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Representations in the Inter-War Years of the American White Working Class by Four Female Authors Paul Ha

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Representations in the Inter-War Years of the American White Working Class by Four Female Authors Paul Ha 1 The Story Less Told: Representations in the Inter-War Years of the American White Working Class by Four Female Authors Paul Harper A thesis submitted for the degree of MPhil in Literature Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies University of Essex March 2017 2 Contents - Abstract p. 4 - 1: Introduction p. 5 Thesis Outline The Authors to be Studied Social and Historical Context - 2: Terminology and Concepts p. 31 Working class Sex and Gender Women’s Writing The Male Gaze Propaganda Propaganda and Art Proletarian Art - 3. Anzia Yezierska p. 55 Yezierska’s Life Yezierska’s Style Yezierska’s Conclusions: An ‘American’ Author: Bread Givers, Arrogant Beggar, and Salome of the Tenements Salome of the Tenements Presentations of Sonya in Salome of the Tenements Conclusion - 4. Fielding Burke p. 95 Burke’s Life Burke’s Style Call Home the Heart and A Stone Came Rolling 3 Presentations of Ishma in Call Home the Heart and A Stone Came Rolling Conclusion - 5. Grace Lumpkin p. 129 Lumpkin’s Life Lumpkin’s Shifting Perspective: Analysis focused on The Wedding and Full Circle Lumpkin’s 1930s Proletarian Novels: A Sign for Cain and To Make My Bread Conclusion - 6. Myra Page p. 173 Page’s Life The Feminist Theme in Page’s ‘Other’ 1930s Novels: Moscow Yankee & Daughter of the Hills Gathering Storm Conclusion - 7. Conclusion p. 209 - Bibliography p. 217 4 Abstract This thesis will study novels written in the interwar years by four female authors: Anzia Yezierska, Fielding Burke, Grace Lumpkin, and Myra Page. While a general overview of these authors’ biographies, writing styles, themes, and approaches to issues surrounding race and religion will be provided, the thesis’ main focuses are as follows: studying the way in which the authors treat gender through their representation of working-class women; exploring the interaction between art and propaganda in their novels; and considering the extent to which their backgrounds and life experiences influence their writing. 5 1: Introduction Thesis Outline This thesis will study the plight of the poor, white, mostly urban working class during the inter-war years, 1918—1941, as represented by four female authors who wrote politically-charged, proletarian novels. The authors in question focused specifically on the experience of women and the double-burden under which they laboured: poor women often undertook roles as mothers, carers, and house-keepers for their own families while also being economically active workers. In the novels to be studied here, female characters who question or reject the model of marriage and motherhood face the disapproval of a society that views them as dangerously different. As well as studying the authors’ treatment of gender through their representations of women and labour, the thesis will also provide biographical information about the authors and consider other themes in the their writing, notably race and religion. It will explore the interaction between literature and propaganda, analysing the extent to which the novelists wrote what might be called propaganda and how effectively they offered models of what women’s role in society could be. Finally, the thesis will consider how much of an influence the authors’ backgrounds and life experiences had on their writing. The Authors to be Studied The female authors on whom this thesis will focus are Anzia Yezierska, Fielding Burke, Grace Lumpkin, and Myra Page. All four wrote novels about working people, focusing on the plight of poor, working-class women. However, there are a number of important differences between the authors, particularly with regard to their backgrounds and the strength of their political convictions. These differences affect their writing and the message that it conveys. Fielding Burke, Grace Lumpkin, and Myra Page, all from the American South, are often grouped together by critics, but this is usually done in the context of studying their novels about the Gastonia textile mill strike; it is far less common to compare their lives and works more widely. Anzia Yezierska is generally not studied alongside these other three, but her inclusion here adds an interesting and 6 important dimension: crucially, unlike the other three authors, she came from a poor background. Like Burke, Lumpkin, and Page, she was a prominent writer in the interwar years, and despite her novels being set in the American North, specifically New York City, she concentrates on similar themes to the other three, particularly with regard to women. She focuses her attention on poor whites, but being Jewish her characters have a slightly ambiguous racial status – they are white but they occupy a space in which they are still seen as somewhat ‘other’ because of their religion. All four authors write about the poor in an urban environment, even though Burke and Lumpkin do dedicate a large portion of their Gastonia novels to describing the mountain life that the central characters lived before they moved to the mill towns, and Myra Page’s Daughter of the Hills is set entirely in the mountains. The migration featured by Burke and Lumpkin is another similarity between the works of the authors: Yezierska’s characters are recent immigrants to America, while the characters in the Gastonia novels are recent immigrants to the mill towns; furthermore, in Moscow Yankee Myra Page presents the experiences of American immigrants in Russia. Particular attention is given by these authors to the portrayal of poor white women. Being white, these characters held a social position in society that was higher than that of poor blacks, but in many cases not very much higher; this fact is particularly true for Yezierksa’s poor Jewish characters. Many of the characters portrayed in these authors’ works existed, in a sense, ‘outside’ the system. They carried such a low status in society that political action to help them often failed to have any influence. They worked under ‘at will’ doctrines, which Nelson Lichtenstein describes: ‘labor law asserted that an employer is entitled to dismiss an employee “at will ... for good cause, no cause or even for cause morally wrong, without thereby being guilty of legal wrong.”’1 They were easily abused, and laws designed to protect them in the workplace were easily circumvented by their bosses. To this end, the story of the white poor, and in particular white poor women, really is a story less heard and one to which novelists like those studied here give a voice. 1 Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 3. 7 Social and Historical Context As many of the characters in the novels analysed in this thesis represent figures marginalised by society, it is important to consider the social and historical situation against which these novels were written; this situation includes the political, economic, and social position of women during the inter-war years. Understanding the relative popularity of socialism and socialist ideas at that time is also useful because it provides a context for the political events that take place in a number of the novels. The novels themselves often have what might be called a claustrophobic feel to them: they focus on characters with limited educational opportunities whose lives are isolated from the world that exists beyond their own geographically narrow borders; this makes a detailed study of the wider contexts even more important for it locates the novels and novelists in a place, not just in the sense of time, but also in terms of social ideals and movements. The history, therefore, is very significant when studying the literature, but the literature to be studied here has particular relevance to the history as well because it weaves a story around the facts that are known, presenting alternative histories at times where there are gaps in the historical archive. Literature opens up the history and engages with it in a way that can increase understanding of the effects that economic and political systems have upon individuals and communities. The literature, therefore, does something that the history alone cannot do, and the literature is what this thesis will ultimately focus on, but not before a vital historical context is provided. There is good reason for this: taken alone, the literature here has much to say about what it means to be a human being – the human condition – but placed in a social and historical context not only can the literature’s place in time be better understood, but wider concepts and ideas can be considered. These concepts will also be explored before the thesis turns to the primary issue of the four novelists and their works. Women’s Position in Early-Twentieth Century America The political standing of women in American society was greatly improved on 18 August 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote, 8 became law.2 A coalition of women’s groups had fought for suffrage, but, according to Lois Banner, once it was achieved ‘the feminist movement broke apart, and the interest of American women turned away from feminism and social reform.’3 She goes on to consider that ‘feminism also failed to take root in the 1920s because it had limited appeal for young women’.4 A suggested reason for this is that young- women’s attitude ‘was cavalier toward the achievement of their elders, including the hard-won gains in woman’s rights.’5 Playwright Lillian Hellman, who was a part of the Left literary movement of the inter-war years, commented on this subject: By the time I grew up the fight for the emancipation of women, their rights under the law, in the office, in bed, was stale stuff. My generation didn’t think much about the place or the problems of women, were not conscious that the designs we saw around us had so recently been formed or that we were still part of that formation.6 Aside from what some saw as a lack of interest among many young women, another factor that hampered the advance of women’s rights in the 1920s was a serious split in the women’s movement.
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