Sara’s quest from begging for bread to giving the bread, the overall theme of the novel is being able to achieve one’s goals no matter what impediments are present on the way there.