The Social Expectations and Classes in Esperanza Rising and the Good Earth
A young girl, bent over a crate of potatoes, her red and swollen hands working at the potato eyes; a young Chinese farmer working his precious land under the copper sun, his back glistening with perspiration, imagining the great prosperity his work would bring him. One may envision these scenes while reading Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. In these two novels, the protagonists of each are largely affected by the social expectations of their respective communities. Esperanza Ortega, a young Mexican girl on the brink of her teenage years, has been brought up in the best of all conditions, in the most comfortable of all settings, receiving a superb education from a sophisticated private school among the daughters of other wealthy and educated land-owners, and living like a princess. Suddenly, she and her mother are forced into abject poverty with the death her father in 1930, as her greedy half-uncles strives to make life thoroughly difficult for them, burning down the Ortega house and vineyard. Wang Lung, a Chinese farmer, was born into a poor family; he has been helping to work his family’s land ever since he was old enough to guide the ox and donkey. All his life, he has worked steadily, saving bits of money from harvests; this saving of bits of money eventually made Wang Lung one of the richest men of his area. The two novels Esperanza Rising and The Good Earth, social expectations and caste affects the lives of the main characters in the form of social mobility, living conditions, and parent-child relationships within the household. Esperanza and Wang Lung have very different relationships in their families. In Esperanza’s family , parents and children are almost equals, except that the elders have more prominent roles to play in the family; there are very intimate relationships between all of the family members. Esperanza is very close to both of her parents; until he died, Papa is a kind of sanctuary for her;