In Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers we are introduced to Russian Jewish immigrant and the novel’s protagonist Sara Smolinsky, daughter of self-identified holy man Red Smolinsky. Throughout the novel, Sara navigates the diasporic condition of new and old lifeways clashing together and attempts to find herself in the new American society, the only world she knows. While Sara attempts to find herself and make herself anew from the old world traditions and her father’s patriarchal grasp, she never fully escapes the old ways or her father’s influence. The novel is set in three stages, each which display the ways in which Sara attempts to escape the old world and how the old world continues to influence her.
The first section, entitled “Hester
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Street” details Sara’s life as she lives with both her parents and her three sisters Bessie, Mashah and Fania. Early on in this section, the novel describes a dreary scene of poverty and struggle, with the family attempting to find any work to pay for their wages. Their current state of affairs is, indirectly, attributed to their father whom, upon being asked to bring goods from Poland to the United States, replies that “in the new golden country, where milk and honey flow free in the streets, you’ll have new golden dishes to cook in” and that the only things worth bringing were his holy books. The novel also makes it clear that the patriarchal ideologies of Sara’s father have at least influenced her because she, as the novel’s first person point of view exemplifies, explains how women are less valuable than men and how they should be subservient to men. Even though Sara doesn’t necessarily agree with this, it is shown throughout this section how her father’s hold on both her mother as well as the lives of her sister’s is strongly reinforced by these religious and patriarchal themes. Sara’s father also takes the lead role in deciding whom his daughters will marry and whether or not their suitors are worthy. As he either forces them to give up on their dreams of marrying certain men or when he dictates whom they will marry, he makes it clear that he is the dominant force. As Sara watches how the marriages set up by her father make her sister’s unhappy, it leads to her to develop the idea that she will only pursue education and only marry a man she knows she will love. This life choice is caused by her father and definitely makes a mark on her. Even as she attempts to defy the ways of the Old World, she continues to be defined by them, even if only in contradistinction. The third section, entitled “Between Two Worlds,” begins after Sara’s father finally pushes Sara to leave the house and she is turned away by Mashah and Bessie’s husbands.
Finding nowhere else to go, Sara finds her own place to live. Rebelling against her father and all he supposedly stands for, Sara works during the day and enrolls in college at night. Even though she is living independently, when Sara rejects a man who wishes to marry her, Max Goldstein, her father barges into her room and demands to know why she rejected him, scolding her and calling her a “lawless, conscienceless thing.” The fight eventually resolves itself, but not without leading Sara to realize that she and her father are incommensurable as he disowns her for saying she hates him. This fight still haunts Sara as it changes her entire outlook on life and once again her father’s hatred and anger defines her a little more, causing her to forsake love and company in favor of solitude. While perhaps it is not explicit, Sara is defined by her father much as all children are – the grasp he holds is one that is solidified through his position as her father, the one who raised …show more content…
her. In the third and final section entitled “The New World,” we see the most explicit ways in which Sara’s father continues to bind her.
Following the death of her mother and her father being tormented by his new wife, Sara, with her new lover Huge Seelig, decide to take him in. This decision is the product of her guilty conscience upon seeing her father old and alone on the street. When he contemplates whether or not he will decide to live with Sara and Hugo, Sara notes that she feels his tyranny once again. The book ends on a poignant line with Sara remarking that “I felt the shadow still there, over me. It wasn’t just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon
me.” In reading the book, it becomes clear that Sara is still haunted by her father and the traditions of the Old World. Even if she breaks out of a lot of them, she never fully escapes her father when his teachings make her feel guilty and miserable for not serving him in his old age, even if she owes him nothing. The quote at the end exemplifies the ways in which the traditions of old haunt her not as lifeways that she herself lives, but rather as the conditions which made her father into the man he is. That weight continues to lay upon her as she decides to take care of her father, as she must balance her new life with his old life, as she must watch her sisters suffer, as she must deal with her father’s new wife – all of these the product of her father’s grasp on her, all of these the product of an Old World which will never understand her.
One of the first and most vital sources utilized was Not By Bread Alone by Barbara Engel. This article comes from Barbara Alpern Engel who is a historian who has wrote several books on Russian women and specifically Russian women during the early 1900s. The book appears in the larger journal The Journal of Modern History. The purpose of this article is to expound on the subsistence riots in WWI era Russia and the ones that lead to the Russian Revolution. A value of this source is her specialization, it seems, in Russian history from 1700 onwards. She has wrote several other books on Russian history and thus she has a greater knowledge than most on the subject. A limitation of this article maybe since she
Book three of the novel “Bread Givers,” written by Anzia Yezierska, is set in New York. The story revolves around Sara Smolinsky, her family, and the struggles they face in their daily lives. The main conflict in book three is Sara’s guilt for leaving her family and pursuing her career without seeing them for six years. For example, when she comes back to see her family, she realizes she is too late. Her mother is dying of a stroke.
... while she still has time (257). She fails at first, thinking her father is “bereft of his senses” in his second marriage (258). She believes this despite the Torah saying, “a man must have a wife to keep him pure, otherwise his eyes are tempted by evil” (259). Gradually, Sara begins to understand her father: the only thing he has in life is his fanatical adherence to traditions; “In a world where all is changed, he alone remained unchanged” (296). Reb has a deep and true fear of God, to expect him to change beliefs that he believes have been handed down by God, beliefs that have persisted for thousands of years, is illogical. It is impossible to reconcile fully the New World with the Old, and it is the responsibility of the New to be the more flexible, unfair as it may be.
Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, written in 1984, and Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, published in 1925, are both aimed at adolescent and adult audiences that deal with deep disturbing themes about serious social conditions and their effects on children as adults. Both books are told in the first person; both narrators are young girls living in destitute neighborhoods; and both young girls witness the harsh realities of life for those who are poor, abused, and hopeless. Although the narrators face these overwhelming obstacles, they manage to survive their tough environments with their wits and strength remaining intact.
“It suddenly occurred to me that my grandmother had walked around here and gazed upon this water many times, and the loneliness and agony that Hudis Shilsky felt as a Jew in the lonely southern town-- far from her mother and sisters in New York, unable to speak English, a disabled Polish immigrant whose husband had no love for her and whose dreams of seeing her children grow up in America vanished as her life drained out of her at the age of forty-six--- suddenly rose up in my blood and washed over me in waves.”
Sarah and her mother are sought out by the French Police after an order goes out to arrest all French Jews. When Sarah’s little brother starts to feel the pressures of social injustice, he turns to his sister for guidance. Michel did not want to go with the French Police, so he asks Sarah to help him hide in their secret cupboard. Sarah does this because she loves Michel and does not want him to be discriminated against. Sarah, her mother, and her father get arrested for being Jewish and are taken to a concentration camp just outside their hometown. Sarah thinks Michel, her beloved brother, will be safe. She says, “Yes, he’d be safe there. She was sure of it. The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel. I’ll come back for you later. I promise” (Rosnay 9). During this time of inequality, where the French were removing Sarah and her mother just because they were Jewish, Sarah’s brother asked her for help. Sarah promised her brother she would be back for him and helped him escape his impending arrest. Sarah’s brother believed her because he looks up to her and loves her. As the story continues, when Sarah falls ill and is in pain, she also turns to her father for comfort, “at one point she had been sick, bringing up bile, moaning in pain. She had felt her father’s hand upon her, comforting her” (Rosnay 55).
Lily’s idea of home is having loving parent/mother figures who can help guide her in life. Because of this desire, she leaves T. Ray and begins to search for her true identity. This quest for acceptance leads her to meet the Calendar Sisters. This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel.
The busy season for the shop she was working on came and the owner of the shop kept demanding for what we call overtime. She got fired after she said, “I only want to go home. I only want the evening to myself!.” Yezierska was regretful and bitter about what happened because she ended up in cold and hunger. After a while she became a trained worker and acquired a better shelter. An English class for foreigners began in the factory she was working for. She went to the teacher for advice in how to find what she wanted to do. The teacher advised her to join the Women’s Association, where a group of American women helps people find themselves. One of the women in the social club hit her with the reality that “America is no Utopia.” Yezierska felt so hopeless. She wondered what made Americans so far apart from her, so she began to read the American history. She learned the difference between her and the Pilgrims. When she found herself on the lonely, untrodden path, she lost heart and finally said that there’s no America. She was disappointed and depressed in the
Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers. Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers attacks several social norms of her. traditional Polish homeland and the American life her protagonist has come to know. Clearly autobiographical, Bread Givers boldly questions why certain. Social and religious traditions continue throughout the centuries without the slightest consideration of an individual's interests or desires.
It is the first time that Lizabeth hears a man cry. She could not believe herself because her father is “a strong man who could whisk a child upon his shoulders and go singing through the house.” As the centre of the family and a hero in her heart, Lizabeth’s dad is “sobbing like the tiniest child”She discovers that her parents are not as powerful or stable as she thought they were. The feeling of powerlessness and fear surges within her as she loses the perfect relying on her dad. She says, “the world had lost its boundary lines.” the “smoldering emotions” and “fear unleashed by my father’s tears” had “combined in one great impulse toward
In Anzia Yezierska’s novel entitled Bread Givers, there is an apparent conflict between Reb Smolinsky, a devout Orthodox rabbi of the Old World, and his daughter Sara who yearns to associate and belong to the New World. Throughout the story, one learns about the hardships of living in poverty, the unjust treatment of women, and the growth of a very strong willed and determined young woman—Sara Smolinsky.
When Lizzie’s stressed father denies her request to play outside, her metaphorical death is revealed. It is not a real death where her heart stops beating, yet, but her respect for men is the victim and the vulture is ready to feed off of it. The Guilty Party’s recurring theme of innocence then betrayal are depicted after Lizzie’s “death”, which contribute to the idea that all decisions have an affect on future decisions.
Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story, but give significance as well. The point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel. The author chooses to write the novel through the eyes of the main character and narrator, Jack. Jack’s perception of the world is confined to an eleven foot square room.
Specifically, Yezierska tells about life as an immigrant woman. The traditional ways of the Solimsky’s homeland impede the women of the family from living out their new, American lives as they desire. Around this same time, the women’s suffrage movement was gaining steam, and in 1920 women obtained the right to vote. It would be interesting to see what a man like Mr. Solimsky thought about women winning that right in America, through a primary source. Bread Givers is a valid primary source, even as a work of fiction. Yezierska informs readers about life for early 1900’s immigrants through writings based on her life. She uses religion throughout the novel to show the divide between those immigrants trying to hold onto their traditions and those trying to assimilate. Religion is used by Mr. Smolinsky to keep control over the women in his family. This rift causes tension within their family and leads Sara to run away in order to pursue her “American Dream”, so to speak. Sara is questioned by others regarding her independence, and why she is not focused on finding a husband. This questioning is due to the domesticity of women, traditional thought that saw tending to the house as the job of a woman. Around this time, many immigrant women that lived in the
The autobiographical novel, Bread Givers, is the story of a young girl Sara Smolinsky growing up in an immigrant Jewish household with her sisters Bessie, Fania and Mashah along with her parents Reb and Shena. Sara’s father, Reb, refuses to work to support his family and instead spends most of his days reading holy books. In turn, the neglect for his family has left his daughters to find means to provide for themselves. Throughout the novel there can be seen a common theme of oppression from Reb and other men. Additionally, other themes such as independence, self-sustenance, the struggle to find happiness and duty versus desire can be seen within the novel.