Poverty In Eugenia Collier's Marigolds

Eugenia Collier uses the setting of a shantytown and Miss Lottie’s house in her story, “Marigolds” to create her

theme of poverty. The setting of this short story is a shantytown in Maryland in late summer during the Great

Depression. People who were poor lived in crude dwellings called shantytowns. The Great Depression was a time when

many people, white and black, were out of work and poor, so it is apparent that the author, selecting this time and

location, wanted to show poverty. “…….I remember only the dry September of the dirt roads and grassless yards of the

shantytown where I lived (269).” Before this statement, the character, Lizabeth, admits that “surely there must have

been lush green lawns and paved streets under

They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place: they were

too beautiful; they said too much that we could not understand, they did not make sense.” (273) The character Miss

Lottie, like Collier’s character Lizabeth, is also used to create the image of poverty. Miss Lottie is described as having a

big frame which was bent and drawn. Her shrinking frame symbolizes that her hard life of poverty has beaten her down.

Miss Lottie’s actions of tending to her marigolds symbolize her fight with poverty. “The old black witch-woman worked

on them all summer, every summer, down on her creaky knees, weeding and cultivating and arranging, while her house

crumbled…….”(273). Despite the living conditions of her broken down house, Miss Lottie’s desire to create beauty and

richness is seen in the tending of her beautiful flowers. “The witch was no longer a witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility. She had been born in squalor and lived in it all her

life.” (277) The image of poverty is created through the author’s two central characters of Lizabeth and Miss Lottie,

and this creation of poverty continues in Collier’s use of

Dust following the main character and her friends symbolizes that poverty was always

near and covered them. They could not escape the poverty; it clung to them as dust. Not only does the dust symbolize

poverty, the author’s use of marigolds further expresses this poverty by sheer contrast. Not only does the dust

symbolize poverty, the author’s use of marigolds further expresses this poverty by sheer contrast. The other image,

besides the dust, the main character remembers is Miss Lottie’s marigolds. “ And one other thing I remember, another

incongruency of memory - a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust - Miss Lottie's marigolds.” (269) These

marigolds are the only thing of beauty in the shantytown. They are used in contrast to the brown, dust and show hope

which only makes the poverty in the shantytown stand out more. “Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry

gray house, rose suddenly and shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous mounds,

warm and passionate and sun-golden.” (273) As stated earlier, Lizabeth is only vaguely aware of her poverty, but her

rejection and desire to destroy the marigolds shows that seeing an image of beauty only served to remind her of