Anzia Yezierska Analysis

"What are the moral lessons in each story and how would you account for their meaning to immigrants?"

'The Lost "Beautifulness"' - 

The moral of this story is less obvious than the second story, perhaps because it is a negative moral or a very realistic moral. It follows a mother who is incredibly proud of her son and just wants to make him happy by painting her kitchen, spending only the money she has made. This causes her rent to go up and she has no way to pay for it. The moral here is that life isn't fair. Whilst this may be quite pessimistic and grounded, to a very large extent it's is true. For immigrants of the time in America, this was a message they would have firmly believed, as they live in poor conditions doing hard jobs for long hours whilst food and such items are still hard to afford. This story goes against the idea of the American dream, as the character says "is this already America?...Was it then only a dream", showing that the notion was just that, a dream. Her beautiful kitchen could exemplify this, acting as the dream, but is soon destroyed by greed and personal gain from people higher up then herself. This character, who worked very hard and fought for everything she had, actually ended up worse off after doing one thing that made her happy.

Another moral within seems to be the fact that, no matter how alone and isolated you may feel, there is always someone in your situation and is there for you. In the story, the landlord claims that Hanneh painted the room "for yourself", calling her selfish. He also is selfish after raising her rent twice to get more money and then evicting her after she cannot. However, this is later disproved later when many of the people from the same street see Hanneh's distress and bring her food and drink. This wasn't done by those people to make themselves better, but just because they were helping. Applying to immigrants, this suggests to them that helping in anyway you can is still helping and sticking together makes them stronger as they are all in a similar situation. Although, even after this, Hanneh is still evicted and lies on the streets.

Perhaps another moral here is the idea that showing off is bad. Whilst she worked hard to finish the kitchen, Hanneh also felt the need for everyone to see it, including the other immigrants around her and her landlord. This boasting proved to be her downfall as the landlord wasn't originally going to go into the house and look at the kitchen, but she made him and due to this he raised the rent. Perhaps the message here to immigrants is to be modest to those around you and not to be arrogant with any slight success.

'Soap and Water' - 

The major lesson conveyed in this story is the idea of not "judging a book by its cover". The main character, looking to graduate from college, is denied this right by the dean of the college based solely on the fact that the student wasn't a "well-groomed lady". This reinforces the class inequality and class judgement of the time, where many in the upper echelons looked down upon any they concluded were of a lower class. "She never perceived that I had a soul" states the protagonist. The title is 'Soap and Water' due to the dean repeating that these items "...are cheap. Anyone can be clean." This reinforces the delusions of grandeur perception of upper class peoples, where they assume just because they have something, everyone should have it, without taking care of who they are speaking to or their situation. For a lot of immigrants in the US at this time, this would have been prevalent everyday in their lives as they worked so called 'less desirable' jobs and lived in poor conditions where the richer would look down upon them. 

The story also implies a battle between the institutional power of the college, versus the working class underdog, a classic narrative in American pieces. The idea of the underdog working their way up and defeating the evil imperialism echoes that of the American dream notion. The main character does "eight hours of work, outside my studies" whilst also attending the college, wanting to better herself from her humble beginnings through hard work and education, mirroring the American dream ideal. However, the story also goes against this as she states she got "a crushed spirit, a broken heart, a stinging sense of poverty that I never felt before" after all of her hard work. In the end her success comes from a fluke meeting of someone she used to know, instead of her actually ascending the ladder of work and success herself. However, it could be read that after her work, the luck was deserved and well earned, similar to how 'Ragged Dick' was. This idea links to immigrants as they would've probably travelled to American based solely on the thought of bettering themselves and earning more because it made them "like a bird just out from a cage" enforcing the 'land of the free' notion, something which a lot of Americans still believe today.

'Triangle of Desire' - http://www.ropeandwire.com/FullStories/Triangle_of_Desire.html

This short story follows a female saloon dancer, Bianca, as she tries to get someone to finally end her abusive former lovers life, Carlos. Whilst performing at the saloon, she spies a lone cowboy and asks him to dance as Carlos comes over to confront him. Bullets fly and Bianca and the cowboy lay dead whilst Carlos is taken to prison and eventually hanged for his crimes. 

The morals of this story seem to be the idea of the evil doer not prospering, as the abusive male gets bought to justice for his illegal actions. This reinforces the moral of justice always prevailing and supports the legal system. However the person he abuses is also killed quite horribly along with her accomplice. Perhaps this suggests the notion that even though bad things are happening to you, to try and solve it in an arguably questionable and just as extreme manner, you are just as bad as the abuser and bad things will continue to happen. Comparing this to the immigrant short stories, it has to be remembered that they are in quite different contexts. The western stories suggest a time where gun crime and shoot-outs were common place whereas the immigrant period in question is not very similar.