Reading The Self Through the Domestic

Dr. Laura NicosiaEnglish DepartmentMontclair State University

Yezierska’s Bread Givers & Material Culture

How Many of You Have Read/Taught Bread Givers?

Anzia Yezierska. Persea Books. Original copyright 1925.

What Is Material Culture?

Material Culture refers to:

• the psychological meanings that all physical objects have to people

in a particular culture

• the range of manufactured objects that are typical within a

socioculture and form an essential part of cultural identity.

Human beings perceive and understand the material things around them according to their

culture.

You can tell a lot about people by looking at their stuff—the things they make, possess, think, and value. That is the idea that drives the field of material culture, in which scholars explore the meaning of objects of a given society. And nowhere are those meanings more revealing than in the material culture of the United States.

In Other Words...

“the things that people use and acquire in orderto define themselves—their tools, their furniture,

their accessories . . . are indeed part of thevery definition of ‘character,’ of who one is

and what one claims to be. And the picture ofthe whole only emerges—if it does—from

the accumulation of things.”

Peter Brooks. Realist Vision. Yale U P, 2005.

To understand Realistic novels, we need to appreciate that:

Today, We’ll Survey Yezierska’s Use Of Material Culture As:

• Oppositional to the realm of the spirit

• Expressions of being “a real person”

• Representative of 19th-20th Century class distinctions & consumerism

• Veneers to portray oneself in a different social class

NYC in the early 1900s

The Setting For Bread Givers:

Hester Street in 1925

The Hustle & bustle of the Street:

The press of urban humanity and mass

market commodities & machine-made products

Yezierska’s use of Material Culture As Oppositional to the

Realm of the Spirit

• As early as page 11, Yezierska presents the parable of Rabbi Chanina Ben Dosa and the “big chunk of gold”

• From this story, it is clear that the desire for things of this earth come at the expense of heavenly treasures and “the wine of Heaven” (12).

Sara & Her family Are Taught Not to want the

Things of This Earth

Sara Learns The World Doesn’t [always] Work That way--she Witnesses Reb’s

Confrontation with the Landlord

“She took one step towards him and shut

his book with such anger that it fell at her

feet. Little red threads burned out of Father’s

eyes. He rose slowly, but quicker than lightning

flashed his hand.... Father slapped the

landlady on one cheek, then on the other, till

the blood rushed from her nose” (18).

These scenes & stories clearly place Material

culture in opposition to The

Realm of the Spirit

The Family Choice: Reb’s Holy Books or The Samovar?

What would YOU take?

When leaving Russia, the choice had to be made...

They also left feather beds, table cloths, curtains, towels—all sorts of domestic items (32-33).

Sara Ascertains That The Desire For Material Culture Might Put One’s Soul In Jeopardy

Lesson One:

Yezierska’s use of Material Culture As Expressions of

being a “Real Person”

Ask Yourself: How Does One Develop a Sense of Self without:

• Privacy or room of one’s own?

• Financial support?

• Time to explore?

• Permission to play and imagine?

Kids Need To Be Kids

In Order To Discover a Sense Of Self--

Sara’s Self-Worth was Based On:

.

In Her Struggle to Feed Her Family, Gain Her Mother’s

Respect & Assert Herself, the 10-Year-Old Sara Peddled

Herring On the Street

“Earning twenty-five and sometimes thirty to fifty cents a day made me feel independent,

like a real person” (28).

“And throwing the fifty pennies, like a shower of

gold, into my mother’s lap, I cried, ‘Now, will you yet

call me crazy-head? Give only a look what “Blood-and-iron” has done’” (23).

At First, Sara Believes That Things Make the Family More American

• “Mother began to fix up the house like other people” (28).

• “[W]e could all sit down by the table at the same time and eat like people” (29).

• “I want to do something. I want some day to make myself for a person and come among people” (66).

• “[W]ith seventy-eight dollars and eighty-nine cents coming in every day, we’ll soon be able to buy a piano and I’ll begin to take piano lessons. And if I were a piano-player instead of a shop hand, I wouldn’t have to marry myself to a common man...I’ll try to catch on to a doctor, or a lawyer” (118).

The “things” of Material Culture

Can Enable Empowerment, a Sense

of Personhood & Pride

Lesson Two:

Material Culture As Representative of Class

Things as Indicative of Class & Breeding

Material Culture: Mass Production & Consumerism

• Standards of Western Beauty

• New World vs. Old World Values

• Portraits of the American Dream as seen in popular culture (consumer ads, film, periodicals)

• Perceptions of “Hand-Made” vs. “Machine-Made”

Mashah “buys-in” to New World Values & Beauty

• “Like a lady from Fifty Avenue I look, and for only ten cents, from a pushcart on Hester Street” (2).

• “[T]hese pink roses on my hat to match out my pink calico will make me look just like the picture on the magazine cover” (3).

• “[S]he came home with another new-rich idea, another money-spending thing, which she said she had to have. She told us that...everybody in the family had a toothbrush and a separate towel for himself ” (6).

What Does a Personal Toothbrush & Towel MEAN to the Smolinsky Family?

Standards of Western Beauty

Advertisement 1889Mashah’s Pink Calico

Machine-Made

Things Become the Indicator of

High Class & Taste

B. Altman advertisement 1926

B. Altman Advertisement 1887

Ornately Decorated Hats Indicate Breeding & Class

The Standard of

American Beauty:

Fair SkinLong CurlsPainted Lips

Flowing Fabricsthe Picture of Health

Movie Poster 1917

20th Century American Material Culture Can:

Represent Social Class, Perpetuate Standards of Beauty, & Endorse

Consumerism

Lesson Three:

Yezierska’s Portrayal of Material Culture As a Veneer to Mask Genuine States or for

fraudulent purposes

Mashah’s Store-Bought & Machine-Made Fashions

Shenah uses things to create the appearance of wealth & comfort

to attract boarders:

• She uses empty herring pails as a bed riser

• She puts a board over a potato barrel, covers it with newspaper and creates a “table”

• She uses a oilcloth-covered soapbox as a chair

Examples from p. 15

The Ultimate “American Dream”

The Family Buys a Store in NJ

• Be one’s own boss

• Make one’s own hours

• Protestant Work Ethic: Hard work pays off

• Honesty is the best policy

• Freedom of choices

The American Dream

The stock in the store was a sham—a veneer—however.

Ultimately, However, Sara Rejects Material Culture as an Escape from Poverty

• “But the more people get, the more they want. We no sooner got used to regular towels than we began to want toothbrushes, each for himself like Mashah” (29).

• “It’s only when poor people begin to eat and sleep and dress themselves that the ugliness and dirt begins to creep out of their black holes” (38).

• “I’m going to make my own life!” (138)

and Recognizes ‘Things’ as Merely Veneers

Lesson Four:

• “I looked in the glass at the new self I had made. Now I was exactly like the others! Red lips, red cheeks, even red roses under the brim of my hat.... But my excited happiness soon sank down. I felt funny and queer. Something was wrong. As if my painted face didn’t hang together with the rest of me. On the outside I looked like the other girls. But the easy gladness that sparkled from their eyes was not in mine. They were a bunch of light-hearted savages who looked gay because they felt gay. I was like a dolled-up dummy fixed for a part on the stage” (182-183).

More...

“My one hope was to get to the educated world, where only the thoughts you give out count, and

not how you look. My longing for the living breath of a little understanding became centered

more and more in my dream of going to college” (183-184).

More...

The End

Laura Nicosia, PhD nicosiala@mail.montclair.edu

The Reality of Life on Hester Street

Appendix

Sub-renting to take on Boarders created

crowded, dirty &

inhumane living

conditions

Hester Street Boarders

Visit the Tenement Museum

•www.tenement.org

•91 Orchard Street

Take a Virtual Tour

A Well-stocked Pantry

Pre-Restoration Apt

Original Curtain in Doorway

a restored Apartment on Orchard Street

The Jewish Population was the Majority

WOMEN AT WORK:INSIDE THE HOME AND OUT IN THE WORKFORCE

The Family at Work in the Home

Sewing Garters

Working in the Sweat Shops

The Local Five

& Dime

RECEPTION OF YEZIERSKA’S WORK

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Display Ad 53 -- No TitleNew York Times (1857-Current file); Apr 29, 1921; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2005)pg. 8

Press Coverage:

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Display Ad 53 -- No TitleNew York Times (1857-Current file); Apr 29, 1921; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2005)pg. 8

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Display Ad 10 -- No TitleNew York Times (1857-Current file); May 10, 1921; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2005)pg. 3

Image Credits*

• Tenement 1890s: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7322191@N04/454796894/• 1902 Hester Street Shops: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40045986@N00/3129760646/• 1903 Hester Crowded Street: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40045986@N00/3128931073/in/set-72157611467423023/• EdwardianFashion1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8948677@N07/552612467/• 1890s FashionAd: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8948677@N07/556162927/in/photostream/• Coat Pattern Ad: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8948677@N07/556213761/in/photostream/• PaperRoseHats: 1903: http://www.flickr.com/photos/strobis/2407068802/in/set-1466011/• TenementHallway: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyshaper/224936862/• LowerEastSide: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyshaper/539452728/• SweatShop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7322191@N04/456123160/• GartersWorking@Home: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87862342@N00/507074034/• Sewing@Night 1908: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87862342@N00/507102533/in/photostream/• ChildWomanBed 1913: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87862342@N00/505171066/in/photostream/• PrayingonBridge1910: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87862342@N00/1149170850/• KosheringMeat: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/765699408/ JewishDailyFoward Newspaper• SingerSewingAd: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/765693888/in/photostream/ “• TenementMuseum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/henry_roxas/262015335/• Apt in Tenement museum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/henry_roxas/262015335/• Restored Apt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/553083650/• StaircaseHester: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/553451867/in/photostream/• KitchenCabinets: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/553452267/in/photostream/• CurtainDoorway: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/2284558476/in/photostream/• LightFixture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/2284563756/in/photostream/• KitchenShelvesMaterial: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/2294141012/in/photostream/• Banister1863+: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tenement/2413535665/in/photostream/• Gish Intolerance 1916: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3530594304/tt0006864 [IMDB]• five & dime: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaharton/430046819/• Herring Barrel: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnemery/249900036/• 1890 Illegal Immigrant Tenement: http://www.flickr.com/photos/40045986@N00/3296977834/• B Altman Clothes: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2574540?n=192&s=4• Hats: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2574540?n=194&s=4• Gifts: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2574540?n=322&s=4

* Not in order of appearance