I Struggle, Therefore I Am

“It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence”. [1] Groan. Throughout Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, Reb Smolinsky makes multiple, groan-inducing comments about women needing men to become more than what they are. Such remarks likely elicit groans in nearly every reader. Yet, regarding the novel’s protagonist Sara Smolinsky, some of these comments hold truth.

Nope, I’m not a male chauvinist.

Rather, I’m considering Sara’s existence in a more abstract sense: Sara’s experiences with men enable her to grow into a person, and therefore “exist.” To be a person, to exist, one must have the ability to be autonomous and independent and to grow. In the male-dominated society transplanted from the Old World, “only men were people.” [2] In the New World, however, women could also ascend to personhood. Sara therefore embraces American culture and its opportunities for personal growth. The challenges of Old World society, embodied in her father, drive Sara to identify what she does not want from life and who she hopes to become. Similarly, Sara views romantic relationships and rejection as learning experiences that facilitate growth towards personhood. My argument should not diminish the importance of Sara’s mother and sisters and other women in shaping Sara’s person. But, most of Sara’s personal growth comes about through conflicts and experiences with men. Primarily through men does Sara achieve an existence.

In facing her father, Sara realizes the depth of her desire to leave behind the gendered constraints of the Old World. Seeing her father drive her sisters into miserable marriages underscores Sara’s drive to make her own autonomous life:  “In America, women don’t need men to boss them…. I’ve got to live my own life. Thank God, I’m not living in olden times. Thank God I’m living in America! You made the lives of the other children! I’m going to make my own life!” [3] In addition, Sara’s attitude towards money is a response to that of her father’s: whereas Reb Smolinsky seeks get-rich-quick schemes and feels entitled to all family wages, Sara views money not as an end itself but as a means of achieving her goals and a hallmark of independence.

Sara also learns and grows from her romantic relationships and infatuations. When Max Goldstein pressures Sara to abandon her studies, Sara clings to her books and refuses him; her ability to choose between a relationship and her studies nourishes her budding independence. After Max leaves, Sara observes, “There was a glow in my face that was never there before….I had an assurance that I never had before. I was thrilled. Flattered. Ripened for love….He only excited me. But that wasn’t enough.” [4] Sara realizes that she can one day find a man who embraces her whole self—books and all—and who encourages her to pursue her goals. Mr. Edman’s rejection is also a learning experience for Sara: “That affair…made me grow faster in reason…. Each time, after making a crazy fool of myself over a man, I was plunged into thick darkness that seemed the end of everything, but it really led me out into the beginnings of wider places, newer light.” [5] For Sara, rejections brought maturity and a clearer understanding of the world and herself. Furthermore, Sara’s existence is strengthened by her relationship with Hugo Seelig: she overcomes her loneliness, which she perceives as an obstacle to personhood. [6]

Despite her growth, Sara does not achieve absolute independence. Each visit home, she is entangled in familial struggles. Reb Smolinsky’s living with Sara and Hugo will also tether Sara to her old life. Even without her father under her roof, Sara will never fully escape the Old World: “It wasn’t just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon me.”[7] The mixed tone at the novel’s end demonstrates that this tie to the old is not wholly undesirable. By reconciling old and new in her life, Sara comes to accept the Old World on her own terms, and this confirms her existence as an independent, thriving person.

[1] Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers, 3^rd ed. (New York: Persea Books, 2003), 137.

[2] Ibid., 205.

[3] Ibid., 137-138.

[4] Ibid., 200-201.

[5] Ibid., 231.

[6] Ibid., 279.

[7] Ibid., 297.

The Pill Turns 50

There’s no such thing as the Car or the Shoe or the Laundry Soap. But everyone knows the Pill, whose FDA approval 50 years ago rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we’ve argued about ever since.[1]

This weekend, I ran across an article on Time.com memorializing the 50th birthday of the birth control pill. While not talked about in much detail during our readings, giving women authority over their reproductive system had dramatic consequences for heterosexual sex lives and the demographics of the American family. While such a shift in social attitudes did not occur immediately, by the 1970s, couples were marrying later and having fewer children, while women were increasingly interested in pursuing careers outside the home.

As with any major social change, the Pill was not universally accepted. The Vatican strongly rejected the use of any form of artificial birth control with the publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, and many African-American leaders in the Black Power movement equated the use of birth control to “black genocide.”[2] Despite opposition, however, two-thirds of Catholic women were using birth control by 1970, and many black women fought for access to contraception. As the Time article states, “when contraception was put under a woman’s control, it put many other things under her control as well.”[3] This newfound sense of power might very well have appealed to women without regard to race or religion.

Looking at my own family history, it’s not hard to see the impact of birth control on families. My paternal grandfather was one of eleven children, and my maternal great-grandparents had four children in five years (if my great-grandfather hadn’t been killed while my great-grandmother was pregnant with their fourth, I’m guessing there would have been many more siblings). The trend continued even into my parents’ generation; after my maternal grandfather died, my grandmother remarried a widower with nine children from his first marriage. Granted, coming from a Catholic background, my data might be a little skewed, but families of that size are nowhere near as common as they used to be. Out of all my (step-)aunts and (step-)uncles, no one has more than four children. I’m one of two. While I have no plans to go around asking about birth control usage at the next family get-together, it’s clear that birth control had a major impact on American families, even moderately conservative ones like mine.

I find the quote that begins this post (and the Time article) incredibly interesting. We can simply call the Pill “the Pill,” and everyone knows what pill we’re talking about. I’m hard-pressed to think of another product that has that degree of recognition. Given our fascination with the Gosselins, Duggars, and other so-called “mega-families,” the introduction of series like MTV’s “16 & Pregnant” and “Teen Mom,” and the ever-present debate over the extent and type of sex education in schools, it will be interesting to see if and how use of the Pill changes over the next several decades.

[1] Nancy Gibbs, “The Pill at 50: Sex, Freedom and Paradox,” Time website, 22 April 2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.

“My Baby Left Me All Alone”: Blues Men and Relationships

After reading about how relationships were a popular subject for female blues singers, I wondered how their male counterparts approached the subject.  How did they feel about infidelity, love, and the opposite sex? Expecting to have to search hard for examples, I was surprised to find many male singers of the era broaching these topics.

Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” provides an interesting perspective in relation to many of the female songs we read about.  It begins with Johnson bemoaning the loss of “the woman I love,” a glimpse into the aftermath of a breakup. However, rather than dwelling on his own bad fortune, Johnson goes on to acknowledge his own wrongdoing. “Oh, she’s gone, I know she won’t come back/I’ve taken the last nickel out of her nation sack,” he sings, admitting openly that he stole money from the woman he supposedly cared about. Furthermore, he expresses sympathy for the sexual double standard applied to women: “When a woman gets in trouble, everybody throws her down/Lookin’ for her good friend, none can be found.” Despite the emotional hardness associated with masculinity, “Come On in My Kitchen” is a surprisingly sensitive, regretful song mourning the loss of a lover.

“No one is as deaf as the man who will not listen.”- Jewish Proverb

If you ask a performer which is easier, acting out a scene or acting out a song, hands down the answer will be the song. When trying to convey emotion into a scene devoid of music, all you have to rely on is your own ability to interpret the situation. A song gives you emotional context. The music sets the tone and mood to what would otherwise simply be poetry. Music, and the musician performing the piece, has the ability to convey complex themes such as irony and sarcasm which are difficult to convey through text alone. Angela Davis in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism argues this point in regards to the work of Bessie Smith. Some of her lyrics may be interpreted as “accepting emotional and physical abuse… but close attention to her musical presentation of these songs persuades the listener that they contain implicit critiques of male abuse.” [1] The lyrics of Smith’s “Yes, Indeed He Do” may appear to be submissive however the delivery and music itself convey a message of defiance and sarcasm, indistinguishable as lyrics alone.

Davis argues that that “blues as a genre never acknowledges the discursive and ideological boundaries separating the private sphere from the public.”[2] This disregard for mainstream cultural acceptance allowed Blues Women of the 1920’s and 1930’s to subvert the discursive norm by bringing into the public sphere, difficult and often socially forbidden subjects, such as; abuse, rape, love and sexuality (both homo and heterosexual) the patriarchal norms of domestic and public spheres and freedom. By asserting themselves through their music, Blues Women were able to air issues that working class men and women were confronting everyday but for which they had no outlet. By discussing these themes it created a form of agency for these black women. The blues “advises women to take control of their sexuality and implicitly challenges the churches condemnation of sexuality.” [3]By taking control they were agentive in a way that was impossible during slavery.

Though Davis argues that Blues Women were singing on themes outside the mainstream culture, Ma Rainey ventures into the world of popular entertainment with her 1928 song “Black Bottom”.[4] Black Bottom was originally a dance which originated in the early 1900’s making its way to New York by 1924 where it was a sensation.[5] My first thoughts were to question why Ma Rainey would deviated from her rejection of social norms? But much like Bessie Smith in “Yes, Indeed He Do” there are elements I was missing, even after having listened to the song and watched the dance. Ma Rainey was in fact using “Black Bottom” as a way to re-appropriate the song and dance for black culture. The dance has its roots in the black community and was appropriated by white society as the ‘next big thing after the Charleston’. [6] By creating a blues song about the dance she re-appropriates her own culture. The Blues allowed black women to be assertive in a way never before available. If historians can truly listen and hear the lyrics, the music and understand the cultural context correctly, then the Blues become a wonderfully rich cultural and historic primary resource.

[1] Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (New York: Random House Inc., 1998), 26.
[2] Ibid 25
[3] Ibid 131
[4] Youtube Black Bottom, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fizLgmUHmw
[5] Wikipedia, Black Bottom (dance), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bottom_%28dance%29
[6] Youtube Black Bottom Dance, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGPnPHrrZeA&feature=related

Oil and Water in Feminism

In “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism,” Angela Davis exposes an issue that has long plagued the feminist movement as a whole. The movement has often struggled within itself because of differing ideals of womanhood and goals of the feminist cause. In the African American women’s community, as in the women’s movement as a whole, class difference was a source of differing viewpoints and approaches.

Feminism tends to touch on very personal topics, such as marriage, family life, sexuality, and abuse. Women coming from varied backgrounds no doubt have varied responses to each issue. One goal all women’s organizations hope for is betterment of their current situation through the ending of all kinds of oppression. [1] How they get to that point and how far they take it are the points of contention. In this week’s reading, Davis asserts that women in the African American bourgeoisie and the women’s blues community both challenged the dominant racial and patriarchal ideologies but were unable to unite in the end.

They Will Survive: Lasting Legacies of the Classic Blues Women

After reading Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, I wanted to know what happened next, in the decades after “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday dominated the blues genre. Did the style and themes of their music manifest themselves years later, and if so, how? Despite being a generation or two apart, there are clear parallels between the songs of Rainey, Smith, and Holiday in the 1920s and 1930s and female African-American artists during the turbulent decades of the 1960s and 1970s.

Aretha Franklin

Gloria Gaynor

While arguably marketed for a more mainstream audience, the themes and strong, independent narrators in Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” (1968) and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” (1978) share much in common with their predecessors of the classic female blues era. “I Will Survive” features a narrator flatly rejecting the man that once left her (“Go on now, go, walk out the door, just turn around now/’Cause you’re not welcome anymore”) while Franklin’s anthem sees a woman demand “a little respect” from her own partner.[1] Almost half a century later, these examples bring to mind songs like “Sam Jones Blues” and others that, according to Davis, “provided emphatic examples of black female independence.”[2]

A Person is 60 Percent Water, the Rest is Blood and Iron (and Education)

All Sara Smolinsky wanted was to be a person.

For our Russian Jew immigrant protagonist of Bread Givers, it would take much of her formative years to figure out how to do that.  She had to become independent of the ways of her family, and the Old World, where “only men were people.” [1]  For Sara, she finds that her only path to achieving the independence necessary to being someone in America is through education.

The most striking issue with Sara was her insistence that, for most of her story, she was not yet a person at all.