The Struggle for Independence in a New World
In Anzia Yezierska's novel Bread Givers, we learn about a struggle between Sara Smolinsky and her father. Her father, an Orthodox rabbi, is stuck in the traditions of the old world and will not tolerate Sara's longing for independence. This novel takes place in New York's Lower East Side, where the population mainly consists of Jewish immigrants who have come to America in hopes of living a better life than they lived in the shtetls. In America, for the family's who still lived by the traditions of the old world, life for the women was no different that life in the shtetls.
Sara and her family had immigrated to America from a village in Poland. According to their Jewish traditions, the only role a woman had in her life was to take care of the family, and make life easier for their husbands. This idea becomes very clear right at the start of the novel. We learn that two of Sara's sisters, Bessie and Masha, are coming home after being out looking for work so they could earn wages for the family . The daughters of Reb Smolinsky were expected to be the wage earners. Women in Reb Smolinsky's household are expected to do all of the work required for keeping the family alive. Reb does nothing to earn money or make life better for his family. He is a religious scholar who has devoted his whole life to the study of the Torah, and his family's job was to make him comfortable. All of the burdens were placed on Reb's family; he carried none of them. Reb was a "dictator" in the household. When Sara's sister Bessie brought home a man for the family to meet, Reb kicked him out of the house. He said that this man was not good enough for his burden bearer. He appears to be very reluctant to ...
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...to see her. He had disowned his daughter for leaving the family and not supporting him. After the death of Sara's mother, Reb even wrote a letter to the principal of Sara's school implying that the school should send part of Sara's wages to him because she abandoned her father.
Sara never did get out of her obligation to serve and take care of her father. The novel ended with Sara offering to let her father come and live with her so she could take care of him. This novel really illustrates the struggles immigrants who came to this country had to deal with. Like Sara, many other women wanted their lives to have more meaning that they were accustomed to. Coming to America gave money of them the opportunity to achieve their independence, just as Sara did in Bread Givers.
Bibliography:
Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (New York:
Persea Books, 1999)
The novel Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska examines the roles and experiences of Jewish immigrants in America roughly after the years of WWI in New York City. The novel follows the journey of Sara, a young Jewish immigrant, and her family who comes to the country from Poland with different beliefs than those in the Smolinsky household and by much of the Jewish community that lived within the housing neighborhoods in the early 1900s. Through Sara’s passion for education, desire for freedom and appreciation for her culture, she embodies a personal meaning of it means to be an “American”.
... her goal. Just like most first generation immigrants, the family went through dreadful poverty. Anzia Yezierska did an excellent job in describing what life was like for Sarah’s family, which was a sample of what life was like for immigrants. As an illustration, when Mashah, who was worked went out and bought herself a toothbrush and a small towel for thirty-cents so she can have her own towel. The rest of the family became horrified. It was like, how dare she spend thirty-cents on a toothbrush and towel, when the rest of the family is starving and they needed that money to buy food? The father supposes it is his absolute right to expect that the four daughters either will never leave home thereby supporting him forever or they would leave home and marry somebody rich, who will then support him forever. The women in the Smolinsky family were the breadwinners.
... 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.
“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.”
In order to obtain religious, social, political, and equality 23 million Jews immigrated to America during the years between 1880 and 1920 (Chametzky, 5). Anzia Yezierska wrote about her experiences as a poor immigrant in her fictional work becoming a voice of the Jewish people in the1920s. She struggled to obtain an education that allowed her to rise above her family’s poverty and gain a measure of autonomy. Rachel and Sara, the female protagonists, mirror the author’s life going from struggling immigrant to college graduate. Yezierska uses her own experiences to portray the Jewish immigrant experience with a woman’s perspective. She successfully gained a commercial following that allowed her to mediate the cultural differences between the mainstream culture and the Jewish people that helped resolve differences between the established Americans and these new immigrants for a time (Ebes...
When families immigrated to the United States, men were primarily the ones who were expected to learn and bring in wages to support the family. While women did bring in wages as well, they were expected to care for the home and take care of the children. Because of this, women lacked the chance to go to school and become educated because it was boys who were mainly sent to school. Women were only expected to work and earn money to help support the family. In the novel Bread Givers, a book about an immigrant family in New York, one of the daughters named Sara explains her sister’s role by saying, “Bessie would rush home the quicker to help Mother with the washing or ironing, or bring home another bundle of night work, and stay up till all hours to earn another dollar for the house.” In this novel, Bessie’s duties are to help around the house and work all she can to earn money to support her family. She does not have the privilege to go to school and attempt to prepare for a bet...
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