Anzia Yezierska Stories

The Lost "Beautifulness"
This short story is about a woman who has taken great pride in the fact that she has spent her hard earned money, 'blood from [her] heart', on painting her kitchen, which ends up costing her more than she had bargained for. The fact that such an insignificant act as painting a kitchen is considered so important in this story, shows that for immigrants in the United States, it was very important for someone to be able to show of their home, as a way of establishing themselves in a new place. This is especially important to Hanneh Hayyeh because she wants her son to be able to return from the army and 'will not have to shame himself...on his old home'. However, her eagerness to show off her newly painted home to her friends, as well as her landlord, results in her rent being risen by $5  a month, which has serious consequences for her and her family. Eventually, the family has to move out of the nicely painted flat, purely because they just cannot afford to pay, without having to starve. So she destroys the kitchen just to spite the landlord, 'no the landlord ain't going to get the best from me! I'll learn him a lesson'. So when Aby finally returned at the end of the story, he did not come back to a grand home tat he could be proud of, but came back to find 'his own mother-and all their worldly belongings dumped there in the rain'.

The morals of this first story seem to be that America is not necessarily the land of opportunity it appeared to be. In the story, it is the hard working immigrant who is exploited by the landlord, just because he has the ability to. For many immigrants at the time, the purpose of moving to the United States was to make a new life for themselves, and the belief was that they would be able to do that, which is not what happened for Hanneh Hayyeh and her family. This shows that the ideology of the American Dream is flawed, in the sense that Hanneh's hard work has not resulted in the fulfilment of the American Dream, if anything, her aspirations have caused her and her family to revert backwards to, perhaps, the life they left behind in Russia. It seems that by the end of the story, Hanneh comes to the realisation that America is not all it was made out to be: 'Is this already America? What for was my Aby fighting? Was it then only a dream- all these millions people from all lands and from all times, wishing and hoping and praying that America is?'. This extract here shows the recognition as America as the 'melting pot' of the world, but it also suggests that all the people who had emigrated to the United States, travelled on false hopes and dreams, that could never truly be fulfilled in the States, when there were people, like her landlord, who chose greed and prosperity over justice.

Soap and Water
This story is one that can be seen to still be very relevant today. This is because in the very first paragraph of it, the woman trying to get her teaching diploma is quite literally judged based on her appearance, and is not awarded her diploma. This story is another that shows the flaws in the American Dream. This is because the notion of the dream is that hard work is rewarded with success, however, this is not the case here. The woman talks of how she worked 'eight hours of work a day, outside my studies', showing complete dedication to her studies and to her aspiration of becoming a teacher, and that this extra work she does is vital for her as a means of continuing her studies. Her diploma is withheld due to her 'personal appearance', her 'skin looked oily, [her] hair unkempt and finger-nails sally neglected', and is also told that 'soap and water are cheap. Anyone can be clean.' The young woman goes on through the story to explain her daily routine, which causes her to look the way she does. This ends up being a vicious cycle, she is 'considered unfit to get decent pay for [her] work because of [her] appearance', subsequently this meant that she was unable to afford better clothes, and unable to afford to keep herself clean, meaning that it made it very difficult for her to move out of her financial and social situation.

In this story, it seems to be implied that it is possible for immigrants to better themselves by moving to the United States, but it becomes evident in 'Soap and Water' that the opportunities for one to better themselves are more difficult to come by for those who do not come from a wealthy background. In the story, the young woman speaks of how she was looked down upon by her fellow college students because of how she dressed, and she stood out because of this, and her state of dress is one that she had not considered as being different or wrong before going to college.

This story is one that truly shows the difficulties that many immigrants would have faced upon arrival in America. Her unawareness of her differences previous to attending college show that as an immigrant she had been living separately from mainstream society, and because of this she was isolated and excluded. The difficulty of moving up in society was also one that was faced by many immigrants as well.