Preview

Bread Givers

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1148 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Bread Givers
Bread Givers

The book, Bread Givers is a novel written by Anzia Yezierska following the lives of woman who have to go through struggle because of new tradition verses old tradition. In the book I found that there are several themes within the book Bread Givers. Woman Rights, being one of them, seem to be an issue throughout the book. This book revolves around the lives of woman in a household on Hester Street in New York City. In the 1920’s times were not easiest for immigrants. In this book there are four girls and a mother who live under the roof of their father. The father, who goes by the name of Reb Smolinsky does not exactly comprehends his true place in the United States, or understand the culture. There was a scene that explicates that very well. In the book Bead Givers father got mad at the rent lady who was nagging the family about paying their rent and got himself arrested. He was then called the “speaking mouth of the block”. As the book Bread Givers goes on the father continues to give the woman hard time, and they happen to be his own wife and his own four daughters.
The mother of the house is Shena Smolinsky. For a long time she had to put up with her husband’s beliefs. She really does not like how he just studies the bibles all day, preaches to the family, does not work, and makes her and their children go out for the work. All the wages made go straight to the father. Shena Smolinsky also treats her husband like gold, and that is the way he likes it. At the dinner table, with already not very much food, she gives her husband all at fat. The women suffer the most because they are the house that cook, clean, and work. A scene from the book Bread Givers where she tells her girls the story of her life back home and how good it was. And how she thought she really fell in love with their father, and how he doesn’t understand the true meaning of marriage.
Most of the book Bread Givers revolves around men and woman. All the daughters find someone

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    The River of Earth

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The story is about a family that considers awkward. They struggle to put enough food on the table for the entire family, most of the time the mother barely eats. They live in a small smoke house that is very cramped and cluttered because of the number of people living in it. The Father is waiting for the coal mines to open so he can work, while the mother takes care of the kids, the family does not complain; they feel blessed for what they have . The father is very proud and doesn’t turn anyone away when they need help. In the book he allowed a group of miners to take most of his beans from the garden to help keep their families feed . The mother is a very strongwilled woman. She never lets anything bring her down; when the family begins to have trouble with food she suggests that they begin growing a garden and providing for themselves. The kids are smart and goodwilled from what they are taught by their parents. They display good moral values in their characters.…

    • 922 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    When Elizabeth and Sylvie come back from their trip after 3 days, “In the sink was a mountainous pile of dishes.” and the boys are just sitting at the table playing cards instead of cleaning up their mess. Back then she thinks that only women works and men can do whatever they want but now Elizabeth realizes that she was the reason her sons are like that. “All along I bin blamin’ men fer bein’ men. But now I see that oftentimes it’s the women that make them that way”. After she realizes her mistake, she tries to tell her sons to help out in the family, she hopes to at least change them so that when they have a family, they can help out their wives so that in the future generations, women and men have equal standing in the house.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bread Givers

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska, is a novel about Sara Smolinsky, and her struggle remaining in the old world traditions or heading to the ever-changing new world. The novel has multiple themes, however, the main theme, of Anzia Yezierska’s writing, is the old world versus the new world.…

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What is the American Dream, and who are the people most likely to pursue its…

    • 354 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This story is a great example of a Marxist theory. It opens up about the class differences, even within the same family when opportunities arise for one…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mrs. Minnie Wright is one of the main characters in the play “ Trifles” by Susan Glaspell. The act characterizes Mrs. Minnie Wright, a wife who is the prime suspect in the murder of her husband. She has to live an unhappy, miserable, tortured life by her husband, who treats her as nothing important like a trifle. The play A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen has theme of female rights, gender roles and marriage life. In A Doll House, Mrs. Nora Helmer is characterized as a happy, beautiful and fashionable woman like a doll of the house, who is loved by her husband, Mr. Trovald and happily living in family. Mrs. Nora Helmer and Mrs. Minnie Wright both are victims of male dominance in both plays but Nora is happy, pampered and loved by her husband and Mrs. Minnie Helmer is badly treated by her husband and lives a sad, empty life, which makes them to finish this unpleasant situation of life in a different way. Nora has a beautiful family. Her husband pampers her and relatives love her. Nora is the mother of three children, but in Minnie’s case, she doesn’t have any children. She works hard but her husband, Mr. John Wright provides her with little. Nobody comes to visit Minnie’s house because it is such an unhappy place. Nora lies to her husband when she has to get money for his treatment because in that time period, women were not allowed to take out a loan without a co-signer. She tells him that she got the money from her father. She puts herself in danger because if her husband knew about it then he can hurt her. It shows that she is not only a childish and pampered girl but also a daring lady. On other hand, Minnie is helpless. Her husband beats her and doesn’t allow talking with other people and receive calls. She is enduring a hard life. She can’t go against these tortures but when Mr. John Wright kills the canary, she feels like all of her desires, wishes, and dreams were being killed so she…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bread Givers

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Success is achieved by hard work and dedication. In Anzia Yezierska’s book “Bread Givers” Sara Smolinsky shows how that applied to her life. The author can relate to the story because she was an immigrant from a small Polish village and had to overcome many obstacles to become successful. She rebelled against her parents’ wishes of following the traditional path of a women immigrant and left home at the age of seventeen to live at the Clara de Hirsch home for working girls. The American dream for most female immigrants was the expectation of marriage and motherhood, a factory job, or if they were lucky a salesgirl. As for Sara and Anzia, that was not enough for either of them. The goal of Yezierska in her books were to recreate the feelings of the immigrant girl she had once been, and how she tried to break away from oppressive strictures of her religion to make a name for herself. “Bread Givers” was a one of her best works by reliving her struggles and obstacles of being an immigrant and trying to become successful through Sara’s life.…

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Out of This Furnace

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Out of this Furnace, by Thomas Bell, tells the story of a multigenerational family of Slovakian immigrants. This family of five generations came to American in the late nineteenth century in search of a better life. One of the first to arrive, Djuro Kracha, arrived in the New World in the middle of the 1880s. The novel starts off telling of his voyage from the “old country” and the labor he performed to accumulate enough money for his walk to Pennsylvania. He ventured on his journey to Pennsylvania in the search for a job in the steel mills. The story also tells of his rejection by the mainstream community as a “hunkey,” and the lives of his daughter and grandson. Soon enough though, the family becomes somewhat acculturate and even “Americanized,” and they soon become to resent the treatments they suffer. Their slow rise to business ownership was quickly ended by a series of events; a summer of Djuro’s drinking habit, Djuro’s return to his work in the steel mills, Mary’s marriage to a worker in the mills, and Djuro’s grandson’s disagreements with unfair labor prices. These events eventually intertwine with America’s transformation of the 1880’s to the 1940’s.…

    • 1035 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood depicts a dystopian society where the United States has been taken over by a monotheocracy and transformed into the country of Gilead. The majority of the woman in this society have been split into three basic categories: Wives, Marthas, and Handmaids. There are also Econowives, Aunts, and Unwomen. The main character, Offred, is a Handmaid. The Handmaids’ sole purpose in this society is to provide babies for powerful households where the wives are deemed infertile. Throughout the novel a struggle can be sensed between most of the women. In The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood demonstrates the way that oppressors will use tension between minoritized groups to distract from their oppression.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    With some connections to the idea of struggle and survival, we can use The Inheritance of Exile by Susan Muaddi Darraj and A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines to show that a home may not always be a safe and secure place. Both stories represent the importance of a rooted home with the exceptions to the difficulties within that home. We will see the struggles behind the immigrant Palestinian women now living in America as they share their personal stories with their daughters, of living in refugee camps. As for the old men gathered at a Louisiana sugarcane plantation known as Marshalls. They await Fix Boutan’s arrival for the murder of his son Beau Boutan. They will share their personal and collective…

    • 1532 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Check It

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages

    She describes the steps in which her lifestyle turned and she fell in to poverty. in paragraph 10 she continues to allude the cycle of poverty because she explains that her kids will have the same life style as she did.…

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    He his explaining how she was a good person. When she had bread for the hungry it’s simply implying that she is willing to feed the hungry. When she has clothes for the naked she gives clothes to those who do not have nice clothes or to those without them at all. Comfort for every mourner I took it as she was able to tell make someone feel good after they lost a loved one or getting through tough times. She will comfort them to let them know that everything will eventually get better.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, portrays a young married woman, Nora, who plays a dramatic role of deception and self-indulgence. The author creates a good understanding of a woman’s role by assuming Nora is an average housewife who does not work; her only job is to maintain the house and raise the children like a stereotypical woman that cannot work or help society. In reality, she is not an average housewife in that she has a hired maid who deals with the house and children. Although Ibsen focuses on these “housewife” attributes, Nora’s character is ambitious, naive, and somewhat cunning. She hides a dark secret from her husband that not only includes borrowing money, but also forgery. Nora’s choices were irrational; she handled the situations very poorly in this play by keeping everything a secret. The way that women were viewed in this time period created a barrier that she could not overcome. The decisions that had the potential to be good were otherwise molded into appalling ones. Women should have just as many rights as men and should not be discriminated by gender; but they should also accept consequences in the same way without a lesser or harsher punishment.…

    • 3445 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Bread Givers Paper

    • 1471 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The novel, Bread Givers written by Anzia Yezierska is a coming-of-age novel about a Jewish-American girl. This book covers broad topics of American history such as Americanization, how old world values clashed with new world values, and the search for independence. The novel’s protagonist, Sara Smolinsky is better suited than her family for America because of her ability to cope with change. Throughout this essay, I will examine how Sara deals with her different perspective of America compared to that of her family and how she is able to replace her old world values with American values. I will also examine how Sara’s search for independence leads her to reconcile with her father.…

    • 1471 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hester is a materialistic woman with an emotionally tired marriage causing her to resent her children, she feels “as if they had been thrust upon her”. She had two girls and a boy, Paul. Her family is trying to keep up with a high class and high status lifestyle on a middle class income. From the outside, the family was picture perfect with a loving mother, well-behaved children, a nurse and gardener to tend their luxurious home, but with two mediocre incomes, they struggled to keep up with this image. This financial strain was felt by the children as they saw in their mother's eyes that something wasn't right. They also picked up on their mother's tension and felt unloved and unimportant. To emphasize the gravity of the tension due to the pressure and high priority of having nice things, the author personifies the house by having it whisper “There must be more money”. To further emphasize, the author adds that even the stuffed animals and a rocking horse heard the whisper and expressed their understanding in their eyes. This whisper will soon consume Paul and become his obsession to silence it.…

    • 1230 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics