“A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.” Kafka
Chapter Two
Growing Pains
“Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.”
Sylvia Plath
“When you grow up your mother says, ‘Wear rubbers or you’ll catch cold.’ When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not.”
Diane Arbus
There’s never been a better time to be a girl: the future is full of career and educational opportunities, and political equality is finally a reality for many, and on the horizon for others. At the same time, the sheer abundance of choices makes the life of a young woman more complicated than it has ever been. To paraphrase Dickens, it is the “best and the worst of times” to grow up female.
Women have always struggled to balance the pull of hearth and home with the work of the world. They have fought to protect their children, keep the love of a husband and take their place in society at large. These three women come of age in three completely different worlds, Communist China, Medieval Norway and Depression-era New York, yet they face similar challenges with courage and grace. In their life sagas women may find both a kindred soul and a new perspective. And men may find some much-needed insight into the women in their lives.
Coming of Age in an Age Gone By:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Some authors, it seems, were born to write one great book, and such was the case with Betty Smith. In 1943, at the age of forty-seven, she penned a semi-autobiographical account of her Brooklyn upbringing. The book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, sold 300,000 copies in its first six weeks. That year everyone in America, from cabbies to college professors, was reading and talking about the remarkable story of Francie Nolan, a poor girl struggling to survive with her family in turn-of-the-century New York. Betty Smith became an instant celebrity, and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize.
Though she wrote three other novels and several plays, Smith never achieved the level of success and critical acclaim that attended her first major literary effort. Fifty years after its debut, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn remains a perennial favorite for schools and book clubs, with over a million copies sold. In 1995 The New York Public Library chose it as one of the “Books of the Century.”
Synopsis
We meet Francie Nolan, age eleven, reading on the fire escape of her Brooklyn tenement flat, her only companion a curious tree that grows out of the cement and curls around her lonely perch. Francie is a masterpiece of characterization; an unforgettable combination of artistic sensitivity and pure immigrant pluck. Some days Francie and her little brother Neeley wander the streets in search of junk to sell for pennies. Other days they are sent on various (often terrifying) errands for their hard-working janitress mother, Katie. Francie’s father, Johnny Nolan, is a loveable Irish drunkard whom Francie cannot respect, though she idolizes him for his charm and talent. Her mother holds the family together with her hard work and determination, while her father lends it romance through his music and idealistic dreams.
Though the bare bones of the story line suggest a romanticized portrait of city life, Smith’s narrative is full of the grim realities that accompany poverty and ignorance. Infant mortality, alcoholism, depression, disease and depravity dog the steps of the Nolan family, and nothing about their lives is sugar-coated or drenched in dreamy nostalgia. The novel follows Francie through her teenage years, and comes to a close as she prepares to leave home and make her way in the world. A true “coming-of-age” story, its primary focus is the growth of one child in a relentlessly difficult environment. Through Francie’s eyes, we see a world both familiar in its scenes of family life and foreign in its wrenching struggle to survive.
What Makes it Great?
Two factors that may account for the lasting appeal of this novel are its delight in detail and its ruthless honesty. Smith has a marvelous eye for the little things that make Francie’s situation unique and interesting to the rest of us. She notices everything, and my favorite moments in this story are those that chronicle the details of a daily life I would never otherwise understand. For example, I liked the description of one week’s worth of dinners made from six loaves of stale bread. Here is Saturday’s feast:
“Saturday supper was a red letter meal. The Nolans had fried meat! A loaf of stale bread was made into pulp with hot water and mixed with a dime’s worth of chopped meat into which an onion had been cleavered. Salt and a penny’s worth of minced parsley were added for flavor. This was made up into little balls, fried and served with hot ketchup. These meat balls had a name, fricadellen, which was a great joke with Francie and Neeley.” (44)
Smith is not a poetic writer, but she is a powerful one, and her descriptions have the searing accuracy that marks the finest prose. Here, for example, is the moment when Francie finally summons the courage to confront her young father after his death from the effects of alcoholism. Notice Smith’s careful attention to the kinds of things that a young girl would notice, such as his face, his mustache, and his tie. This, combined with the avoidance of any form of sentimental whitewashing, creates a moment that feels completely real: as with Anna Karenina on the tracks, we are there, with Francie, palms sweating, heart pounding, approaching the coffin:
“Francie stood there with her eyes on the ground, afraid to look. Finally she lifted her eyes. She couldn’t believe that papa wasn’t living!
Did You Know?
After the publication of her novel, Betty Smith received thousands of letters from people who felt that she had captured something essential about growing up poor in America. She wrote, “Now, any time of the day, Box 405 is filled with letters from people who have read my book. Most letters begin: “This is my first fan letter. I’ve just read your book and I must tell you . . .” Or: “I’ve never lived in Brooklyn but someone must have told you the story of my life because that’s what you wrote.” Smith answered every letter, and said she felt a personal connection to each person who was touched by her book.
He wore his tuxedo suit, which had been cleaned and pressed. He had on a fresh dicky and collar and a carefully tied bow tie. There was a carnation in his lapel and, above it, his Union button. His hair was shining and golden and as curling as ever. One of the locks was out of place and had fallen down on the side of his forehead a little. His eyes were closed as though he were sleeping lightly. He looked young and handsome and well-cared for. She noticed for the first time how finely arched his eyebrows were. His small mustache was trimmed and looked as debonair as ever. All the pain and grief and worry had left his face. It was smooth and boyish looking . . . It was queer to see papa’s hands so quiet when she remembered them as always trembling . . . She stared steadily at his hands and thought she saw them move. Panic churned up in her and she wanted to run away . . .” (288)
Poverty isn’t Pretty
Many novels tend to portray poverty in one extreme or another: either poverty destroys lives, and engenders hopelessness and crime, or poverty is painted as an ennobling ideal from which sturdy young souls emerge. Betty Smith manages something altogether different. Her startling combination of realism and idealism shocked some critics, yet it accounts for the lasting popularity of the novel. When asked why she wrote so frankly about issues many considered too daring to discuss, Smith responded, “I had no axe to grind. I just wanted to write, but it seems I didn’t know my own strength.” Reaching beyond the domestic trials of the poor, Smith explores the social context of poverty as well: class struggle, the power of the unions, and the fraud and deception practiced on the illiterate immigrant population are all chronicled through the experiences of the Nolan family.
In the face of this grim reality, Smith ably captures the resilience and the indefatigable resolve of these people to rise and improve their status through education and thrift. Though she has only finished grade
school, Francie’s mother has her children read one page of Shakespeare and a page from the Bible every night, and by so doing pushes them onto a higher plane of learning. Brooklyn’s poor are the backbone of a rising nation, and Francie embodies the best of their kind.
In the end, this is not primarily a book about social issues, or Brooklyn, or even about poverty. It is a story of a girl growing out of her childish dreams and into the life of a woman, and because it touches upon this universal theme it has found a universal audience. Francie takes enough of her idealism with her into adulthood to earn our love and respect, yet of necessity must say goodbye to the child that sat on the steps by the tree. In a sweet final scene she sees a new occupant on her old step. As she dresses in her high heels, stockings and linen dress she has that moment that defines the “coming of age” novel as, whispering good-bye to her former self, she closes the window on that chapter of her life.
Novelist Anna Quindlen comments on why this novel is gritty, yet great: “In Francie’s beloved Brooklyn, a rapist stalks the hallways, young women give birth out of wedlock and are reviled and even attacked, the nice old man in the junk store is not someone a child should risk being alone with . . . So why is this not a grim book, with Francie’s beloved father crying through delirium tremens and her teacher giving her “C”s in English when she dares to write about that real-life horror . . . ? Part of it is certainly because we know Francie has triumphed.” (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Introduction, x)
The generation that lived through the Great Depression is nearly gone now, but the benefit of their experiences is needed more than ever. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn should be required reading for all of us baby boomers and our carefully coddled offspring.
Quotations taken from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Harper Modern Classics, New York. 2001.
Talk About It
Betty Smith was criticized for including many of the grim details of poverty in her novel. These days, she would be criticized for not including enough of the bad stuff! What do you think? Did she get it right?
About the Author: Betty Smith
Betty Smith was born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner in 1896, in Brooklyn to German immigrants. She married twice and was the mother of two girls. While her first husband attended law school at the University of Michigan, she enrolled in college courses, though she had not graduated from high school. There she honed her skills in journalism, literature, writing, and drama, winning a prestigious Hopwood Award. Throughout her life, Smith worked as a dramatist, receiving many awards and fellowships including the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship for her work in drama.
In 1943, at the age of forty-seven, she wrote a semi-autobiographical account of her Brooklyn upbringing, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It sold 300,000 copies in its first six weeks. Betty Smith became an instant celebrity, and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize.
Smith often said that she wrote the novel, “not as it was, but as it should have been.” She worked with George Abbott on the musical adaptation of the book, and continued to work as a dramatist throughout her life. She died in Connecticut at the age of 75.
Sources: Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Wolf’s Pond Press, 2008.
A Life Worth Celebrating:
Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset
It happens this way: you’re young, in love, and you cannot listen to your better judgment telling you that you are making a mistake. Against the advice of everyone who knows better, you marry that charming man with a weak character. Each passing year shows you the folly of your choice, yet you make the best of it and build a life together.
Or perhaps it happens this way: you are a parent, and you have a child who is the special treasure of your heart, yet she chooses to marry a man whom you cannot respect. Later, when you are older and your grandchildren come for a visit they are unruly, as ill mannered as their father, and hard to enjoy, yet you watch their faces as they sleep and revel in their perfect beauty.
Then again, perhaps it happens this way: you have a spouse you love dearly, yet between you there are long-standing resentments that are hard to get past. On some days however, the two of you feel so much joy and fulfillment in the children you have raised and the life you have built together that you wonder why those tense times must plague your relationship.
As you grow older your faith in God grows, but your faith in mankind suffers. Or vice versa. Finally you lay dying, and all of the trials, resentments, fears and challenges seem as nothing to you. There is only your faith, the love between you and your spouse, and your quiet joy in the lives of your children and their children.
I could be talking about moments in your life or the lives of those close to you. In reality, I am recounting scenes from a remarkable trilogy of novels titled Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset. In an epic narrative tracing the life of one fourteenth century Norwegian woman, Undset holds a mirror up to life that reflects the timeless nature of the trials, joys and fears we all face. Sigrid Undset was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded to her in 1928 for this remarkable trilogy. Some critics hailed her heroine, Kristin Lavransdatter, as the first “real woman” in literature, and she emerges from these pages as a fully realized human being, with a noble heart and many flaws.
Synopsis
We first meet Kristin as the young, slightly spoiled daughter of a Norwegian nobleman who refuses her father’s choice of a husband and instead marries a weak, moody man. We follow her progress through her long, difficult marriage, the joys and sorrows of raising seven sons, the onset of old age, and to the close of her life. Along the way we are introduced to an unforgettable cast of supporting characters.
As does any good historical novel, Kristin Lavransdatter immerses us in the details of life in another age. We know what’s for dinner, how it is eaten and what the room looks like where it is served. We come to understand the church, and the strange combination of pagan superstition and Christian faith that guided the people of that day. Kristin’s weaknesses, joys and sorrows are so deftly shown through dialogue and inner monologue that we begin to feel that we know her intimately, and cannot help but love her as others do. The narrative shifts effortlessly from political intrigues to the most mundane details of rural life, from deep spiritual insights to moments of selfishness and stress. In other words, we are given a whole life, not the varnished version of a life presented with a hidden agenda.
What Makes it Great?
One of the characteristics of this great book is the way it combines historical accuracy with emotional veracity. Many works of “historical fiction” give us a picture of life in another age; yet offer us only cardboard cut-outs for characters. Undset, a diligent student of history, definitely has her facts right, but her writing soars as well. As Kristin’s life unfolds we are drawn both into her family and into her time, as the world of medieval Norway becomes as familiar to us as our own. Few historical novels accomplish this with such grace; we are scarcely aware of the transformation, but we begin thinking and reacting like Norwegians in that distant age. The character of Kristin is multi-faceted. We are never sure what she is going to do or say but we never tire of finding out. Her insatiable love of life sees her through one trial after another, and fuels the lifelong passion in her relationship with her husband, Erlend. Much like Tolstoy, Undset has a gift for bringing us in the side door of a family and finding us a spot at the dinner table. We are privy to the thoughts and emotions of each family member, yet always our main focus is on Kristin and her stormy path.
Did You Know?
The first major translation of Undset’s work, by Charles Archer, has a quaint, old-fashioned tone. Archer used a medieval-sounding jargon for his translation that can be hard to follow at times, yet this is the translation I first read and I found it charming. Since that time another translation by a woman named Tiina Nunnally has taken precedence. Nunnally (using the theory that even medieval Norwegians woul
d not sound medieval to each other) uses a more contemporary colloquial style that will be easier to read. Her translation is said to be more accurate and less precious than Archer’s, though Undset’s genius shines through both.
Juxtaposed against the ongoing battleground of Kristin’s marriage is the steady relationship of her father and mother. Undset beautifully contrasts their insurmountable difficulties with the deep joys of the long, faithful partnership between Lavrans and his wife. When, after thirty-four years of marriage, Lavrans becomes ill and knows he must die, these two stoic souls are finally able communicate without barriers (yet still with a dignified restraint) in one of the most beautiful exchanges I have ever read. (Its spare beauty reminds me of the last sweet exchange between Cordelia and King Lear.) In a quiet moment together, Lavrans places on her finger his own ring, one that he had requested never to be taken from his finger. Ragnfrid gazes down at her betrothal ring, her wedding ring, and now this last, which she realizes is to be worn after his death.
“She felt it—with this last ring he had wedded her again. When in a little while, she sat over his lifeless body, he willed she should know that with this ring he had espoused to her the strong and living force that had dwelt in that dust and ashes . . . Through the pitchy darkness that was coming she saw the glimmer of another, milder sun, she smelt the scent of the herbs in the garden at the world’s end . . .”
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